This isn’t fair, I said in French to two fellow conference-goers during a coffee break. You are in the majority here. We should be speaking your language, not mine. They indulged me for a few sentences – and then switched back to English.
With school examination results out, the UK is having its annual panic over young people not studying foreign languages. There were 10,000 fewer taking language exams this year than there were at the end of the 1990s.
“Languages are an important part of business,” says John Cridland, head of the CBI, the employers’ group. “That second or third language gives your competitor from Germany, or France, or the Netherlands, the edge.”