5-3 Will The Monoglot Ever Understand?

Will The Monoglot Ever Understand?

"They come over here, live in their own communities and don't even bother to learn our language . . ."

One of the major challenges of today is to come to terms with the consequences of globalisation, the shifts of population it engenders, and the expectations of individuals that they will be able to move to other parts of the world for work, leisure or simply a better life. As the quote above suggests, one facet of this challenge is the need to adjust our thinking about languages and language learning.

And, as far as globalisation goes, there are two sides to the linguistic coin. On the one hand, it is bringing us a dramatic growth in the use of English as a lingua franca. On the other, linguistic diversity is thrust in our faces as never before, in our cities, on the internet, on manufactured products - even down to the labels in our clothes. We know there are 300 languages spoken in London alone, and that's just by residents.

It's never been clearer that the world is multilingual and always will be. Individuals make their own decisions about which languages they speak for which purposes, and it is a basic human right that they should be able to do so.

We might also consider the right - and duty - to learn another language, in order to be equipped with the skills to participate fully in civil and economic life in a global society. Both the Council of Europe and the European Commission are strong on the need for plurilingual individuals ("plurilingual" is the preferred term for individuals, with "multilingual" referring to societies or communities) as a means of underpinning a strife-free and economically successful Europe. Skills for international communication will mean competence in the mother tongue, plus the standard language of the country where the individual is living (if different), plus another "foreign" language.

And, in case you thought otherwise, the comment quoted at the beginning of this article is about English expats living on the Costa Blanca in Spain. And here we have the basic problem for monoglot English speakers: in the linguistic panorama thrown up by globalisation, it is all too easy to see just one side of the coin - the one that begins to perceive the whole world as speaking English. From there it is only a small step to believing that it is their duty to learn English and ours merely to sit back and enjoy the cuba libres.

This perspective is stuck within a frame of its own making. It is precisely the experience of learning another language that gives us a wider perspective on ourselves, on our place in the world, on those who are different from us. Unless we can break out of this monolingual frame, we start to look like a declining power. We are dooming ourselves to failure if we cannot see what others see: that in a multilingual world we need to communicate in more than one language.

My own experience of many years in business and working as an interpreter, is that for most markets English will not be enough to create and maintain the level of relationships required with overseas customers. Our most loyal customers are those we've got to know personally, the ones whose business we know and understand and the ones with whom we share mutual respect, liking and trust. Overseas customers are no different.

They want to develop supply partnerships with people they can work well with, who value their custom and who will go the extra mile to sort out problems when they arise. How are we going to get to know their business if all contact is handled through an agent? How are we going to demonstrate that we value their custom if we haven't even bothered to try to learn their language? In short, to develop those relationships we need to speak their language.

That is why languages need to be an essential element in the education of all British teenagers. Government moves to make the curriculum for 14 to 19-year-olds more flexible and relevant to working life have, in the short term, had a devastating effect on languages as schools and pupils (stuck in a monolingual mindset) have taken this as a cue to drop languages. There has been much debate about the unpopularity of the subject and the alleged unwillingness of teenagers to choose to do languages of their own accord.

This autumn the National Centre for Languages launched a new range of materials (Languages Work) designed to help schools and careers advisers to provide proper guidance to students about the importance of languages. We help bring home to them the need to take a broader perspective on the world.

Some have told us their reasons for not wanting to carry on with a language: "I'll only be working in the West Midlands", "I'm hopeless at languages", "I won't need them for what I'm going to be doing." It is clear to us that the barriers are within themselves; it is their narrow horizons, ignorance and lack of aspiration and self-esteem that hold them back from language learning and will hold them back in their future lives - unless we can convince them otherwise.

Overcoming these barriers would have a fundamental impact on our economy and on our nation as a whole. It would help to create a generation that is outward-looking, enterprising, full of confidence on the world stage and able to make some impact internationally. Above all it would be a generation that was interculturally astute, not fazed by other cultures but not arrogant towards them either.