THE LANGUAGE OF BUSH AND BLAIR – BUT EUROPE?


THE LANGUAGE OF BUSH AND BLAIR – BUT EUROPE?
Linguistic egocentricity is driving Europe towards the ever more obligatory use of English, writes David Ferguson.

“To modify language arrangements requires the agreement of the [EU] Council and, if it does not agree, [I] must demand compliance with the rules of procedure, regardless what our personal views may be,” European Parliament president Josep Borrell told MEPs during their first plenary session in Strasbourg. In his first few months in office, Borrell, a Catalan, wasted no time before pushing his mother tongue. But with Catalan not (currently) an official EU language, he knows his powers are limited. Linguistic egocentricity is the best way to characterize Europe’s political debate about language. French linguistic activists, all for French being the sole official language of the European Court of Justice, would scoff at the idea of Catalan – or God forbid Breton – being a fully official language in France, let alone in EU institutions. Other politicians are no different: Slovak MEPs – still amazingly docile about late translations and poor interpretation of key EU documents – virulently oppose suggestions that deputies back home be allowed to use their native tongues – mainly Roma and Hungarian – in the Slovak National Council. How can Hungarian – or Roma-speaking Slovaks be so unpatriotic? Sadly, the debates by MEPs and national politicians on languages are not only egocentric but also increasingly irrelevant. The real dynamics of EU language policy are toward ever more obligatory use of English despite the theoretical privileges accorded to speakers of official languages whether here in Brussels or in the member states. As a press officer at the British Council explained: “Frankly, French, Italian or German are not in the same league. Today, we don’t need to push English as a language.” Europe’s language ‘debate’ is about the unique selling point of the language of Bush and Blair, Lord of the Rings, Terminator and Madonna. Conservative estimates put earnings in the top six English-speaking countries at some €7.5 billion alone. Here we are only talking of money spent by people travelling to the UK, US, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand to study English at recognised language schools. The British Council estimates total English Language Teaching expenditure, with around 600,000 language students in the UK per year, at some £600 million. “Double that figure if you include exams and publishing. People need English to get jobs, so they need exam certificates,” said Cherry Gough, director of English Language Teaching, the promotion unit of the British Council. The European market for English Language Teaching has also become truly international: “In 2002 it was estimated that the ELT sector contributed over Aus$800 million to the Australian economy and international education as a whole contributed over Aus$5 billion,” said Sue Blundell, executive director of English Australia. ELT is the sector where the dominance of English-speaking countries is ‘naturally’ accepted by non-natives. But the preference for ‘native English’ in education has been linked to Europe’s brain drain as an OECD study, now gathering dust on shelves, pointed out back in 2002. Entitled ‘The Mobility of Highly-skilled Workers’ the study shows how non-Anglophone countries are at an increasing disadvantage in attracting talented overseas workers and students as well as in keeping their most promising students and researchers.
There is an even sadder aspect of language inequality: it is no longer sufficient in Brussels to be ‘excellent’ or ‘near perfect’ English. The European Esperanto Union has collected around 1000 advertisements for ‘English native speakers only’. Despite over 50 MEP questions on the matter, and an on-going second complaint to the European Ombudsman, the European Commission has still failed to take action against discriminatory advertisers like Tacis, Phare, Socrates, Cedefop, the EU embassy in Moscow, and a host of other associations financed by Brussels cash. Even small firms in Europe have begun to give preference, not to those who merely speak English well, but to candidates who have studied in English-medium schools and universities. Such candidates can claim an ‘almost perfect command of English’. Currently, around one million foreign students attend universities in traditionally English-speaking countries like the US, UK and Australia. And down under the ‘international education industry’ is Australia’s third largest foreign revenue earner – behind tourism and transport. This fundamental linguistic inequality is present in many other sectors such as, film, television and music industries. In the European Union, over 75 per cent of television programmes and films shown in cinemas are now produced in Englishspeaking countries. The dominance of the English language has effectively killed off a commercial self-sustainable film industry in most European countries. To give another example, around 80 per cent of music played on German, or Flemish, public radio stations, is in English. Sadly, burdened by linguistic egocentricity, many MEPs do not seem to be asking the right questions. They appear amazingly keen to put ink to parliamentary question papers on matters as diverse as official status for Irish, lack of Swedish, Spanish or Slovenian brochures, and enshrining French as the language of the Court of Justice. Yet the principle of ‘language equality’ – of making sure that all Europeans are treated equally regardless of their mother tongue – is dismissed as Utopian nonsense. There are no calls for commission reports on the effect of language inequality in economic, cultural and academic spheres. But Europe needs a real language policy based on hard economic facts – not just glossy commission brochures on the European Day of Languages. We are sadly heading toward a society divided between an elite with excellent, perfect or native-speaker competence in English, and a colourless mass of Europeans only truly fluent in their mother tongue. In this search for language equality, an easy-to-learn neutral language like the 120-year-old Esperanto would certainly help.

David Ferguson

For more information on Esperanto
go to www.esperanto.net
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