When students received their offers of university places this year, it was clear that once again, in both Ireland and England, the numbers choosing to study a foreign language were down. This has a knock-on effect. Several modern language departments in the English university in which I used to teach have been closed down. One can only speculate on the reasons why fewer students are opting to study French, German or Spanish. Perhaps many see no point in it, when Europeans so easily speak English, and oft, writes Heather Ingman.
It is not simply the loss of the English-speaking world's ability to use other languages that I'm mourning: that's a technique; as Montaigne remarked, you can teach a parrot a foreign language. I'm speaking of the loss of our knowledge of different ways of seeing the world. "Different?" you many say. "Surely we're all Europeans now?" Yes, but the differences remain.
Village life
We went to France for our summer holidays this year. It was like stepping back 50 years. Our small village, deep in the heart of the French countryside, seemed untouched by the kind of developments that have blighted village life in this country and in England. There was one hardware-cum-grocer's shop, a pharmacy, a butcher, two cafés, a post office and a bank. I know villages of comparable size in England where you're lucky if you find a newsagent; everything else has closed down and you have to go 10 miles into the nearest big town to buy stamps. In Ireland you might still find the facilities, but developing like a parasite in the picturesque village centre will be the inevitable modern housing development. The French have preserved their village life in a way neither the English nor the Irish have been able to.
French food hasn't changed much either. It didn't need to. While there has been a revolution in the Irish diet in recent years with a bewildering assortment of dishes imported from around the world with varying degrees of success, the French realised long ago that simplicity is the secret of good food. You can still go into any small café in France and eat an excellent omelette or tomato salad. And don't get me started on the bread. We may think we're now eating croissants and baguettes in this country, but the French still do them much better.
So there are differences. Though outwardly a more secular country than Ireland, France celebrated the Feast of the Assumption when we were there with a national holiday. The village church was crowded out for Mass. There was a fair in the village, fireworks and a snail-eating contest (I said there were differences).
But learning a foreign language can entail more than getting to grips with a different cultural experience. I still remember my first French lesson at the age of 11 and the way in which my mind turned somersaults as I realised that a tree wasn't necessarily a tree but could be un arbre. My brain seemed literally to stretch to take in the gloriously liberating fact that words aren't fixed, that language is a construct, not predetermined. The universe was a chancier thing than I had supposed. It also brought me up against arbitrary constructs of gender: my mother-in-law, doing her bit for the feminist cause, always insists that soleil is feminine and pluie is masculine, rightly in my view. More about gender constructs in a moment.
Down the Amazon
Hardly anyone went abroad in those days. In our small Northern English town the idea of visiting France would be roughly equivalent nowadays to journeying down the Amazon. It wasn't at all a sure thing you'd survive the trip. Growing up, France and the French language were always slightly mysterious. We had French cousins who visited us once a year and when they didn't want us to know what they were saying they spoke in French. My choice of university subject was predetermined. I just had to get to grips with this damned language and discover what they were saying about us.
This was the period when we were still excited by the events of 1968, by existentialism, by songs sung in cafés criticising the bourgeoisie. The French were going to change the world and we were going to be part of it. How we looked down on those stay-at-homes studying English.
So began a series of life-changing experiences working in France. One summer I worked as an au pair in St Tropez. From six in the morning until eight at night I looked after two toddlers in an open-plan house (parents of two-year-olds will appreciate the significance of the conjunction of the words "open-plan" and "toddlers"). The family ran a beauty salon in Paris.
Grandmother's affair
The grandmother was taking advantage of her husband's absence to embark on an affair with a young man in his twenties. Her daughters took exception to this. Meal times were punctuated by bottles, wine glasses and assorted cutlery thrown across the table. As well as improving my childcare skills and picking up a few beauty tips, I learned to dodge hard flying objects. Eventually the grandfather arrived and all miraculously returned to order. The boyfriend disappeared. The daughters stopped having hysterics. I got some time off. For a moment I believed there might be something to be said for the patriarchal family.
Then there was the year I spent in Grenoble teaching English and learning to ski, the months I spent in Paris living in attic rooms, surviving on a meal every three days while I wrote up my thesis on French literature.
Looking back, I see what a wealth of life experience I gained from studying a foreign language that wouldn't have been available to me in any other way at that time. Though I no longer teach French, France remains a dear old friend. Two minutes back in the country and I start thinking in French again. How sad if young people are turning down such opportunities to get outside their own culture.
If we want to be comfortable being Irish, or English, we need to know what it means to be something else. National culture enriches and nurtures, but only when it accepts and understands the cultures of others. If all you can see is what is just around you, and if you cannot recognise what is beyond, you are in a prison.