British polyglots

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/12/polyglot-language-teaching-demand

The future is not necessarily in language teaching in primary schools, as Ruth Collins suggests, but rather in highlighting the relevance and the context of foreign languages to blinkered islanders. Make school exchanges easier, emphasise fluency and enjoyment rather than grammatical perfection. I think that until the UK ceases to see itself as a superior island, an 'exception culturelle,' languages in the UK will never really catch on.

The BBC could help enormously by showing films in VO, with subtitles rather than horrendous dubbing, and radios in the UK should provide a platform for non-English language music. Gordon Brown could help by ensuring that policies follow on through from primary school to secondary school. Exposure is the key; and exposure to foreign cultures and languages is fairly non-existent in the UK (with the exception of the US), compared with the inter-cultural melange you see and feel on the European continent.

Kinder leicht!

Winter in Zurich

Pestalozziweg, Zurich. Looking towards the Uetliberg.

Werdinsel, Zurich.

Totter, totter, totter.

Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse leads to Paradeplatz, where the mighty (perhaps less so these days) banks have their headquarters. Where countless men in unimaginative black suits, mackingtosh jackets and dull shoes trundle in to the sombre looking buildings early in the morning, and where they daundle out of after dark, leather briefcase in hand.
It makes sense that the street that leads to this money pot is also paved with gold. Dior, Luis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci and other pretentious places where they deem themselves so trendy they need door staff. I tend to find the customers of these sorts of places rather amusing at the best of times; they dangle their hideously shiny silver handbags on their elbows, they drag their Gucci-coated anorexic grey dog on its pink ribboned lead and they totter along on the uneven paving on their uncomfortably angular shoes, into one guarded shop. Out of one guarded shop. Into the next. Out of the next. Totter totter totter.
In my mind, many of these women are the wives or lovers of Russian oligarchs who are off in some less ordered corner of the world making a 'Deal.' I have no idea if they are indeed wives of oligarchs. I don't particularly care; they look daft, whatever they are.
I have even less respect for these women since last week when large graceful flakes of pure white snow danced their way down onto Zurich's pavements at a speed and volume quicker and greater than Zurich's fleet of snowploughs. It was beautiful. The women tottering on their high heels in the snow were not. But they have been practising balancing their handbags on their elbows so they are pretty good at that, even in the snow in their overpriced shoes.

A different approach to responsibility

March 7th. Six days before my twin sister will marry. Sunday. Paris. I will, in theory run a half marathon. It should be quite a pleasant trip. I will meet family, we'll enjoy some good food and a little wine, perhaps nip around on a Velib', if the machines will take our non-French cards as deposit.

A place on the race costs 36 €. A reasonable sum, and I think you get a free t-shirt. A medical signature on the 'certificat medical' which all runners are obliged to present when they collect their numbers will cost me 450CHF. The doctor must, according to some seemingly archaic French law, sign a form that states that the running will not fall over and die during the race. I present the form, having fought to get an approved translation of the form in German, to my (very) Swiss doctor (although this is an international event, the organisers did not think so far as to fully translating the website. Mainly leaving the most important pages and necessary documents untranslated), and I attempt to make a joke in my stinted Swiss German about how ridiculous French bureaucracy is.

He instead turns the joke on me. Starts to go through a list of tests I will need in order for him to judge me fit to run a half marathon. I was expecting him to ask me if I smoke, drink and exercise. Instead he ticked, he named tests (which he then translated into English after seeing my puzzled expression, and the translations were not much help), he ticked again, he named more tests. 'Were you expecting it to come to this much?' he asked, with that cocky smile that the Swiss often have when they (often) demand money for something. I said in my best German 'I had no flipping idea!'

My brother's doctor in the UK has refused to sign the form, since he cannot judge, after almost a decade of medical study and perhaps triple that medical experience, whether my brother, who has a job where fitness is a strict requirement, can safely run a half marathon.

We will fake the signature and stick our fingers up in the face of French bureaucracy. I simply do not understand how it is up to a doctor to judge whether you should be running a half marathon. If you collapse in a heap on the second kilometre, then it is almost entirely your fault for stubbonly ignoring your body. If you are knocked over by an arrogant Frenchman in a beret waving a string of garlic in your face on his bone-shaker, then it may well not have been your fault, but there isn't much you can do about it.

Life has to happen without stupid pieces of paper that graduates of the Grandes Ecoles are paid to create and then fossilise so the stupidity can remain for decades and decades without a single bonhomme parisien questioning it.

Vive le non-signing of les formulaires debiles. (Et le franglais, bien sur!)