Language

Bernard Shaw said that one should know one's own language well before attampting to learn another - or words to that effect. Now there is much press discussion about the dearth of foreign language speakers in this country, that schools are not paying enough attention to teaching foreign languages and that, as a result, people are growing up, getting jobs which require them to go abroad, possibly to sell British goods abroad, without being able to converse with those they are meeting. "But doesn't everyone speak English these days," many people say; "what do I need to be able to speak Spanish to a Spaniard for when he probably speaks good English? Don't they all?" Apparently there is need because over 80% of the world's populace do not speak English. Surpirised me too!
I learnt some French in school and it faired me - not very well.... I could get along sometimes but was obliged to use mime on most occasions: e.g. scrambling action for scrambled eggs (it worked sometimes with the word "oeuf" thrown in with it).
Better than nothing I suppose but I would have thought that a salesman, for example, would need a far greater knowledge of the language he needs than GCSE's. A level surely.
However, the best way to learn a language I have always thought is to go to the country and learn to speak it there over a period of a month or so. Hard going but I have known it work.
I was once on one of those schemes where they were trying to bring together the peoples of Europe after WW2. We lived together and worked together. One of the troubles was that everyone from the continent wanted to speak English; it seemed that they were already able to speak English quite fluently and they wanted to practice on us. But there was one fellow who wouldn't have any of that: he was determined to learn French so he spoke it, what little he knew - and it was quite basic - on every occasion he met up with a French person. You could see the screen coming down over their eyes whenever he tried his stuff out with anyone. I lost touch with him for a month then, when I met him again, he was speaking quite good French. He told me what he had done was learn phrases and one day they all seemed to come together. He was a zoologist so maybe that dioscipline had told him something about the human condition: perseverance maybe of a dung beatle, or stubborness of a donkey, or bullishness of a rhino.
I used to just get along with my nouns and verbs (always in the present tense - "I go to the cinema yesterday") and my mime. Flapping by arms like wings and "Poulet, Garcon, sil vous plait".