humming.
You Are What You Speak?
So, in much of Europe in the year 2000, you’ll be able to cross borders without noticing them and you’ll only need to carry one type of currency, the euro. But what language will you speak? More and more, it’s likely to be English. Increasing numbers of Europeans are deciding that if they have to invest time and effort in learning a second language, it may as well be one that can be used as widely as possible in Europe and beyond.
Like so much else in Europe, there is a precedent for Europeans sharing a common tongue, a lingua franca. For well over a thousand years, into the early centuries of the present millennium, educated people across the Continent spoke variants of Latin, the language imposed by the Romans. Modern French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan are direct descendants of Latin.
For much of the present millennium, Europeans spoke a huge variety of local dialects. It was only with the establishment of modern nation-states and public schooling that the idea of standardized national languages took hold, enabling people in different parts of the same country to communicate with each other. But the problem with language is that it’s not only a means of communication, it’s also a repository of national culture, identity and pride.
When the European Community was founded French was the predominant language until the UK joined in 1972, when English began to pose a threat. Since the admission of the Scandinavian countries in 1995, English has been even more widely used; an article in the Electronic Telegraph noted a recent survey of more than a billion pages of EU documents that confirmed that English has taken the lead. Although there are eleven official EU languages, European Commission meetings take place in just three tongues: English, French and German.
The smaller EU nations, such as the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, take it for granted that their languages are of domestic interest only. Even Italy and Spain apparently have no international aspirations for their languages. Not so Germany and France, where the national languages are seen as flagships of the national culture, to be promoted with government backing to stop the insidious slide towards English.
More than half the Germany foreign ministry’s cultural budget is devoted to promoting German language and culture abroad in 180 German schools with 2,200 teachers and specialists. Nearly 170 government-supported Goethe Institutes employ 750 people in seventy-eight countries to champion the cause.2
France takes its language very seriously indeed and is trying its best to stem the tide of English. It has a highly respected body, the Académie Française, to rule on correct usage, and has placed legal restrictions on the use of English in public communications. France even runs an international forum of forty-nine Francophone countries, which held its seventh summit, in Hanoi, Vietnam, last year. Earlier this year, France lodged an official protest with the European Commission about the way English is supplanting French as Europe’s prime working language. As part of its campaign, France has made it clear that it will block the appointment of the next president of the EC if he or she does not speak fluent French.
But, for better or for worse, English is becoming the ‘industry standard’, in much the same way that VHS became the videocassette standard and MS-DOS, Wintel and TCP/IP have become computer standards. Perhaps it’s the fact that English developed as a melting pot of the major European languages. Or maybe that it’s an ‘open standards’ language – accessible to all, and not owned by any one country.
Sonja Huerlimann, account planner at Advico Young & Rubicam Zurich, predicts that English will become the first foreign language taught in Swiss schools. The New York Times reports that young French people are flocking to Britain to improve their English-language skills, which are appreciated in much of Europe but considered a threat to the primacy of the French language back home. The Netherlands has successfully touted the English language skills of its people to promote itself as an ideal location for multinational companies to set up their European headquarters.
Paradoxically, even as Europeans increasingly choose to adopt English as their ‘trading language’, many find themselves more able than ever to slip back into their minority languages and dialects back home – linguistic diversity is thriving in Europe. In Spain, young Catalans, Basques and Galicians have grown up being allowed to talk languages that were banned under General Franco. In Italy, it was recently discovered that Italian had not been officially registered as the national language. While amending this oversight, legislators took the opportunity to register eighteen regional dialects and languages.3
Despite its reputation as being English only, the Internet is providing a low-cost medium for minority language speakers dispersed across Europe and beyond to network in languages ranging from Albanian to Welsh. Visit http://www.partal.com/ciemen/europe.html for a sample.
In the coming millennium, expect Europeans to apply global – local thinking to language. For functional global communication, English is bound to emerge as the best option. For local, personal and cultural purposes, local languages will continue to be the entrance tickets to parallel worlds. The losers in this process will be those poor souls who speak only English.
What’s Next in the UK
The United Kingdom – what’s next even for just those two words begs a lot of questions. Namely, how far into the new millennium will the country still be a kingdom, and how much longer will it remain united?
But starting this section on a negative – or even a questioning – note would run counter to the spirit of the times for the UK. The country is on a roll, Cool Britannia, fêted by feature writers the world over, once again regarded as a world-class style capital. And it’s been lauded not only as a style leader, but also as being ahead of many other European countries in terms of its preparedness for the New Economy. ‘The UK is seen in some quarters as a model for a more commercial, entrepreneurial Europe,’ says Adrian Day, of leading brand consultants Landor Associates, based in London.
The buzz has spread all over the world, but probably the sweetest satisfaction comes from changed perceptions close to home. France has tended to regard Britain with amused and slightly bemused hauteur – a trendy tourist guide of the eighties was entitled London, 100 Years Behind and 10 Years Ahead. But many French are now seriously wondering whether Britain is leaving them behind. Unprecedentedly large numbers of young French people are crossing the Channel to find work in Britain and polish their English – some 60,000 of them are in London’s financial district alone, according to Le Figaro. Even the leader of the French parliament, Laurent Fabius, recently lavished his charm on Britain’s Prime Minister, according to a report in the Financial Times: ‘We are curious about you, dear Tony Blair, your personality and style, which have made more than one of us feel old-fashioned.’
Who would have expected it? Through the late 1980s and much of the 1990s, Britain seemed to be suffering a hangover from the Thatcher Revolution. The eighties boom peaked in 1988 and was followed by gloomy years of waiting for the return of the elusive ‘Feel Good Factor’, a buzzword used by the Conservative government of John Major (who succeeded Mrs Thatcher). House prices languished, homeless people were everywhere and politicians faced incessant accusations of corruption and wrongdoing – the so-called Sleaze Factor. Ironically, the Feel Good Factor only returned at the landslide victory of the re-engineered ‘New’ Labour Party under Tony Blair in May 1997.
Postwar Britain has been characterized by boom-and-bust cycles, and time will tell whether the latest upswing will fall into the patterns of the past or break them. New Labour has certainly declared its intention to change the country. Much of the spadework was done by successive Thatcher governments
