Do you also speak English? – Why English as a second language is generally better in certain countries

 

[women showing confusion*]

Several years, I attended a conference in Valencia, the third largest city in Spain, and needed to talk to a bank in regards to a credit card issue. I entered a local management branch and asked the question “Does anybody speak English or French?”. Of the more than 20 executives, college graduates I presume, only one said that she could speak a little French. The less said about the Spanish taxi driver who could not even read an address, the better. By contrast, almost all Israelis, from taxi driver to bank executives,  speak quite passable English, some of them almost fluently. This contrast leads to the question of why in certain countries most people know, as compared to study, a second language, English being the most common and most useful, while in others the second language is truly foreign. As I see it, admittedly based on intuition, the following four factors influence absorption of English and other second languages to one degree or another:

Resemblance – Learning a foreign language, especially for adults, is a daunting jump into the unknown. Clearly, if a person’s native tongue and the second language have the same alphabet, even with small variations, the latter feels already seems a bit familiar. If the two languages share some roots, e.g., French/English and German/Dutch, people find it significantly easier to study and remember vocabulary, a vital step in learning language. Yet, having a different alphabet or different roots do not in themselves make a language unapproachable but merely add an element of difficulty.

Government policy – Most national education systems include English as part of their curriculum. However, the starting age, number of hours, training of the teacher and quality of the materials vary significantly. Clearly, the ideal is to start teaching a foreign language as early as possible since small children enjoy superior language learning capabilities. Ideally, locally produced learning materials are better as the cultural references better reflect the experience of the learners. Some governments use their power to influence television programming, choosing to produce and broadcast English language learning programs for various ages. English road signing as a matter of policy also increases exposure to the language. In this manner, English becomes a second language, not a foreign language.

Exposure – Regular exposure to a second language creates natural opportunities to use it. While many countries still dub movies and TV programs, those ‘forced” to hear the original English, even with subtitles, improve their listening and reading comprehension to one degree or another. The Internet era has clearly elevated English to an essential language in navigating the Net and accessing information. Searching, whether for information or products, clearly involves some English as the machine translation of sites in many languages can be extremely confusing. Academics in almost all fields depend on English language sources, whether written or oral presentations, to stay up to date. Regardless of their origin, the language of communication of most tourists is English, especially in countries with exotic languages. Where English is prevalent and useful, people see the need to learn it.

Willingness – The subjective element has an important influence . Specifically, people in some countries, in particular those that had great empires or are geographically isolated, feel great pride in their heritage and assume that others should speak their language as a matter of respect. They view speaking a foreign language as unnecessary and, to a certain degree, degrading. Clearly, not every citizen shares this attitude but often a large percentage of population do feel this way. By contrast, native speakers of statistically irrelevant languages, such as Hebrew and Islandic, know that outside of their country (and a few cities abroad in the case of Hebrew) they must speak English. It even becomes a matter of pride and high style to insert English in their native languages. A look at the store signs in Israel shows how highly English is esteemed. People have to be open to using a foreign language to make it a true second language.

Looking at the spectrum of use of English throughout the world, we can see, on the one hand, countries where the English-speaking tourist has no problem managing with a sprinkling of the local language and large portion of English. On the other hand, there are places where tourists have to resort to sign language and pictures, such as in many parts of China and even a few countries in East Europe. The reasons for this variance are far from simple and involve government policy, the international reality and intrinsic attitudes. The result, among others, is that not all countries are created equal in tems of foreign language accessibility.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

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