By Julian Hale

Languages have opened many cultural, professional and ‘romantic/friendship’ doors for me over the years.

Learning Latin, French, German, Italian and Spanish has enabled me to become a kind of ‘factotum’, working as a professional interpreter, including for Nigel Short, who challenged Garry Kasparov in the World Chess Championships and then as a translator, journalist, media summariser for the European Parliament’s Media Intelligence Unit, report writer (the German, Protokollführer, sounds so much more elegant to me) and video/podcast producer.

Love at first sight

Latin and French were my initial routes into the world of foreign languages, my first ‘coups de foudre’ (love at first sight/bolts of lighting) if you like. As an 8-year-old boy, I was more interested in sport than school, but it was Latin that got me interested in other subjects and lifted me from the bottom of the class rankings to the top. I will never forget the look of happiness in my mum’s eyes when she picked me up at the end of a term. Her standard question: Where did you come? I would often say 23rd or 24th but this time I proudly said “4th”.

Gaining grammar

Little did I know at the time, but Kennedy’s Latin Primer plus wonderful teachers gave me a grammatical basis for English (we didn’t learn much English grammar at school back then) and a modus operandi (way of working) for learning Romance languages and German.

Cultural openings

Culturally, thanks to languages, there are countless wonderful exhibitions, for example the Europäische Hansemuseum about the Hanseatic League and films I’ve seen like Jean de Florette, also good in helping you understand a southern French accent. And then there are the books I’ve been able to read: Candide by Voltaire, Sin Noticias de Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza, Bruxelles: Terra di frontiera tra mondo latino et tedesco by Beda Romano or Die Schachnovelle by Stefan Zweig. (NB they are all short and wonderfully written books just waiting for you but best read in their original languages to get the full experience!)

Trips and travel

Other language highlights for me include winning a Spanish prize at school and a wonderful study period in Uruguay. Having a job as a ski rep meant learning Italian at the same time, effectively ab initio. A wonderful friendship with a lifelong French friend in Grenoble has been a constant joy. And learning German (and a tiny bit of Schwäbisch) in the little town of Besigheim near Stuttgart was another delight.

The world of work

Dabbling in Portuguese (I can passively understand it), Esperanto, Swedish (my grandfather was Swedish, my dad used gramophone records to try to learn the language and I know about ten words) and the Brusseleir/Bruxellois dialect (including writing an article about it - https://www.thebulletin.be/how-brusseleir-dialect-alive-and-kicking-little-help-shakespeare) has also been great fun.

I still use my foreign language skills, both for my work and for fun activities. I have started an informal monthly Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters/Institute of Translation and Interpreting ‘languages club’ and have a regular slot on a local radio programme (Radio Panik, flux detendu) on Monday evenings. A recent one was with Carine Girac-Marinier, head of Larousse’s Dictionaries and Encylopedias department, about the French language - find it here. 

If I were UK Prime Minister for a day...

Nowadays, younger generations have lots of access to foreign languages literally at their fingertips (via social media, films subtitled in the original language, songs with lyrics and language apps) but, especially in the case of young Brits, they may lack motivation due to omnipresent English being a global ‘lingua franca’.

So, my two ideas for the UK Government:

Firstly, consider introducing a ‘language passport’ system, where students are recognised for language learning and activities done in another language (trips, visits, school twinning etc.) and are encouraged to keep learning languages from the start to the end of their school career. Languages aren’t just about a final qualification.

Secondly, I’d like to see UK Education Ministries set up a prize for language teachers¹ who teach languages and cultures. I know from my own experience that it is teachers who open up young minds – and we need inspiring teachers as an antidote to a potentially insular and monolingual mindset.

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