We need to mind our languages

Historically, this might have had something to do with the days when the sun never set on the British Empire and subject peoples were expected to learn English if they had any hope of being understood by their self-styled colonial masters.

Yet even in very recent times, it would have been difficult to tar many Jersey folk with the same brush used to label the monolingual majority in the UK. You don’t have to probe too deeply into the past to identify the era when a significant proportion of Islanders were fluent in English, Jersey-Norman French and, quite often, French. But, like it or not, those days are gone.

However, as well as lamenting the shift away from widespread fluency in more than a single language – and looking with envy at Portuguese and Polish members of the community who can converse in English as well as their native tongues – we should be asking ourselves whether we are doing enough to foster the sort of multiculturalism that correlates with linguistic prowess.

Indeed, many Islanders will have been surprised – and quite probably shocked – to learn that just one Jersey school currently teaches German and that that school, Les Quennevias, is about to drop the language. Courses in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and even Jersey-Norman French will continue, but it seems that German will finally disappear from school timetables.

Even those who retain memories of German as the language of the Occupation are unlikely to view the final cessation of school German classes as a positive development. Those who appreciate that Jersey has a vital need to communicate with the outside world – not least with Europe – will see this move as a very retrograde step indeed.

Throughout the UK foreign language courses are under serious threat as school budgets tighten and awkward choices have to be made. Similar pressures are, without doubt, a feature of present-day life in Jersey.

That said, if we are to encourage a cosmopolitan attitude among our young people, help to equip them for lives in a world where frequent foreign travel and cross-border business dealings are the rule rather than the exception, and encourage the understanding and acceptance of other cultures, we should surely strive to teach the widest possible variety of modern languages as mainstream parts of the curriculum.