Time to speaking the English, pliz

Günther Oettinger got off to an ill-starred start as EU commissioner: the Youtube video of his address in English, rendered nearly incomprehensible by his thick Swabian accent, made him the laughing-stock of Europe. Even with English lessons, he will have a hard time shedding that notoriety for some time to come. To steer clear of suchlike pitfalls, Austrian commissioner Johannes Hahn stuck to German at his confirmation hearing in the European Parliament – though a click on Youtube will suffice to show his English is quite passable, at least better than a number of his ex-ministerial cohorts’. Over at the Viennese Opera Ball, to cite another egregious instance of public mortification, ORF [Austrian national broadcasting corporation] presenter Claudia Reiterer lost a chunk of her dancing star glamour by stammering through an interview in English with French lingerie designer Chantal Thomass.

English, yardstick of cosmopolitanism and competence

For decades you could more or less get by in public life with school English. But globalisation, the growing importance of the EU, in which English is ousting French as the working language, the out-and-out Anglicisation of academia, and the worldwide exposure of every public blooper on the web have significantly beefed up the English proficiency prerequisites for politicians, executives, academics and celebrities of every ilk. Those who can’t pronounce "the" correctly or don’t know that "sympathy" means “compassion” and not “liking” not only reveal gaps in their education, but find themselves severely handicapped at any polyglot chinwag – whether at a conference or the negotiating table.

Other languages are valuable assets, but a command of English is, in our day, the ultimate yardstick of cosmopolitanism and competence. Language skills are a key factor of competition for whole nations as well. Ireland, once the poor man of Europe, metamorphosed into the Celtic Tiger because multinationals could hire native speakers there to fill every post. And the high degree of international interpenetration in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, which is reflected in their economic success, has much to do with the excellent English spoken by even the man in the street there.

Not just a challenge for schools

These countries benefit from the standard practice of showing American movies and TV series in the original with subtitles. The ruthless German dubbing juggernaut, on the other hand, robs Austrians of every opportunity to pick up a little English while whiling away the hours watching telly. Compared to Germany – where even foreign minister Guido Westerwelle mauls the Queen’s English – and especially Italy, many younger-generation Austrians sound pretty good in English, though they are increasingly outclassed by their up-and-coming coevals from Eastern Europe.

This isn’t just a challenge for schools, where all too often up to 25 kids are packed into a single English class, but for the business community as well. Every outfit ought to offer continuing education to make sure their personnel have a command of English that won’t embarrass the company. Hence the need for rigorous language tests in addition to further training programmes. Likewise, our political parties could require junior-tier members to sign up for English instruction. And as for ORF, not only should it work on improving oral and pronunciation skills in its own ranks, but by running at least some movies and series in the original it should help the whole nation attain to world-class proficiency in the one and only world language.

European Commission

And what about the other languages?

Just imagine for a second what the non-francophone media, especially the British, would have said and written if a third of the European Commission’s spokespeople were French.… The reverse situation, on the other hand, doesn’t bother anyone: of its 31 spokespersons (three more posts have yet to be filled), a dozen are native speakers of English. And while most of them speak French fluently, some of them mangle the pronunciation – even though French is, after English, the second language in the press room. The French were only allotted three posts, the same number as the Germans. Then come the Portuguese and Italians (2 apiece). Belgium (or rather, Flanders), Denmark, Spain, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia, Finland and Romania each get one representative apiece. This Anglophone bias is pretty striking, seeing as the spokespeople are supposed to be the interface between the Commission and the public, the majority of whom, last I heard, do not speak English as their mother tongue – or think like Anglo-Saxons either, for that matter. What’s more, I can’t help wondering why there isn’t a single Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian, Hungarian, Slovakian, Czech, Bulgarian or Swedish spokesperson. Plainly, the native speakers are endowed with the lion’s share of the European gift of the gab. Chalk up another victory for the British!

Jean Quatremer, Coulisses de Bruxelles (extracts)