Linguistic incompetence in Britain
Back on 16 December the
Economist
took up not only the three new official languages of the EU (reported
on
here),
but also the monolingualism of Britons. There was a leader (U.S.:
editorial), on p. 14, and a news story, on pp. 55-6, about how Britons
are "God's worst linguists": "just 30% of Britons can converse in a
language other than their own (only Hungarians did worse)", and fewer
and fewer young people are studying languages in school. (Why
bother? Everyone else is learning English!)
We chatted about these pieces over sherry in the Writers' Lounge at
Language Log Plaza at the time, but the story didn't seem significant
enough to merit blogging. Even in Europe, the Hungarians (are
said to) do worse than the Britons (though only by one percentage
point), and surely Americans and Australians would give the Brits a run
for their money in the foreign language incompetence sweepstakes.
(Actually, that 30% figure seems high. The figures are from
a
European
Commission report of 2005, based on a questionnaire administered to
29,328 people, and they represent the percentages of people in each
member state who "assert that they can speak at least one other
language than their mother tongue at the level of being able to have a
conversation." We might expect such self-reports to be a bit,
well, optimistic.)
Now there's a new twist: are Britons competent even in their own
language?
In a letter in the 6 January issue of the
Economist (p. 14), Jason Smith of
London raises the issue:
With regard to your leader lamenting
the willingness [I would have said "unwillingness"] of the British to
learn Johnny Foreigner's native tongue, perhaps you could turn your
attention to persuading Britons to master their own language
first... I recently received a marketing leaflet advising me:
"Dont wait for new year sales when there in stock now".
Yes, it's about
SPELLING (including punctuation and
capitalization). I was prepared to see a rant about non-standard
grammar or the innovations of the young or even the appalling
pronunciations of
Estuary
English, but instead -- in response to pieces about people's
ability to
CONVERSE in languages other than their
mother tongue -- we get a hell-in-a-handbasket letter about spelling.
English orthography is cunningly mined with traps for the unwary, and
ordinary people writing in English have never been particularly good at
avoiding the traps.*
[* Bob Yates addresses the issue in e-mail to me:
Whenever I read statements that
"things" are sliding downhill, I remind myself of this petition written
by [a] white woman in Miller County, Georgie in September, 1863 to
Jefferson Davis. Fortunately, Williams, who says this was typical
of such petitions from women written to Davis, did not fix the
spellings.
Our crops is limited and so short [that
we] cannot reach the first day of march next. . . . But little
[illegible] of any sort to Rescue us and our children from a unanumus
starveation. . . . We can seldom find [bacon] for non has got But those
that are exzempt from service . . . and they have no humane feeling nor
patreotic prinsables in thare harts. . . . they care not ef all the
South and its effort fail and sink so they swim. . . An allwise god who
is slow to anger and full of grace . . . will send down his forty and
judgement in a very grate manar [on] all those our leading men and
those that are in pwere if thare is no more favors show to those the
mothers and wives and of those hwo in poverty has with patrootism stood
the fence of Battles. . . I tell you that with out some grate and
speadly alternating in the conduckting of afares in this our little
nation god will frown on it and that speadly.
Source: Williams, David. (1998). Rich Man's War. Athens: University of
Georgia Press. (p. 113-4)
This is not some email exchange. This is a text written to the leader
of [the] country. ]
In addition, spelling ability is at best weakly connected to measures
of verbal facility, intelligence, and the like. Being "good at"
spelling in English (note: in
ENGLISH) is one of those
odd language-related talents like being good at Double-Crostics or
being able to talk ad lib in iambic pentameter or being able to
rap. If you're not good at spelling, you'll have to find a way to
work around that in circumstances where spelling is important, but you
shouldn't let spelling problems prevent you from writing; after all,
some spectacularly bad spellers are very good writers indeed.
On the other hand, if you can't frame what you want to say in ways that
your intended audience will be able to understand without hard work,
you're in trouble. If this is in your mother tongue, you have
some sort of disability. I've spent a fair amount of time with
people with such disabilities, and it's distressing all around.
(Maybe I'll be able to post about this, maybe not. The case I
know the most about is my partner of 26 years, now dead.)
Two notes: a claim about the ability to hold a conversation in a
language other than your mother tongue got turned into a rant about
writing, in fact about the mechanics of writing, thus trivializing a
serious issue; and all deviations from correctness, all kinds of
"incompetence", are treated as equivalent, thus elevating poor spelling
to a significance it doesn't deserve. Why, someone who would
spell
they're as
there might be capable of anything!
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at January 8, 2007 12:12 PM