Speaking in tongues

In the Netherlands people are used to hearing their national politicians taking press conferences and interviews in English for the benefit of a wider international audience. Whenever they are required to do so, foreign secretaries, finance ministers and the like are generally able to put across their message in English albeit with varying degrees of dexterity. Take Jan Pronk for example, perhaps best known for his time as Dutch Minister of Development Aid. Whilst his command of English is terrific, his crabbed guttural pronunciation lets him down. Begrudgingly, I would also add Geert Wilders – he with the Mozart coiffure and anti-Islamist views – to the list of competent English speakers. There are others too, including Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former secretary-general of NATO, whose main claim to fame, linguistically at least, was that English TV and radio presenters could never pronounce his name correctly.

British politicians who speak a foreign language on the other hand are a rarity, so when you hear them doing so, it makes you sit up and notice. When they do it well, it’s quite extraordinary. Imagine my surprise then when I was alerted to a YouTube clip of Nick Clegg - this week instated as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - being interviewed on the election stumps by a Dutch TV crew. His Dutch is well-nigh impeccable. Of course, it has to be said that Clegg has a Dutch mother and spent several years living in Flanders working as a Eurocrat and MEP. Nevertheless, pretty amazing stuff. The truth is though, if the roles were reversed (i.e. a Dutch politician speaking flawless English), nobody would bat an eyelid.

Not so long ago, the UK had a prime minister who could speak French, but in general, polyglots amongst the Westminster political fraternity are few and far between. Denis MacShane, who was the Minister for Europe under the Blair regime, speaks French, Spanish and German fluently and has a working knowledge of a smattering of other languages. James Purnell, a former Labour cabinet member, speaks fluent French (he grew up in France) and Ben Bradshaw, another former minister who was ousted from government at the 2010 election, studied German at university and worked as an award-winning radio correspondent for the BBC in Berlin when the Wall came down. But that seems to be as far as it gets.     

The reality is that too few British politicians speak a foreign language. Many believe this leads to a blinkered, Anglo-Saxon view of the world. However, even though you can point the finger of blame in their direction, it’s not just the politicians: their lack of foreign-language skills reflects a wider unwillingness on the part of Britons to embrace multilingualism. Despite having joined the Common Market in 1973, time seems to have stood still. When I was studying French and German A-level in the 1970s, language students in the UK were considered somewhat quirky, but today things actually seem worse: language learning, according to experts, is rapidly becoming a “twilight” subject in state schools. In 2004, the Labour government even decided to take compulsory language learning off the GCSE (exam) curriculum. Nowadays, language students are evidently even quirkier. And sooner, rather than later, there will be no teachers left to teach languages. Contrast this with the Netherlands (and other European countries), where language learning is a mainstream element of the curriculum. Of course, it’s a myth that the British lack the genes for it: the British ineptitude to speak foreign languages cannot simply be shrugged off by quoting the old chestnut, “Sorry, we’re just no good at it!”

Yes, English is a global language, but consider where the UK’s trade markets lie. Culturally, the benefits of learning a foreign language would appear to be self-evident, but economically, they should be even more obvious. The EU, collectively, is by far and away the UK’s biggest trading partner, yet native English-speakers only account for 13% of the overall EU population, against 18% who are German-speakers, 13% Italian, 12% French and 9% Spanish. Of course, many people on the continent speak English as a second language, but if UK business hopes to break into these potentially prosperous markets, they will have to learn to communicate more effectively with them, that is, by speaking their own language. 

So, does a multilingual Lib-Dem deputy prime minister offer hope, or does the inherent antipathy towards all things European on the part of his new coalition partners presage a further watering down of language learning in the UK?

What's in a name?

The main character in Alexander McCall Smith’s academic satire, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, is a larger-than-life figure with a larger-than-life name: Prof Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. The absurdity of his name lies not in the fact that his name in English means Hedgehog Field (=Igelfeld), but in the use of his ‘double-barrelled’ academic title, for in English it’s just not possible to call yourself Professor and Doctor at the same time…

Surprisingly perhaps, for a society which is allegedly class-ridden, the British are rather timid about using official titles. The only ones we ever use as academic titles are Professor (Prof) and Doctor (Dr) – and NEVER together for the same person! We use these, and other references to academic and business qualifications, almost exclusively for professional purposes. In fact, someone who goes around flashing their academic title in everyday situations is considered slightly pompous. We like to be modest about our achievements. You might put a MSc or a BEd against your name on a business card, but you might risk being mocked as pretentious if you band it around in private circles. In fact, over the last few decades there has been a tendency to dumb down whenever it comes to titles and surnames, even in the business world, with most people slipping into first-name terms on the first meeting – almost to the extent that you are left second guessing their occupational background and qualifications.

