Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push British children to learn French? |
“Now, Gary, repeat after me: Quiero una margarita, por favor,” my Spanish tutor instructs. I cringe at the butchered Spanglish my estuary accent produces. Like Del Boy Trotter ordering a cocktail: “Key – yeah – row oon margari’a, pour far four.”
It’s 2023, I’m 41, living in Argentina and battling the frustration and disempowerment of learning a new language at this age, longing for my elastic 11-year-old brain over this husked-out mush. I’m also wishing, for the umpteenth time, that I was taught Spanish instead of French at school.
Not to throw shade on French: it’s a beautiful language, and I studied it until my first year at university. I even worked in Nice for three summers. But Spanish would have really set me up for life – and that is even more true for today’s students. Yet we are still teaching far more of our youngest students French than Spanish. It’s outdated. Partly, it’s a simple numbers game. Spanish is the world’s second-most-spoken first language – 484 million speakers. French is 22nd, with just 74 million native speakers. Spanish wipes the floor with French for overall speakers, too.
Logically, we should teach French to half as many students of compulsory schooling age as we do Spanish, which would come close to matching the proportion of speakers of each worldwide. We are nowhere near those numbers........