母语为英语的烦恼

当FT专栏作家斯卡平克在法国南部的一个活动上，用法语向酒保要矿泉水时，得到的回答是：“would you like ice?”这种情况也就是近几年才出现的，身为英语为母语的人，作者深感自己越来越没机会跟外国人说外语了。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

mangle ['mæŋg(ə)l] 砍，损坏

prerequisite [priː'rekwɪzɪt] 先决条件

tout [taʊt] 兜售，招徕

stilted ['stɪltɪd] 不自然的

lingua franca 通用语，因法语曾是欧洲外交和贵族圈中的通用语而得名

Non-Anglos won't let us speak their languages （765words）

By Michael Skapinker, August 20, 2014

This isn't fair, I said in French to two fellow conference-goers during a coffee break. You are in the majority here. We should be speaking your language, not mine. They indulged me for a few sentences – and then switched back to English.

With school examination results out, the UK is having its annual panic over young people not studying foreign languages. There were 10,000 fewer taking language exams this year than there were at the end of the 1990s.

“Languages are an important part of business,” says John Cridland, head of the CBI, the employers' group. “That second or third language gives your competitor from Germany, or France, or the Netherlands, the edge.”

That may be true. But those eager young anglophones who take his advice and learn another language face disappointment. Not only is mastering someone else's language hard. When you do learn to speak it, you will struggle to find people prepared to speak it to you. While you have been learning their language, they have been learning yours. And English is what they want to speak.

My conference experience was not the only such one I have had – and it is not just top executives who have resisted my attempts to speak their language.

At a trade fair in the south of France this year, I went to the bar and asked in French for some mineral water. “Would you like ice?” said the bartender, in English.

This is quite a change. I remember, years ago, asking the person who answered the telephone at a large French company whether she spoke English. “No, you can speak French,” she told me in French. I cannot see that happening today.

Perhaps francophones don't think I speak their language well enough. I work hard at it, reading the Paris press online and listening to a French podcast most days.

To what effect? I was in a meeting a couple of years back with six people in Geneva. After initial chit-chat in French, they switched to English, even though, I estimated, I spoke better French than at least three of them spoke English.

Is this just a French issue? Are French speakers so unused to hearing foreigners speak their language that they cannot bear to hear it mangled?

Possibly, but I have seen the same switch to English happen elsewhere. When I worked in Greece in the early 1980s, people were so delighted I was bothering to learn their language that they were happy to chat in it even when I could barely manage a sentence.

By the time I left four years later, they were effusively complimentary, ignoring my mistakes. They still are – “you remember your Greek after 30 years!” – but then they, too, switch to English. Once again, it is not just business people: taxi drivers and hotel staff do it too.

The tone is subtly different. Whereas I see French language-switching as passive-aggressive, the Greek switch is enthusiastic: why speak our language when we can speak yours?

Why is it happening? I have some theories. First, English is now a prerequisite for any job that requires contact with foreigners. Whether that job is in the boardroom, behind the reception desk or touting for customers outside a restaurant, you need to be able to speak English. Perhaps addressing people in their own language rather than English suggests they lack that crucial professional competence.

Second, as English has become the lingua franca of business, science and academia, people now see their own languages as part of their private domain, reserved for friends and family. In conversations with both French and Greek friends, I have found them happier to speak their own languages.

Third, it is possible that I give up too easily. Rather than meekly accepting that the conversation should revert to English, perhaps I should carry on speaking their language as insistently as they do mine until they surrender.

There are more civilised ways of behaving. I used to have lunch with the London-based correspondent of a French newspaper. We would spend half the meal speaking English and half French. This carried on even when his wife told him it was the most stilted and artificial arrangement she had ever heard of. Eventually he was posted elsewhere and I have not found a replacement.

If you wish to apply for this role, please do so to the address below, in whatever language you like.

michael.skapinker@ft.com

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.Should we encourage British pupils to learn foreign languages?

A.Yes, despite the difficulties.

B.No, it makes little sense today.

答案(1)

2.According to the writer, why ordinary people in France and Greece switch to English?

A.Anglos are now worse at foreign languages.

B.They want to show their professional competence.

C.English is easier than French and Greek.

答案(2)

3.English is the lingua franca in areas except?

A.entertainment

B.business

C.academia

D.science

答案(3)

* * *

(1)答案：A.Yes, despite the difficulties.

解释：像德国、法国或荷兰人那样掌握不止一种语言是一个优势。作者观察到自己越来越难找到与外国人讲外语的机会，但外语并没有因此不值得学了。

(2)答案：B.They want to show their professional competence.

解释：这是作者的第一种解释，今天，凡是需要与外国人打交道的工作都要求英语，因此说英语的人到法国或希腊，会发现东道主很愿意说英语。

(3)答案：A.entertainment

解释：商业和学术领域已经是英语一统天下了，并没有提到娱乐领域。