Mind your language, Lyndon Jones

The challenge of the new Mind your language Lyndon Jones asserts the educational benefits of studying Modern Languages at school and a conversation with Andy Hartley shows what this can lead to in life and in a career

Modern Languages learning in senior schools, the benefits of which should be self-evident, has eloquent detractors, though what motivates them to air these views beyond fear, ignorance and prejudice, seems elusive.

When, in 2004, it became optional for schools to prescribe languages as compulsory subjects pre-GCSE, what had previously been a commonly acknowledged faith in their value began swiftly to be eroded. This was a myopic concession to ease. Since then, their position in the curriculum has grown ever weaker. Articles in the press have spoken portentously of ‘The death of modern languages’, or of ‘Degree courses in freefall’, so that, were it not for a few obdurate voices in the wilderness, not least that of Richard Dawkins, who speaks of our ‘monoglottish disgrace’, one might be forgiven for inferring that we had thrown in the towel and relinquished our aspiration to belong to a better world because it all seemed too difficult.

What has been filling the void has not strengthened the position of young people in their preparations for the modern world and its dangers. In a climate of conflicting entrenched

Frankfurt

certainties, in which a foolhardy contempt for expert judgement defines the prevailing mood and all forms of peril are a mere click away, the need for disciplines in school that encourage young people to listen, to read and above all to think with openness, agility and honesty seems clear. What better source of confidence than a resourceful mind? Language study has an important healing role to play amidst the tensions of this troubled world and it needs its apologists. In search of reassurance I therefore sought out Andy Hartley, with whom I had studied Modern Languages at University, and who now lives and works in Brussels.

LJ: Where did it all start?

AH: As an all Yorkshire lad, I had never been abroad, other than on one of those pioneering package holidays to the Balearics, but I was intrigued by our Dutch neighbours, whose house, identical architecturally to ours, contained all manner of different things and smells, which struck me as interesting and exotic. I thought languages would open up ways to explore different places - and cultures, though this was not really a

concept to me yet - and I resolved to become a modern linguist.

LJ: How important were your teachers in stimulating your curiosity?

AH: Like most others in my generation, I first encountered French as a compulsory subject in my first year of secondary school. It was taught fairly academically but was more amusing than many other subjects, as you had to speak up and make funny noises. I was precociously good at it, having a good ear and reliable memory, and when I was fourteen, I asked my teacher, Tony Kingham, to explain to me the tenses we had not yet come across in class so that I could read Astérix books. When, for my third year, I had to make one of those bizarre choices dictated by school curricula between Biology, Ancient Greek or German, I opted for German, initially an intimidating experience, for we actually had a native speaker. Dr H.E.H.A. Krips had been a brilliant young judge in Vienna at the time of Anschluss and had decided to get out while he could. He ended up for the rest of his life trying to foster an interest in German in schoolboys in Bradford. He was the oldest teacher in the school, but Dr Krips actually had a radically modern approach to language teaching and spoke to us only in German for the first three classes - to our total bewilderment. He then relented and taught us what it all meant in English. He was a remarkable old Viennese gentleman, from whom I gained the insight that a modern language is something very much alive and used spontaneously by people in other countries.

LJ: And what have Modern Languages done for you?

AH: It came as something of a revelation to me, when living in a village in the South of France for nine months at the age of 18, that the thing I had striven for years to master at school was, albeit with a good many colloquial adaptations learned by listening to those around me, immensely useful and fun, as it enabled me to engage with a quite different world to the one I had grown up in and make endless discoveries about it and its inhabitants and, ultimately, about myself. After two years of university, I repeated the experience by living for a year in Germany. I later became a professional linguist by training in Brussels to be a conference interpreter. I started to pick up Italian in the process and ended up marrying an Italian and staying on to work in Brussels.

LJ: Have you found it difficult to go on learning new languages?

AH: Given the large number of languages we work with at the SCIC (the European Commission’s interpreting service) there has always been considerable pressure to learn new languages for professional purposes. I have been lucky in that my employer has provided generous training opportunities for language learning. When I rejoined the staff in 1992, I was very keen to learn Spanish properly. I had a passing acquaintance with it from numerous holidays in Spain and also more recently in Cuba and Mexico, and it had always attracted me as an important world and literary language. Since I already had French and Italian it was not going to be too hard. However, non-linguists may be surprised to hear that there is one hell of a lot of vocabulary to learn if you’re going to use Spanish (or any other language) professionally, even if you’re on relatively familiar ground. Much later I learned Dutch for work, which again was relatively easy for someone who knows German and English.

LJ: Does it surprise you that relatively few young people appear willing to take up the challenge of European languages, despite their claims to be pro-European?

AH: It surprises me, in an age of globalization and more frequent travel, where languages can be directly useful, and at a time of easy access to all manner of multilingual media on the internet for learning purposes (compared to the situation of a boy growing up in Yorkshire in the 1960s!), that language learning is actually taken less seriously by young people in England now than it was then. Is it the glib assumption that everyone speaks English and therefore what’s the point? But, of course, they don’t all speak English and this attitude smacks of cultural arrogance and a lack of intellectual and human curiosity. That I do find saddening and strangely inexplicable.

Both my children were brought up tri-lingual (Italian, English and French) in Brussels, but with the freedom to speak whichever language they wanted when they wanted. They did most of their schooling in French before going to university in the United Kingdom. My daughter studied languages and is a proficient linguist. She has written English performing translations of Musset and Pirandello plays which she has directed. She has also mastered Farsi. My son studied chemistry and uses his languages competently in his private life, but it was thanks to his knowledge of French that he got a first temporary job in Glasgow.

Learning a language is not easy, it is a challenge and a long process. Like many things in life, what is acquired with persistence and effort gives ultimately more satisfaction. A language is really like playing a musical instrument: you only get and remain good at it by constant practice. However, if you’re going to get anywhere, you just have to get stuck in, no matter how inelegantly at first. Nevertheless, even at a modest level, there is an immediate payback in making it possible to communicate with people in other countries and get things done.

As an academic discipline, languages are not an exact science – whilst many things are definitely wrong, there is frequently more than one correct solution. But, unlike many other academic subjects, they are directly applicable in real life and what is more important - and more human - than the way in which two human beings communicate with each other? Developing this aspect of your intellectual and mental equipment enhances your general ability to interface with others. Learning another language inevitably teaches you things you didn’t realise about your own language, how you can make it work better for you and how others may be using it to manipulate you. Developing language ability makes you more aware of how communication works and of how to clarify your own thoughts when you are obliged to express them with more limited resources in a language that is not your own.

Being able to speak a foreign language is an immensely useful life skill, but relatively few people make a career out of languages as I have done. In the global economy, where trade with other countries is all important, the successful candidate of two otherwise equally qualified job applicants may well be the one who has mastered a second language. So, to return to your question, languages have given me personally a job and a family, but before that they permitted me to broaden my horizons by living in other countries, getting to know people of different backgrounds and cultures, and gave me a better understanding of myself, as well as of a wider world. Lyndon Jones taught Modern Languages for thirty years

Andy Hartley is a Senior Staff Interpreter for the EC