Joe McWilliams
Is the world moving toward a single language for commerce? It looks that way!
Kids are being told: “Learn English and your prospects will improve,” and the message is getting through.
Everybody and his dog (as they say) wants to learn this magic thing called English.
But where does that leave the native English speaker?
In my case, with insufficient incentive to learn other languages. I do make some effort, when overseas, to figure out some words and phrases to get by. But mostly, people in those countries are way ahead of me, have some English and aren’t afraid to use it.
And prefer to, in most cases!
English is creeping in everywhere. Even foreign-language films and TV shows are littered with English lingo – much of it recognizably cliché stuff from English films and shows.
I got watching a series of YouTube videos recently by a young Canadian fellow who calls his channel The New Travel. So far, he’s visited 16 cities and done a video in each one in which he approaches 20 or 30 people on the street and asks them what languages they speak. That doesn’t sound like much, but it unexpectedly turns into something quite inspiring.
Besides anything else, it’s a great ice-breaker. Who knows how many people he approaches who brush him off, but the ones who end up in the video mostly seem happy to talk about the languages they speak, and generally give a good impression. Of course, it only works (or mostly only works) because the people he approaches on the street understand enough English to answer his questions.
The videos paint those cities and their denizens in a kind of glow that you’d never get from just walking around and observing. It brings out something rich and warm, and – as noted – completely unexpected, for me.
Although the interviewer has some annoying habits (he uses ‘amazing’ far too much, for example), it got my imagination all fired up. So I decided to do something similar and turn it into a newspaper story.
As I made the rounds one day I asked several people how many languages they speak. The results were every bit as good and as enjoyable as the videos had given me reason to think they would be.
For example, the four people at the local pharmacy each speak four languages. The Filipino guy at the coffee shop has 4 1/2, if he isn’t exaggerating. And so on.
I’d like to think I have one and a half, but don’t ask me to prove it. Meanwhile, I spend about 15 minutes per day doing online German. It’s mostly fun and I do OK at the lessons, but I’m not sure I’m gaining much ground. No harm done so far, though.
It’s all good stuff, but native English speakers are in an odd position, because people everywhere, it seems, want to learn English, and are learning it, mostly out of necessity. It means we have to make less effort to get by in foreign circumstances, and given the opportunity, most of us are more than willing to not make the effort.
It took me a long time to figure some things out and one of them was that I should have buckled down and learned another language or two when my brain was still nimble. Now that it isn’t, I am making effort, and the going is slow.
So my advice, for what it’s worth. Get at it when you are young!