Speaking in Tongues

"The chopping French we do not understand," says the Duchess of York in Shakespeare's Richard II, and there are other passages in the play indicating an unwillingness to engage with another language. Thomas Mowbray, banished for life by the King, sees his bleak future in linguistic terms: "The language I have learnt these forty years, My native English, now I must forgo."

The virtues of making an effort to speak another language have of course been pointed out. Lady Diana Cooper was an advocate for speaking French fluently rather than correctly: "It's nerve and brass, audace and disrespect, and leaping-before-you-look and what-the-hellism, that must be developed." She would have won the approval of Lewis Carroll's Red Queen, who advises Alice, "Speak in French when you can't remember the English for a thing." From an earlier day, Chaucer's Prioress would have been happy in their confident company: her French was said to be "After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowne."

Some traditional approaches to language variety have incurred criticism. Edith Wharton in her novel The Age of Innocence notes unadmiringly that: "An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."

In the end, however, all languages are to be valued (according to Dr Johnson, "Languages are the pedigree of nations"), perhaps the more because of their differing identities. As the critic William Empson said, comparing French and English, "Learning French is some trouble, but after that you have a clear and beautiful language; in English, the undergrowth is part of the language."

Elizabeth Knowles

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