My spoken French is rubbish. I can get by being able to ask for stuff, but it’s dealing with the response I have difficulty with. I just can’t get do it well enough to hold any form of conversation.

I had this problem in Italy. For example I asked for a large bottle of still mineral water and when I was asked for the room number to charge it to (in Italian) I was like... dafuq?

My wife is from the Ore Mountains in eastern Germany. This means that when I go to visit, I absolutely have to speak German.

The reason? Of those that speak English, most are concentrated in the cities and large towns in the west. Fewer than 10% of resident East Germans speak any English whatsoever and most speak one of the many strong German dialects. So when I go to Saxony, I have to deal with a population that primarily learnt Sächsich, Vogtlandisch or Erzgebirgisch (a separate language derived from German with a strong accent roughly equivalent to Geordie) whose second language is Russian.

Ended up in Stuttgart? Many don't speak Hochdeutsch (Standard High German) but rather Swäbisch. Are you in München? Your german had better be good because Bavarian is horrific. Or perhaps in Bremen? Good luck with the Plattdeutsch. And that's just Germany itself. There's also the Swiss, the Austrians, the Italians, the Polish and the Scandinavians.

And you can't rely on English being international either, due to most English-speakers being in urban areas. As soon as you go even slightly off the beaten track, lack of fluency with German can get you in trouble very quickly.

But, so the argument will no doubt go, I'm not very likely to require any knowledge of German because I'm not interested in going anywhere near German speakers. My nextdoor-neighbours are Polish. Of the nine of them that live in the house, only three speak English; I speak with Bogdan in German instead. Furthermore, I've been at the wrong end a pistol trying to reason with a drunk, frightened Polish man who only spoke pigeon German and no English whatsoever - in Birmingham. I was very glad I'd learnt German that day I can tell you.

Nobody can predict what knowledge they will need and when - the one thing you refuse to learn will be the one thing that leaps up and bites you.


Exactly correct, Dave.

If anyone expects to turn up in Southern France or Eastern Germany and speak English, they're in cloud-cuckoo land. Most people there don't speak enough to be useful and those that do are likely to refuse to use it.

I have been quite surprised at some of the responses on this thread. My mother is Belgian and was brought up with English, Flemish and French. She did get confused as a child so decided just to teach me English. I wish she hadn't and had spoken other languages to me when I was young as I was rubbish at school. Whereas my Mum can speak and understand numerous languages now. I did French and German at school but feel I absorbed more Spanish after spending many years holidaying there.

My opinion is teach the children young like they do in Europe. I think if you feel children are not learning English well then why is that? Has schooling changed so much in the last 30 years that they don't teach spelling and grammar? Is it to do with the computer age and parents not spending as much time with children and just plonking them down in front of a games console for entertainment so children are more lazy?

I don't know as I don't have children but I do know languages are an amazing skill to have so start teaching them young when their brains are like sponges.

Kids should be learning languages, music, literature, reasoning skills and history from the moment they are ready; and we should ignore Gradgrindian assumptions about the comparative value of subjects. If they learn nothing but maths, science, spelling and grammar they will either grow up to be dreary people, or else rebel and learn nothing.

Plus they'd be bored to death without variety in their lessons.

I agree with your entire post and it amazes me that anyone else wouldn't, but just to respond to this question...

30 years ago I was almost 12. I'd been learning French for a couple of years, and was just about starting German. The one thing I remember most about German was the teacher complaining that no one in the class knew anything about English grammar.

Technical grammar rules are not something you pick up in conversation. When you learn a language naturally, you say things "because they sound right". Systematic grammar has to be taught, and we'd only been taught some very basics.

I think you have to go back more than 30 years to find proper English grammar being taught to children in "normal" schools, if ever. I suspect it was the reserve of grammar schools. (no joke intended)

The teaching of grammar was re-introduced a few years back in primary school.

There was, however, an extended period of about 30 years where it wasn't taught at all. Any grammar skills I learned at school were learnt in French with the majority picked up in adulthood.

It has something to do with teaching methods, I think. We had to use reasonable spelling and grammar, but my brother, who was 2 years behind me, didn't have to concentrate on non-English subjects on his spelling or grammar, he just had to be able to get his ideas across.

Here, in Germany, pupils lose half a mark for each spelling or grammar mistake on a page on ANY subject, not just English. That is probably why most Germans I know have a better grasp of English Grammar than many English friends - their vocabulary might not be as large, but they run rings round many native English speakers.

Edit: Wot they said! JJW and Rusty hit the nail on the head. Even in English, we only learnt basic grammar rules, we were expected to pick up the advanced rules from reading and practice. The grasp of grammar rules seemed to slip with each class that followed. Hopefully the re-introduction of teaching grammar rules explicitly in schools will see the current generation of school children coming out able to communicate better than those that left school in the last 20 years or so.

The Future Mrs PZ says that everything from the top is being pulled down. By that she means that subjects and topics covered in secondary school are now being covered at the top few years of primary school, and everything that needs to be covered in primary education is being slowly compacted towards the younger years. So less time for the basics to be covered at younger years because you are rushing them through to make space for stuff that would have been taught in secondary education.

That's pretty much my fear around all this - I was utterly astounded at the amount of homework kids are getting these days, for instance. It made me wonder just how much is getting crammed in during lessons

I had a chat with one of my colleagues who has 4 children and he's saying they're not really teaching anything these days. He actually hires private tutors when they get a certain ages and teaches as much English, Maths, Biology, History and Geography himself to try and make up the gap. He says the schools are becoming very Americanised.

They are also getting taken to local police station and get finger prints taken at the age of 12 which are kept on record which is rather worrying. Also the doctors and dentists have taken swabs for DNA records.

Yeah, a sneaky peeler did that at our primary school, I'd say it's solved quite a few crimes

This does not bode well.

I produced a flyer for PowerPlex in Indianapolis this year, one of our project managers has to send out information to a prospective customer (multi-national, based in Germany with multi-billion turnover) and I have until tonight to finish translating it from English into German.

Even though the company is a multi-national, all the information we send them has to be in German, or we won't even get our foot in the door.