I shouldn't be amused, but...

For those of you who were unawares, the Labour Party and 10 Downing Street now have their own channels on YouTube. The latter recently posted the following video, of Tony Blair congratulating the new French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, on his election victory. In French.



Now, perhaps understandably, the commenting facility was disabled here. However, some enterprising users have re-uploaded the video, and comments there surprise me. Perfect French? Even I could do better than that! (This would hopefully bode well for my final marks, then.) For a man who has supposedly spoken French for several years, I personally found his accent to be somewhat sloppy, but perhaps I'm too strict on these things.

In any case, the video got me thinking about the role of foreign languages in the world today. As with most normal citizens, foreign premiers seem to speak our language better than our leaders do theirs. Indeed, Blair is the only British politician I have even heard attempt to speak a foreign language in recent times. Jacques Chirac, on the other hand, speaks English beautifully (and probably better than I do!), despite his notable opposition to the growth of the language's power throughout the business world.

Obviously, language learning is not everyone's strength. However, I do feel it is only polite that we should at least attempt to learn the languages of others. The fact that 'everyone already speaks English' is no excuse in my book. There is no reason to be afraid of getting it wrong, as many people will just appreciate the fact that you've made an effort, and I feel that the odd word here and there is better than nothing.

When David Willetts MP, the Shadow Education Secretary, visited Newcastle University, the issue I raised with him was that of the decline of language learning in UK schools, namely the fall in number of degree level entrants, and the fact that it is no longer compulsory to learn a language past the age of 14. He agreed that it was necessary that in a modern society, Britain needs to catch up with languages standards of our neighbours, but rightly pointed out that with the lack of qualified young people as language teachers, the fewer people there will be to teach our youngsters, and thus a vicious circle starts.

I hope we will be able to reverse this problem in future, and despite my earlier teasing, I do think Mr Blair did the right thing (and you will probably be able to guess how much this pains me to say!) in making the video in French as well as English.

For those of you who are interested, here is the English equivalent of the video.



As for Monsieur Sarkozy becoming Monsieur le Président? I shall reserve judgement on that, I think...