Our English is all Greek to rest of the world

‘It is seen as arrogance. People think that the British are unwilling to make the effort’

IT’S A theory which is bound to put the cat among the pigeons.

The British are proud of the idiomatic humour of their language, but one academic has argued that we are falling behind globally by insisting on using phrases that the rest of the world simply does not understand.

Prof Jennifer Jenkins, the chairman of Global Englishes at the University of Southampton, says that native speakers are also unwilling to make allowances for others by changing their speech patterns or slowing them down.

This dynamic means the two groups could be unable to understand each other in as little as a decade, putting native English speakers at a disadvantage with the rest of the world.

Prof Jenkins’ research has included speaking to students on Erasmus programmes, which allow students from different EU countries to study in the United Kingdom. She interviewed Hungarian, German and Italian students who said they could speak to each other with perfect ease, but only had trouble when a native English speaker joined the conversation.

Lecturers, too, were said to use too many British references and cultural in-jokes when speaking to students, leaving non-native English speakers confused.

She also cites one case where an interviewer on BBC Radio 3 asked the Italian opera singer, Roberto Alagna, whether his trip to London was “going swimmingly”.

“It was clear that Alagna did not have any idea of what this opaque idiom meant and the interviewer, after an uncomfortable pause, realised this and asked instead, ‘Is it going well?’” the article says.

Another journalist, a Channel 4 news presenter, was interviewing Emmanuel Macron, the then French presidential candidate, and asked how he would challenge the country’s Rightward move: “So how would you buck that trend?” This is said to have left Mr Macron confused.

Prof Jenkins argues that the dynamic is causing a divide as other countries see the British as aloof because they insist on using their own language instead of learning others.

“It’s seen as a sort of laziness, as an arrogance. People seem to think that [the British] are unwilling to make the effort,” she said.