Filthy English - Standards of English in Mallorca

Harking back to that report into standards of English among students at Palma's university, there was a comment piece in yesterday's "Diario" which drew attention to the apparent contradictions in the report. These concerned the fact that, for example, two-thirds of students said they did not understand English, yet 50% spoke it.

Standards of English in Mallorca are not high. They should be higher: not to give British residents even more of an excuse not to learn Spanish or Catalan, but to be pragmatic in recognising the importance of the language where tourism is concerned. Pragmatism. A word that crops up time and time again whenever language is discussed, yet one widely ignored by the Mallorcans. Whereas the non-pragmatism of the Castilian versus Catalan debate is granted much attention and emotion, insufficient attention has been given to the learning of international languages, especially English. It is an historical failing, one of inadequate education, and one that is only now being given anything like the attention demanded.

However, for all that English is not as good as might be hoped, one should spare a thought for the locals, confronted by English in all its different manifestations - regional accents, idioms, slang, changing usage and the simply wrong. Pity the poor receptionist or waiter who has to decipher Geordie, Scouse, Brummie, Cockney, Ooh-Arr, the English of the Northern Irish, Southern Irish, Scots, Welsh, to say nothing of mangled English by other nationalities. If you can do Spanish, then try making sense of different accents or dialects. Ever had to listen to Argentinians? Impossible. Despite the apparent contradictions referred to above, it is generally the case that one can speak a language but have difficulty understanding it when spoken to. Take another language - German. If you do this, you may find it easy to understand someone who speaks "hochdeutsch", only to then try and fathom out a Franconian dialect replete with an accent that sounds as though the speaker has an entire potato field stuffed into his gob - rather like many Mallorcans.

No-one much speaks English any longer. Not English as in the Queen's English or a long-past BBC English. They speak street English, football English, soap English, estuary English. They apply the infinite variables of internationalised English, of English in all its flexibility. They speak mingin' English, innit, English that's so not English - alrahht. They speak a corrupt English, a filthy English of a low-lifed anti-vocabulary.

And it is not just spoken English. In the same report into standards, 68% of students said that they could read English. The question is, what sort? Take newspapers, the broadsheets for instance. Generally speaking - as it were - these will contain "high" English. It's the same with Spanish newspapers, the quality end at any rate. In their pages, one is likely to encounter a formal style of Spanish, one quite removed from much everyday usage and typified by a preponderance of the different subjunctive forms that exist in Spanish. No-one actually speaks like that, or very few do.

Then there are other newspapers and other forms of English. A couple of days ago, along with Graeme and Aimee from "Talk Of The North" and auntie Susan, I was trying to make sense of "Lashlish", the unique style adopted by a certain columnist in "The Bulletin". The paper does, I seem to recall, get used in English teaching locally. We come back to those receptionists or waiters, those who may be presented with:
"True or false? - In the daily sent "Majorca Daily Bulletin" is to find Cynthia Lennon as this is on this celebrated Majorca one long standing celebrity writer most talented."
I've made that last "sentence" up (sort of), in case you're wondering.

"Inglich not espouken" was the title of the piece in "The Diario". Let's not be too harsh on the students or on any Mallorcan whose standard of English is low. If native speakers can't "espouke" it, then what the hell chance have the locals got.


QUIZ
Yesterday: "Round The Horne", Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick. The wooden horse was Margaret Thatcher on "Desert Island Discs". Today: which author and journalist - one who, when not low-lifing, writes in a higher form of English - wrote "Filthy English"?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.