On the continent however, non-English persons are often unhappy about relinquishing their academic titles, especially in English-language texts intended for professional purposes - where one might reasonably expect this reluctance - but equally so in everyday situations. Supposedly, it helps them single themselves out from the rest. However, the fact is Dutch titles - at least those of a lower academic standing than Professor or Doctor - such as Drs, Ir, Ing and Mr (a potentially very confusing one!), are completely unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world. So far from adding any value to their status, they probably detract, and will actually leave the average English speaker pretty nonplussed.

An English friend of mine who’d just moved to the Netherlands once told me his next door neighbours had a nameplate on the front door with the words “Drs L. Smit-Janssen”. He automatically assumed, of course, that he was living next door to a medical practice run by a Dr Smit and a Dr Janssen…

Word of the month: bully

I, for one, was glad when stories started appearing in the papers last week about Gordon Brown’s alleged bullying. I’m surprised the media made such a big deal of it. After all, you’d think nothing of it if Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher had ever been charged with the same thing. As it happened, my relief was that Brown hadn’t wrongly been accused of mobbing.

The other week I came up against another bully, this time a German one. Now before you start thinking I’m going to make disparaging remarks about my eastern neighbours, I ought to explain that this particular bully is quite a helpful beast. Pistenbully is the German name for a Snocat or snow groomer and it is responsible for moving, manipulating and compacting snow on ski slopes and trails, the latter on which grooves or tracks are laid. Quite useful if you fancy a bit of cross-country skiing.

The PistenBully is the trademark of a make of snow groomer produced by the German-based Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG, but it has become the generic (German) name for anything that pushes around snow on a piste. But why Bully? It was the Volkswagen Bus that was first unofficially dubbed the Bully (or Bulli) when it came out in 1950, though its derivation is unclear. One theory is that it came as a combination of the first syllables of the words Bus and Lieferwagen (van). Another version postulates that workers at the VW factory gave the prototype the nickname from the adjective “bullig” because of its bull-like appearance. Apparently the name Bully never caught on in the UK because, as the German wikipedia site for the VW Bus quite rightly points out, „Bullying“ bedeutet Mobbing.

Pleurisy

My year hasn’t started tremendously auspiciously. After spending two weeks in the UK, on the way back across the North Sea, I must have picked up an ear infection which has rendered me temporarily hearing-impaired. I’ve never worn a diving helmet before, but I’m slowly beginning to realise what it might be like to don one: the voices I hear just seem to reverberate unintelligibly off an invisible shield around my head. So last week, there seemed little point giving my normal English lessons at the Volksuniversiteit and having students’ questions literally fall on deaf ears. The next morning there was an envelope jammed in the letterbox addressed personally to me. The heading on the photocopy it contained said ‘Pleurisy’. Oh dear I thought, not another illness I’d been diagnosed with. But reading on, I found the following:

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of mouse should never be meese,
You may find a lone mouse or a whole nest of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But a bow if repeated is never called bine,

And the plural of vow is vows, never vine.
If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth, and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
 

If the singular’s this and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss ever be nicknamed keese?
Then one may be that and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
 

We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren,
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis and shim,
 

So the English, I think, you all will agree,
Is the queerest language you ever did see.

The note had been sent by a concerned colleague, who had signed off with a Get Better Soon. And even though it didn’t manage to clear up my aural orifices, it did cheer me up. A kind gesture indeed!

So, if and when I’m able to doff my imaginary diving helmet, I will at least have something in store for my students next time …

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Belgian travel games

To alleviate the boredom of a long car journey in the nineteen-sixties, my brother and I would be encouraged to play games in the back of the car, supposedly to stop us quarrelling. One popular way of passing the time was the inn-sign game, where for each pub the car passed - depending on the number of legs in the name - points could be scored. So, the Red Lion would give you 4 points and the Horse & Jockey 6 points, but the Royal Oak would provide you with none. My brother would take the right-hand side of the road and I the left. The winner at the end of the journey was the one with the highest number of points (or legs). The four-hour journey from home to Scarborough on the Yorkshire Coast, where we sometimes spent our holidays, went through Manchester city-centre, Oldham, Huddersfield, Leeds and York, so it was rewarding territory. Of course, in the intervening years, these towns and cities have all been by-passed by motorways and dual-carriageways and it is unlikely that any pubs will appear along the roadsides these days.

Nowadays, (motorway) travel can be quite mind-numbing and I have to admit that car-driving and I are not natural bedfellows. So I have to think of other ways of breaking the monotony on a long drive. A fortnight ago, I was driving to the port of Zeebrugge on a stretch of road that I quite often travel for North Sea crossings and I was reminded of why travelling in Belgium (even on its motorways) can be such fun. 

