Why do the French struggle to speak English?

Why are the French so bad at learning foreign languages? Yes, you read that right. This isn’t a lament as to how the British are so terrible at learning foreign languages, a theme so beloved by stand-up comedians, who insinuate that it reflects our outdated superiority complex and ingrained xenophobia. I meant the French. For they, too, are terrible at learning foreign languages.

Many people in France don’t even know how to say the most basic greeting in English, according to a report in the Times. In a study published by Preply, a language teaching platform, there are 14,800 searches on Google Translate every month for ‘bonjour’ in English, with a further 8,100 for jours de la semaine (days of the week), and 6,600 for chemise (shirt), chiffre (figure), madame and merci. ‘Thursday’ is also tricky for the French, warranting 12,000 searches, as does ‘March’, the subject of 4,400 searches.

The finding is reported to have caused much hand-wringing across La Manche among commentators in regard to the nation’s grasp of the world’s foremost global language. ‘The French obviously need to make progress and they don’t trust their level of English,’ reflected Le Figaro. Another study published in November by Education First, the language business, found that France was among the European nations with the worst levels of English.

Although a cousin of mine who teaches English in France says that English-speaking proficiency has improved there in recent years, France has always struggled in this field. This may be down to pride, arrogance or resentment on the part of the French, who may begrudge our mongrel language for having displaced their own pure and elegant tongue as the lingua franca. The Chinese, also infamous monoglots, likewise have cultural reasons for their reluctance to take up foreign languages.

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Yet there lies a more prosaic reason for the French being second-rate English-speakers. They historically haven’t needed to be. When you speak a language that is the means of communication in great swathes of Africa, the Caribbean, Canada and beyond, there’s no imperative to learn a second language.

This is why the Spanish are among the least proficient when it comes to learning a second tongue. They, too, speak a global language that today is only second to English in terms of reach and number. They aren’t resistant to taking up foreign languages because they are xenophobic, ‘Little Spaniards’ trapped in the past who mourn the ‘loss of empire’. It’s just that, in many cases, there is little incentive or obvious reason to do so.

The Italians, too, are near the bottom of the class for taking up foreign languages, and for wholly different reasons. As emigrants to West Germany in the postwar years found out, Italians suffer from the peculiar handicap of speaking a logical and regular language, the diametric opposite of that erratic and complex language, German, with its wandering words, article declensions and many ways of forming plurals. Also, until the advent of television in the 1950s, Italian itself was a second language in the country, with most Italians speaking regional dialects in the home.

The foremost function of language is to communicate most easily via a means both parties are assumed to readily comprehend. That’s why English is the world’s lingua franca. And that’s why the British lack incentive. Indeed, most Brits feel too shy to speak a foreign language, so fearful of making a mistake or sounding like Officer Crabtree from ‘Allo Allo’. Indeed, and ironically, we may blame the French for our own monoglot culture. So many of us have been so burnt in France while trying out our O-Level or GCSE French, met with a contemptuous reply in English, that we have made a mental note never to try again.

Peoples around the globe are reluctant to speak a second language for many reasons. That the French approach much English with trepidation is no surprise, not least with recognising and pronouncing our ‘th-‘ construction (this is why ‘Thursday’ is difficult for them). That sound is alien to the French, just as we have trouble with their guttural ‘r-‘. A greater handicap for Brits, at the written level, is that we have no native concept of masculine and feminine nouns, and find the entire notion of gendered words just weird (Lee Mack had a great skit on this in a 2007 stand-up performance, in regard to being reprimanded by a waiter who informed him ‘la crème d’oeuf’ was feminine. ‘It’s an egg custard. What do I need to know the sex of an egg custard for?’).

We are not unique in struggling with foreign languages. The irony is that those who believe the British are uniquely terrible polyglots are themselves displaying their own ignorance and insularity.