It’s time to break down our language barriers

How gloomy it was to hear that language learning in schools is at its lowest since the turn of the millennium, with German and French plummeting particularly fast. Schools report the reason is that languages are seen as “difficult” subjects that are harder to get top grades in. This, too, is dispiriting, as though the point of studying is now purely to collect exam points, rather than actual skills – including those sought after in the jobs market.

My own acquisition of languages is patchy and rusty – I have a distant O-level in German, a GCSE in Spanish, and an A-level in French – but there is none the less a peculiar magic to learning another language, however incompetently: each has its own distinct poetry and logic, allowing you to creep inside the thought-processes of another country.

While children of other countries often grow up bilingual, however, native English speakers have been rendered somewhat lazy by the fact that English is used as a lingua franca. There is little more excruciating than hearing an anglophone attempting to overcome the incomprehension of any nonenglish speaker by simply speaking English more slowly, and at earsplitting volume.

Still, sometimes the citizens of other countries get their own back. After leaving school aged 17, I decided to take a year out, go to Paris and find a job. There, with the misplaced optimism of youth, I dressed up smartly and began hunting for work as a shop assistant on the Boulevard Saint-germain.

When I inquired at one boutique, which had a card in the window seeking an English-speaking assistant, the rather haughty manageress quickly made it plain my services would not be required. I said, in French: “But I thought you were looking for someone who spoke English?”

She replied, in French: “Yes, but they must also speak French.”

It still stings, a little.