This is actually a serious challenge both for social and linguitistic reasons. Social because so many other people speak English, and linguistic because we don’t have the complexities such as gender and case that many other languages have.

Also I believe pronunciation has been very poorly taught.

I strongly believe that there should be more teaching of Spanish. In fact, despite them often using one word where we use three, it is a much easier language than French. Educated people who learn French don’t realise how difficult French is because they are often taught very superficially (eg Edward Heath!)

I also think it’s a bad thing that languages are often taught only to ‘grammar school’ ability pupils, and therefore I very much welcome the teaching of languages in primary schools.

I also think that people should still be made to speak another European language to a university entrance standard, which is what we ask, after all, of those whose first language is not English, and that Gaelic should be allowed to regenerate in these islands; however, I think it best if the official language for everyone is english, taught properly and with grammar. That’s something else that people have lost.

People should be encouraged to buy themselves courses in university outreach departments, or on the OU, in an Asian language. Universities would be able to do that if they were given endowments and floated away to take advantage of whatever opportunity they could to help people improve themselves whilst taking their cash honestly. Who knows, maybe even some of those makework ‘lecturers’ could take the classes after appropriate training.

What I wouldn’t want is the government involved. Really, though, I find myself wondering why people know next to nothing about Europe, good or bad, bar what they are fed (and this isn’t true, in my experience of many skeptics, before you say it), whereas every hoary old myth and misconception about the the United States trips off their tongue.

I love the US, but, really, they are very far away and they have their own interests, which from time to time coincide with those of humanity but which often are sui generis.

You’re into bandwidth issues and so forth. Is it possible to extend the BBC’s foreign language services educationally to British people, on a clear channel or via the internet?

One final point–sorry for the long post. I know quite a few civil servants (and for any snoops reading that doesn’t mean the ones who were my students at Oxford). Why was it that there were almost no translators in the British box at the last G-20, but the other governments brought theirs in? Did we only negotiate with them when they had what the Daily Mail would no doubt think of as the good sense to speak English? You are my appointed European Representative Mary! Look into it.