Lots of people told me to not study languages – including my own (monolingual) dad. “You’re never going to be as fluent as a native speaker,” I remember him saying when I was deciding on my university degree. “Why bother?”
A little more than a decade later, I’ve collected a wealth of experiences. I’ve staffed Sotheby’s Madrid reception desk, I’ve taught theatre and English to Syrian children excluded from mainstream schools in Beirut. I’ve given a speech on sustainable development goals for Arab audiences at the UN, and I’ve trained journalists in Ecuador’s most dangerous city. I’ve dated men I’ve wanted to, swatted off men who I didn’t, sung songs, cooked recipes, all in languages that are not my native tongue. And most important of all? I’ve changed my dad’s mind.
Nick Gibb, the former schools minister, was right this week when he told the Times that the UK’s decline in language-learning is “damaging to our reputation as a global player”. Our international counterparts are far more multilingual than us; in Europe, we are among the least likely to speak a second language. Brits were not always poor language learners – in 1997, we reached a high point where 82% of boys and 73% of girls were entered for a modern language at GCSE – but by 2018, that had sunk to 50% of all girls, and only 38% of boys.
More democratised access to language-learning – once the preserve of elites, like Etonians and the accomplished young ladies Jane Austen loved writing about – had been under way for most of the 20th century, but it was soured by the fact that language GCSEs were hard. To this day, they are consistently graded more severely than other subjects.
But rather than marking exams more generously, challenging the perception that language exams are too onerous, or better equipping schools with higher quality language teaching, the 2004 Labour government decided the solution was to eliminate the requirement to take a language GCSE altogether. It has had a catastrophic effect on language-learning ever since.
Some languages are weathering the ensuing collapse in interest better than others; Spanish take-up is healthy and growing, while French appears to be stabilising after a big drop. German entries at GCSE are falling rapidly despite it being the most-requested language in UK job ads. Worse, we appear to be going back in time, where language-learning is once again becoming the preserve of the elite; the percentage of year 11 pupils studying a language at GCSE in poorer areas sits at around 46-47% compared to affluent areas, which stand a whole 20 percentage points higher.
Inevitably, lower language uptake at GCSE triggers an ongoing cave-in among A-levels and university degrees. Even though more people are going to university than ever before, UK applications for undergraduate language degrees have gone down by more than a fifth in the last six years. Universities – especially post-1992 ones – keep losing their modern languages departments. Neither Brexit nor the pandemic will have helped, curtailing possibilities connected with studying abroad.
I was fortunate to go to a school that prioritised languages, but I was even luckier to benefit from exposure to multilingualism, something that research has recently suggested makes pupils in England far more motivated to study languages, even when they live in monolingual areas. Where my dad saw little value, my mum – fluent in Italian and the minority language variety my nonna brought with her when she emigrated here from the Ligurian Apennines in the 1950s – encouraged me to add as many languages to my roster as possible.
Without the Spanish I started learning as a 13-year-old, the Arabic I started as an 18-year-old and the Italian that has hovered in and out of my life since birth, I wouldn’t be the journalist or person I am today. That’s not only because of the conversations I’ve been able to have or the sources I’ve been able to read; it’s because of the formative life experiences that accompany language-learning. The reason languages are so desired among employers isn’t just for the words and grammar, but because of the soft skills that come with accumulating them – the resilience, the creative thinking, and the openness to new ideas that is demanded of you when you immerse yourself into different cultures.
Multilingual people gain access to all of the jobs that require such skills, as well as the cognitive benefits associated with everything from enhanced creativity to possibly delaying the impacts of Alzheimer’s. Any Britons who assume they can rely on English alone when travelling quickly have that belief dismantled when forced into vulnerable situations abroad, or moments where they are hopelessly incapable of helping people at home. Earlier this summer, an elderly Portuguese woman on the Tube stopped me because she was lost trying to go to a hospital appointment. Unfortunately I only know how to say a smattering of dramatic fado lyrics and “I don’t speak Portuguese” – but my fluent Spanish meant we could understand each other, and I could tell her what stop to get off at.
Despite a vague attempt to improve languages’ chances with the English baccalaureate in the 2010s, the situation in the UK has become so bad that the unhinged owl app Duolinguo is now trying to intervene, recently sponsoring a Westminster language-learning challenge getting politicians to out-nerd each other.
So how do we resolve this issue? A recent thinktank report made immediate recommendations to hire more international language teachers to plug gaps and to keep language-learning as a statutory entitlement for pupils up to 18.
I have additional ideas, beginning with better respecting the glittering diversity of languages emigrants bring to the UK. We wrongly dictate that assimilation in western countries requires shifting to English monolingualism, as opposed to developing sophisticated bilingualism across second, third and fourth generations. Leaning into more heritage language-learning opportunities, that both the UK government and international partners can collaborate on, would build international ties along with individuals’ connections to their families and communities.
Accounting for our own indigenous languages would be a start, too; when Keir Starmer tweeted “If you want to live in the UK, you should speak English” this year, he ignored the language policies of our devolved nations that do not forget to accommodate Welsh, Gaelic and Scots.
Combine the contribution immigrants make to our country with our ancient Celtic languages and one quickly realises the UK is not nearly as monolingual as we assume. Embracing multilingualism as a British trait would probably annoy or confound many. But – as I would relish explaining to you in the four languages I speak – that is precisely the reason why we should do it in the first place.
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Sophia Smith Galer is a journalist and content creator. Her second book, How To Kill a Language, will be out next year