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future of Britain's economic and political well-being is hampered by our unwillingness to learn foreign languages ??

is an ominous sign of our times that one of the most effective attacks on Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich is that it's so anti-American dares to speak French. Since the Iraq war, France and the French are synonymous with lack of martial spirit and European solidarity with the United States, but there is more work than that. Master a foreign language shows the wrong priorities, according to this line: shows the willingness to work hard in the understanding of another culture, language and customs. Real Americans do not.

Britons are infected with the same culture, but we have the excuse of being the dominant power in the world and occupy a continent. We live in a large island in the North Sea, whose economic power is fading fast, and any design sustainable future requires openness and sharing with the world. Even skeptics preach as a nation, we must look at the world to secure our future. In fact, Britain should pursue both their European and global ambitions. But whatever their position in this debate, the ability to speak a foreign language - and for pleasure in it - is a basic skill

However, the figures last week showing a sharp drop in those applying to study non-European languages ??- 21% - seems to suggest that we are moving in the opposite direction. What does this say about the interest of our youth in the other? Awareness of the growing importance of China, the Arab world and the rest? Or, indeed, his willingness to submit to the discipline of learning a foreign language? The image of the European languages ??are not better -. 57% of students are no longer taking languages ??at GCSE, although there was a marked decline in the number of candidates who are studying languages ??at a level

seventeen years the application of their choice of college is to create a series of personal choices, family and school, which in turn reflect our great cultural reflexes and provisions. But if part of the explanation is that these 17 years believe that acquiring a language that is not valued by the labor market, then your opinion is completely wrong. The unemployment rate for graduates of language is extremely low. The labor market value.

Perhaps the new fee regime in which students leave university with an average debt of around £ 45 000 has become a factor, we'll see. (Complete the statement. I chair the costs of newly created independent commission is to study the impact of the quota system in new applications) But it would be wrong. In purely utilitarian, the economy needs more people who speak foreign languages. This is a valuable skill, if you are part of the global scientific community or the world trading system.

learning a language is a double victory. The brilliant performer Michael Hofmann wrote in these pages of the joy of mastering more than one language. To speak a language, he says, must be enclosed in one of the cultural opportunities - to be condemned to live in the cage language and culture which they are grown. "If you do not have another language, are doomed to occupy the same positions, the same phrases throughout his life," he writes. "It is difficult to make no mistake, the more difficult to suspect in one language. It is harder to play. "To acquire another language is open to the world and greatly increase their employability.

The problem is that popular culture, neither Britain nor its elites have not yet reached an agreement with the new international status of the country or what is implicit in our economic situation. The hangover of the Empire and the legacy of a great power, with the reassuring fact that the U.S. Anglophone, is that we still wrong to think that speaking a foreign language is a nice-to-have , but a must-have asset.

However, in our view, the actual traffic remains to foreigners learning our language and adapt to our customs. Worse, there are floods of them beyond our borders who want to live our welfare state meant extraordinarily generous. The task is not open to them as part of rebuilding our economy and remake us - is to keep them, pull the drawbridge, that our welfare system as mean as possible and to balance our pounds. Foreigners are part of the problem is not the solution. Maybe that is why many of our children who start learning a foreign language mocks rather than leased and quickly give up something that is so demanding.