Linguistic Inspiration? Can Flirting with the Classics Help the Poor Man of Europe?

What did the Romans do for Britain? One thing was to leave its shores with the gift of Latin. It is often described as a 'dead' language however it's about to make a comeback in state primary schools. A project orchestrated jointly by Peter Davies, a former President of the Association of School and College Leaders and the Esmee Fairbain Foundation will see the ancient discipline taught in 60 state primaries in Cambridgeshire.

Supporters of the scheme argue that the benefits are self-evident. Teaching children Latin will aid a child's understanding of the various patterns of language besides offering insights into history and civilisation. As part of the project, Latin would be just one of the proposed languages that will be learnt, alongside French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Punjabi. With an increasingly diverse population, what languages should Britian's children be taught and more pertinently which languages will hold the most relevance in the future?

There is no doubt that English remains, be it the first or second, a global tongue of choice. Those who do not class English as their native language will often learn it in some capacity, whether it be at school or for business. Still, Britain remains the poor man of Europe in terms of being linguistically challenged abroad with a survey by the European Commission in 2006 merely confirming this fact. One other finding of note was that 51% of EU nationals can hold a conversation in English however 62% of Britons cannot speak a foreign language. The well worn tale of the Briton shouting louder or speaking slowly in the hope of being understood is an image that projects such as this one in Cambridgeshire will hope to eradicate.

British children have traditionally been taught a combination of French, German and Spanish. Whilst the latter has a significant proportion of the world's population as speakers, Mandarin and Hindi have been ear-marked as the two considered the best for advancement.
Mandarin Chinese is officially the most widely spoken language on the planet, counting 1.1 billion of the world's population as speakers. With China's growing global stature, would learning Mandarin be advantageous for British children? It is already set to become the second most popular language in UK schools as headteachers aim to provide their pupils will the linguistic tools to assert themselves in the 21st century. Meanwhile Hindi has 490 million speakers worldwide with a contingent of Hindi speakers already living in Britain. Not to mention India's own status as an emerging superpower, Hindi is another language that will prove an asset, even more so as the global economy recovers.

If learning Latin as part of a structured framework that encompasses a variety of languages is successful then the benefits to Britain's under-equipped children are clear. A future generation able to converse freely with the world will enable Britain to further enhance its ambitions of becoming a specialised, knowledge-based economy. With the UK government making it compulsory for every primary school child from seven years old to learn a foreign tongue, studying more difficult languages such as Mandarin and Hindi from an earlier age will afford learners the time they require to grasp complexities such as the differing tones in Mandarin. For the future generation to be able to create trade opportunties in China and India and for Britain to lose the stigma of being an insular, one tongue nation, learning Latin and going back to the classics could be just the beginning. Finally, perhaps Britain can reach an enlightened understanding of the world in which the country truly takes part in a global conversation.