"Excuse Me, Do You Speak English?"

“Yes of course, everyone does.”

Everyone, right? Well, I guess that’s the problem we’re facing right now in this globalized and Americanized world. Everyone thinks he can speak English and tries his best to do so. But let me tell you something, there are mile between knowing a language and being able to speak it. Yes, there is more to a language than being able to say “yes, no, si, non, нет, да, ja, nein.” So what’s the point, you might ask. Well, let me show you.

The thing about studying foreign languages is that you cannot get away with just memorizing some words and rules. (Believe me, I tried that with Russian.) In order to a speak a language properly the thing you need most is time and patience. And patience is usually not widespread among Austrian Society. But I’m digressing here.

It’s a fact that the Austrian school system starts children’s English education as soon as they are out of their diapers. From first grade in children are confronted with the basics of English vocabulary, syntax and grammar, although some skeptics might argue that the real English instruction doesn’t start until fifth grade. Anyway, what I am trying to get across is that Austria prepares its citizens very well to compete in this globalized English-speaking world.

Already a long time ago we Austrians (and Germans; I can’t deny the fact that we speak the same mother tongue) have realized that English is the new German. This great acceptance of the English language has created a mutilated form of German which some people call “Germish” or “Denglish.” I call it “Pseudo English.” The intermingling of elements of German and English has contributed to grammatical as well as syntactical confusion in both languages, especially for language learners. On Wikipedia it’s argued that “due to [the] lack of rules for proper declension and conjugation forms, English words […] will almost always come out in some twisted form.” So true. If you are interested in the outcome of such interminglings check out the Wise Guys song “Denglish.”

Once a foreign word has found its way into a languages it puts down its devastating roots and spreads over both languages – the attacking language and the attacked. Scientists are warning that Europe is in danger of loosing its variety of languages. Further, they describe a phenomenon which they call BSE (no, not the cow disease) – Bad Simple English.

Take the case of Austrian Broadcasting (ORF): During the 2009 Olympic Games in Vancouver, for example, the Austrian TV audience was shocked by how bad the ORF sport hosts dealt with their English interviews. It was embarrassing to listen to their attempts at broken English. No wonder that we are not able to speak the language properly, when not even the people responsible for the so-called educational programming on TV are able to find qualified people.

So let me come back to the aim of this post. It’s really not necessary for everyone to be able to speak English. Just put the right people into the right positions to protect all the languages from their ruinous influences on each other. That is why I would argue that the world needs more people with English, German, French, Russian or any other language degrees.