I got the "Why can't everyone just speak the same language?" question again this week. So we had the conversation. "And that language... would it by any chance... be English?" "Yes!"
Oh dear.
Unfortunately it has been tried. And it was English. Whole nations of people. We even took their children away and put them in special schools and banned them from speaking their own language. In the USA and in Australia in my lifetime. I don't start with this fact - I normally save it until the pupil is agreeing with me that on reflection language diversity is a good thing.
I ask them if they also want everyone to have the same names as us, the same foods, the same clothes, the same jokes, stories and songs. On reflection, very few pupils want to persist with the question.
They may shift to another question, "Why do we have to learn French?"
This question can mean four things. Why learn languages? Why only learn one? Why learn French in particular? Or it might just mean, "I am tired and want to go out and play in the sunshine." Giving pupils these alternatives helps frame the conversation that follows. Unless it's the fourth option in which case the answer might be, "Get on with your work and you can go outside and play at break."
"Languages are such an important part of what makes us human and what makes our world what it is. I am so sorry that you only get to learn one, I know it would be great to learn several. Perhaps you will, but let's start with one and then you can go on to fall in love with other ones throughout your life. Meet people, go places, read stuff, listen to music, watch films, play games, expand your horizons, live life as a human on our planet."
"But why French?"
Honest answer to close down the discussion:
"To be honest, the reason you learn French is because we have people to teach you it."
Political answer to stir up more debate and ultimately engage them in a genuine conversation that I think they will enjoy and appreciate being taken seriously:
"It's our nearest neighbour and used to think it was an important country in the same way England thought it was important. But yes, it's no more important than Polish or Thai or Guajarati."
Anecdote to side track and then return to work:
"It's part of our culture that an English person understands some basic school French. I have a friend who learned Russian in school which she enjoyed, but she feels left out culturally because she has literally no idea about things in French that everyone else knows."
Flippant answer:
"Yes. I am asking if next year, Year 7 can start with American English as their foreign language. There's load of cognates and accessible cultural material. And then they can move on to Australian English after that."
Linguistic answer:
"It's a good place to start though. Because it is a language that is different from English in lots of ways, but also closely related. It has the same alphabet and is one of the languages that English has evolved from."
Which brings me on to linguistic conversations.
Starting with the famous equation. English = French + German.
Or English = Spanish + German.
Based on the fact that English is made up of words of a Latin root (via Norman French) or a Germanic root (via Anglo Saxon). This is useful for understanding why French or Spanish syntax is often different from English. Pupils can see that English often has two ways of saying things, and that one will be the "German" way and the other will be the "French" way.
The most prominent examples would be House of Fraser or Fraser's House. Later or more late. So if you say ma soeur's chambre, you've just done it the German way in French when you should have said the bedroom of my sister.
It also amuses pupils that you can rearrange the equation to get all the knowns on one side:
English - French = German
So if you ignore everything I tell you in French, you will be speaking German!
Often when French syntax is different from the English, the question "Why?" isn't a real question, it is just an expression of discomfort. But having an answer can go a long way to allaying the discomfort and the explanation can make the linguistic feature more memorable.
Now for the nightmare question. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's handy to have an explanation ready. "Un sandwich au jambon. Why does that say A sandwich to the ham?"
OK. Here we go.
For a start, it would be much easier if it was a sandwich of ham. Un sandwich de jambon? But to a French person's mind that might mean that it was literally a sandwich just made of ham. Which isn't a sandwich. It's some ham. Inside some ham. That might be enough to hold them off. They nod, happy to have had an explanation.
Which is fair enough. After all in science: "Why does this apple fall?" "Oh, that's Gravity." "Oh, thank you very much." That's not a real explanation but everyone's happy. "Why do brakes rubbing make them get hot?" "That's friction." "Oh, thanks very much." When friction is just literally a fancy word for "rubbing."
But not this group. Someone had obviously done a good job of teaching them the equation à + le = au. And they wanted to know. And the answer also helps understand other questions about prepositions such as "Why can à mean so many things?" And, "Why are there so many words for in?"
Wish I had taken a picture of the board now, to illustrate the explanation. But basically we need the concept that one language is not built with reference to another. There is no deliberate correspondence between French and English. (Although other more disparate languages might make for a better example.) There is the illusion of a match up between words. Because French refers to the real world. And English refers to the real world. So when a word refers to something concrete, it is likely that the other language will have a word that does the same job. But a word at the other end of the concrete-abstract spectrum will behave differently. And when it comes to au in un sandwich au jambon, then this is a word that doesn't refer to any identifiable concept in the physical world. Its role is to define the relationship between two other words. In this case sandwich and jambon. Its role is entirely internal to the language. To the French language. So there is no reason whatsoever why English should have a direct corresponding use of the word.
I reckon if they're asking that kind of question, they deserve that kind of answer! Or if they don't appreciate it, then maybe they can stop asking questions that begin with "Why" and get back to work.
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