- What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
Bilingual. (bell rings)
What do you call someone who speaks one language?
British, of course. ("God Save the Queen")
(rock music)
Ha ha ha ha, yes, a funny joke, I know.
And it's funny 'cause let's face it, it's true.
But why are the British so bloody bad at foreign languages?
In the third part of my Julian in Amsterdam series,
one of my favourite videos to date, by the way,
I talked about the question,
why are the Dutch so good at English?
And in the comments section I got a great, well, comment.
ThatDutchguy said, we're good at French and German too.
Why are the British so crap at other languages
is a better topic for a video I'd say.
And indeed, I think that is a great topic for a video.
Is it actually true that the British are, indeed,
crap at foreign languages?
Well, the European Commission did a survey
and yes, it turns out that we are rather rubbish
when it comes to learning foreign languages.
(bell rings) 62% of people reported
that no, they indeed don't speak any other language
other than English.
(bell rings) 38% of people report
that they speak at least one foreign language.
Though of course it is important here to realise
that it's not stated how well
they might speak those languages.
So although 38% of people reported
that they do speak another language, how well
and whether that goes beyond hello or not is not clear.
(bell rings) 18% of people reported
that they speak two foreign languages,
and just 6% of people said that they spoke three.
All in all, lang.
The Brits aren't great at learning foreign languages.
Part of the reason for this, of course,
if we're perfectly honest the United Kingdom
has a history of not befriending other cultures
and learning their language, but pushing their way in,
taking over the country, and forcing you guys
to learn our language.
Really, simply put, the answer to the question,
why are the Brits so crap at foreign languages
is pretty much exactly the same as the answer
to the question why are the Dutch so good at English.
It's all about attitude.
Us Brits have totally the wrong way of thinking
about foreign languages.
To us, foreign languages are strange, alien,
unfamiliar things that we know nothing about.
It's not like it is in, say, Holland, or say, Sweden
where much of the media may be in English
and people grow up exposed to English
in a way that means that when they come to then learn it
at school they're already familiar with the language.
It's not this strange, weird, alien thing to them.
It's something that they already know quite a lot about
and are already, again, quite familiar with.
I mean, take French, for example.
I, like most British kids, learned French at school,
but the first time I was ever exposed to French
was when I was 12 and we learned colours and animal names.
Not exactly the most stimulating of content.
This isn't of course to say that you have to start as a kid
to get good at a language.
I was first exposed to Japanese in my early twenties
and I started learning when I was 23
and I did pretty well, thank you very much.
But rather, it's to say that it's all about familiarity.
If you are familiar with something
when you start learning it,
it's obviously going to be much, much easier
than if you have never ever heard anything about that thing.
Aside from attitude, another problem that us Brits face
is quite simply that it can actually be quite hard
to find situations where we are actually required
to use a foreign language, even if we want to do it,
often things just switch to English.
I know a guy of French ancestry who lives in Ottawa.
He grew up speaking English and wanted to learn French,
but whenever he'd try to use French with somebody,
despite the fact that Ottawa is very much a bilingual city,
those people would instantly realise
that English was his first language and switch to English.
This happens to most of us most of the time.
English is the de facto lingua franca.
It's the language that people use
between themselves in business.
If you have an Italian person speaking with, say,
somebody from Holland they are gonna speak in English,
or most likely they are gonna speak in English anyway.
So it's pretty obvious that when a British person comes in
they're not suddenly going to switch to Italian
just because we've got a British person here
and you know, hey, the British person has to speak Italian.
No, work is going to get done in English.
That is what everybody is familiar with.
That is what everybody is used to.
Meaning, (chuckles) again, there is very,
very little pressure put upon the British
to learn foreign languages.
Combine that with the less than productive attitude
and we don't tend to get very far.
On this, let's get some discussion going in the comments.
Head down to the comments and answer this question.
If English were not the de facto language
of international business, if, say, Chinese
was the language that everybody used between each other
to do business, would you actually bother to learn English?
Let us know in the comments.
Let me just finish this video by saying that there are,
of course, people in the United Kingdom,
born and bred Brits who are pretty bloody good
at foreign languages, thank you very much.
Just like I am sure there are people in, say, Holland
who are rubbish at English.
I personally think I happen to be one
of the Brits good at foreign languages.
I learned Japanese to a very advanced level as an adult.
Would I have done so if I hadn't have found myself
in a situation where I needed the language?
Honestly, probably not, but hey, I had little interest
or knowledge in Japan or Japanese culture
before I came to this country, so hey,
that's circumstance for you, I guess.
Related to this topic,
members of my English learning community Julian Northbrook's
League of Extraordinary English Speakers
are encouraged to check out the lesson Stan
the stick in the mud where we followed a conversation
between a group of people in the office
talking about the role of English in the world
and how did you know English isn't even
the most common language in the world.
Indeed, it's not even the second or third
in terms of number of native speakers.
If you're not yet a member of my English learning community
you can and should become one by heading over
to doingenglish.com/Membership.
There's a link in the description.
(rock music)
Ha ha ha, funny joke I know,
but it's funny 'cause it's true.
Hi, I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com
and why are the British so bloody bad at English?
I just said, "Why are the British so bad at English?"
Wait a minute.
Well actually no, that's a fair question.
but it's funny 'cause it's true.