Kayt Turner: Were it not for the international language of mime, I don’t know that I’d ever get anywhere

In this day and age you would think any adult travelling in Europe would have the basics of the language. There’s really no excuse. We’re inundated with phrasebooks, phone apps, interactive learning systems. Surely we have all moved on from the “Mind Your Language” style attitudes to people who don’t speak English. Well, I’d certainly like to think so. Louder and slower is all very well, but it just means that you’re deafening people who don’t understand you.

And so, a confession. While I am amongst the first to rant and rave at those legions of eejits who up sticks from Surrey and move to deepest darkest Gascony to start a new life, without learning a goddamn word of French, it was me who was doing the comedy accent in France last week. Were it not for the international language of mime, I don’t know that I’d ever get anywhere. Well, that and my friend’s teenage daughter, who smoothly stepped in – and explained that I had learning difficulties, was a bit “special” and had to be excused. Thanks for that, Lil.

I did do languages at school. I have no idea what liberal notions were floating about the Scottish education system at the time, but we learned French with the aid of a cartoon robot called Pmf. He had landed from outer space in the middle of Provence and had to learn his way about. As he learned, so did we – that was the idea anyway. That’s why my French accent is more Android than Alsace. We were mainly taught German by a Led Zep-crazed student and we did little in the way of grammar and much more in the way of air guitar.

Despite somehow acquiring Highers in these languages, I was never what you would call a cunning linguist (Mother would never have allowed it for one thing), but I have always prided myself on the ability to order two beers and a cheese sandwich in nearly every European tongue.

For any more complicated needs – toilets, train stations, that kind of thing – I have often resorted to reading aloud from the phrase book. Locals tend to indulge my linguistic ineptitude and, after I’ve thoroughly mangled their mother tongue, they take me through what I should actually have said.

It doesn’t always stay with you though. Which is why last week, as I struggled to remember the French word for hotel (yes, really), my friend’s daughter was helping German tourists find their way about, easily slipping between three languages. I wasn’t really able to carry on talking – in French, German or English – as I was struck mute in awe.

Which is why I applaud the Scottish Government’s initiative to have our nation’s schoolchildren taught in two languages as well as English. (Although, a colleague did quip that it would surely just mean Glasgow kids leaving school illiterate in three languages rather than just the one. Given that he comes from Dundee, I think that’s a bit rich.) To grow up having that kind of ease and familiarity with languages is something most of us would envy. To be able to travel the world and ask for beer and sandwiches if fair enough – but it would be good to be able to ask directions to the toilets as well.