Español o française? Learn a language because you love it, not because it’s useful | Letters

Letters: Readers respond to an article by Gary Nunn who says learning Spanish has never been cooler

Gary Nunn misses the point of language learning in seeing it as a numbers game (Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push British children to learn French?, 10 February). Evaluating a language by its usefulness is reductive – about as soul-destroying as telling a passionate mathematician that they don’t need to bother learning complex theorems because a computer could do it.

I did two language A-levels (German and Japanese) and went on to do a Japanese degree at university. Despite Japanese being less “useful” than Spanish in terms of the number of speakers, it has enriched my life in countless ways.

Learning any language, be it a minority one such as Welsh or a widely spoken one such as Mandarin, is beneficial in that it teaches young people multiple skills that can then be applied in later life (and indeed to the learning of additional languages later on if the language they were taught in school is not the one they wanted to learn).

It teaches them to think and communicate in a different way, gives them a greater understanding of different cultures and histories, and access to new art and media.

Spanish is an incredible language, and it does it a disservice to reduce it to its “usefulness”. If we want to motivate young people to learn languages, we need to teach them to love languages rather than just seeing them as a means to an end in their future careers.
Miriam Starling
London

• The suggestion that Spanish should eclipse French in schools because it is more useful or has more native speakers reduces language education to a crude numbers game. Learning a language is not about chasing cultural trends or lifestyle optics; it is about developing cognitive flexibility, literacy, memory and cultural understanding. Pupils do not disengage because they study French rather than Spanish – they disengage when expectations are low and learning feels inaccessible.

Spanish absolutely deserves its growing place, but framing this as a zero-sum contest does a disservice to pupils and teachers alike. Languages are not popularity contests – they expand how young people think about the world, and that is their enduring value.
Sean Ennis
Head of modern languages, Blenheim High School

• In arguing that Spanish should have priority over French in British schools, Gary Nunn states: “We should tell people that in terms of employability … Spanish will serve them better than French.” I’ve got news for him. For some years now, the most sought-after modern foreign language with British employers is one he doesn’t mention: German. This is also the language that in recent years has been allowed to wither on the vine by our schools and universities.

We Brits are much better at learning foreign languages than many assume when given the opportunity, a stimulating syllabus and good teachers. But we are hopeless at getting our priorities right when it comes to foreign-language provision.
David Head
Malmesbury, Wiltshire

• Re Gary Nunn’s regret at not learning Spanish now he is living in Argentina, I have just arrived in Buenos Aires for a few days and, despite having a reasonable grasp of Castilian Spanish, I cannot understand a word anyone is saying, let alone being understood here.
Margot Crookshank
Hove, East Sussex

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