You could, for example, try spotting French place-names when circumventing Brussels - one of the largest Francophone metropolises in the world - on the northern section of its outer ring road (R0). Well, guess what? There aren’t any. The R0 doesn’t actually enter bi-lingual Greater Brussels, so if you don’t know the Flemish names for Liège and Mons, you’d better check up on them beforehand.

Jodoigne: now you see it, now you don’t. Driving the Belgian motorways can be a baffling experience. If you travel the E40 from Liège to Brussels, keep your wits about you if you have an appointment in French-speaking Jodoigne. One minute you’re in Wallonia, the next you’re in Flanders, so don’t miss exit 25 for Geldenaken (that’s French for Jodoigne – as if they even look or sound the same!)

When you peel off E40 onto the E314 just west of Leuven and see signs to Aken (followed by the German name Aachen), you might be forgiven for thinking that the French-speaking and Flemish-speaking communities would show some fraternity when it came to providing road signs in two languages, at least on their national routes where place names differ, but – apart from in Brussels and local authorities with so-called language facilities - this is taboo.

However, my favourite game on Belgian motorways, like the inn-sign game, is beer-related and is called Spot-the-Brewery: on my recent drive to the Belgian coast, I passed junctions signposting Hoegaarden, Grimbergen, Affligem and Brugge (and if you take the southern route through Wallonia to Calais, there are motorway exits to Jupille, Floreffe and (possibly) Watou). Now if that doesn’t work up an appetite, I don’t know what will.

Swith Fremeful*

Any ideas what the following might mean?

1. Bewarping the way of rightwiseness

2. The American Forthspell of Selfdom

3. You have a wlitty anleth

4. Needness is the mother of afoundness

5. Lessness of ourlandish goods show unrightcrafting

It may look like gibberish, but somehow the five expressions bear some passing resemblance to present-day English. Perhaps this is not so surprising, according to David Cowley, the author of a recent book on the subject "How we'd talk if the English had won in 1066": this is how English might have looked or sounded if King Harold had won the Battle of Hastings. If it hadn’t been for the Norman Conquest in the 11th century, many French (and Latin) words would never have entered the English language.

You might think the book begrudges the victory of the Normans in 1066. However, it seeks to present an entertaining picture of how a language may have developed if history had worked out differently. Of course, it’s purely hypothetical, since many subsequent historical events have made a significant impact on the English language. But perhaps nothing quite so momentous as the Norman Conquest when the English nobility was replaced lock, stock and barrel with their Norman counterparts. Right up until the mid-14th century, the language of authority was French. If you could not speak French, you were unable to command respect. The king spoke French, as did his lords, knights, clerks, chaplains and servants. Hardly any of them would have been fluent in English, the language spoke by the commoners.

Many words which had their origins in Old English, such as go up, find out, put off and take off (and which are still predominantly used in everyday spoken language today), gained high-sounding equivalents derived from French or Latin: ascend, ascertain, dissuade and deduct. In fact, these loanwords are still considered to be the preferred choice in formal, written English: how many readers, the author asks, have been drilled into writing 'I received your letter' instead of  'I got your letter’. So whilst much of the Anglo-Saxon wordstock persists in modern-day English, many other old (Germanic) words were replaced by loanwords.

Here is just a flavour:

wastumbearingness = fruitfulness, fertility

oathbreach = perjury

afterfollower = successor

forthgang = progress

unmightly = impossible

So what are the expressions above supposed to mean?

1. Perverting the course of justice

2. The American Declaration of Independence

3. You have a pretty face

4. Necessity is the mother of invention

5. Minority of home-manufactured goods of poor quality

* Very useful

Tussendoortjes

 

Any self-respecting translator will identify with the problem: you have more than enough on your plate when the phone rings and the client asks if you can just do a small job for them: “It will only take half an hour, we need it back by the end of the day, I'm sure you can fit it in somehow.” You try telling them, No, my diary is bursting at the seams. But you don’t really want to let them down (translators are good people after all). You think, okay, I’ll work through my lunch break, I’ll put off that shopping trip until tomorrow or I’ll give up my forty winks on the settee after dinner.

You put down the phone and start thinking, “Heck, why on earth did I say yes, I’m up to my eyeballs in work. I didn’t really need the job did I?” But we translators are gluttons for punishment.

I wonder whether a painter and decorator working on a large project would suddenly down tools, jump in the car just to touch up a bit of paintwork on a window frame ten kilometres down the road. Somehow, I seriously doubt it. He’d make a call-out charge as well. I make the allusion because the ten kilometres is the distance my brain sometimes has to travel to switch from one job to the next. One minute I’ll be toiling away on a legal contract and the next I’ll be asked to translate a photo-caption (with no photograph attached so no context either). And in the end the half hour becomes 60 minutes…

So next time you decide to appeal to my better nature, just be aware that I’m missing out on a slice of my life that I’m never going to get back. Thanks for your understanding.