Talking sense

Michael Fry (Perspective, 4 January) is right to point out the advantages of learning languages. If we wish to trade with other countries, it is only sensible to understand what they say and to speak to them in their own tongue.

Moreover, in learning a language, one is forced to learn something of the culture from which it springs. If one does not understand how a group of people think and what the driving forces are that underlie their culture, one will be hard put to develop a real relationship upon which to build business.

The debate should, however, be widened. It is clear to me that basic skills which were once universal are now regarded as almost “spooky”, to use a youthful term.

I mean, for example, the ability to calculate in one’s head and come up with an answer to a combination of multiplication, addition and subtraction without recourse to a calculator. This is beyond most young people.

The learning of spelling is deemed irrelevant when one texts in fluent gibberish. The same goes for the use of punctuation and grammar. Knowledge is unnecessary when one has a smartphone with which to check Google for answers.

The learning of Latin, which was the norm in my youth, gave a useful basis upon which English grammar could be understood, as Michael Fry says, especially in relation to important, but dying elements of our language such as the subjunctive.

A final point on the topic of education is that another essential subject (close to Mr Fry’s heart) is thoroughly neglected as unimportant.

It is, however, of utterly central significance in people’s appreciation of their place in the world and how they got there; of understanding their relationships with other peoples and of not being led by the nose by people with a narrow-minded, divisionist political agenda.

That subject is history. If people were taught history rather better, then Tony Blair would not have invaded Iraq, the EU would look very different from its present form and the SNP would not be in power in Scotland.

Andrew HN Gray

Craiglea Drive

Edinburgh

One of the most infuriating results of the traditional incompetence of English-speakers at learning foreign languages, rightly excoriated by Michael Fry, is that our reputation has spread to the extent that even those of us who have some linguistic ability struggle for the chance to exercise it.

In Florence recently I asked, in Italian, the price of admission to one of that city’s many historical features, and got the answer “Twenty euros”. The attendant had obviously understood my Italian and gathered that I could handle the language, so why did she think it necessary to answer me in English?

Also recently, having lost my way in Charles de Gaulle Airport (an easy thing to do) I explained to an official why I had just come out the wrong door and where I was trying to get to.

He answered “You are looking for gate number 24.” Since that was precisely what I had just told him in French, what the devil did he think was the sense in telling me it in English?

I speak French and Italian quite fluently, German and Japanese less fluently but well enough to get by, Gaelic and Spanish at least well enough to make some attempt (though I can read them both), and the interest I have obtained from learning and using them has been immeasurable; but as to putting them to practical use with native speakers, they often seem reluctant to give me the chance!

Derrick McClure

Rosehill Terrace

Aberdeen