Only English please, we're British

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, FEB. 25. Britain is all dressed up and ready to walk into Europe, but it seems a huge communication gap is awaiting Her Majesty's subjects at the end of the tunnel. A report says that two-thirds of them have ``absolutely no knowledge'' of any European language whereas most continental Europeans can speak at least one foreign language, in some cases more.

To find out how ``bad'' the Brits are at speaking any language other than English, The Guardian got a team of its writers with a ``smattering'' of a European language to call up some of London's prominent public institutions for very basic information, each pretending that they didn't speak English. To their surprise they drew a blank everywhere except at the European Parliament, where the voice at the other end spoke better German than the pretender from The Guardian. But then, it was perhaps a German who answered the call, as happened at Madame Tussaud where the person who picked up the phone promptly passed it on to a Frenchwoman.

The Brits themselves were a big let down. Even at the newspaper's own foreign desk, they had problem handling a call in Spanish. At the British Council, after a long and tortuous exchange in non- communication the operator hung up shouting ``Inglais, Inglais, Inglais, only Inglais. Bye, bye''; and at the Buckingham Palace they were appropriately imperious with a ``very irritated'' voice declaring that ``We speak English.''

Calls to the Imperial War Museum, the Football Association, the Millennium Dome and the London Eye among others elicited the same reply in varying degree of weariness, exasperation and plain irritation. There were no takers for either French, German or Spanish - the three most common European languages - confirming that Britons' command of foreign languages is the worst in Europe.

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Section  : International
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