Music

Applause

Hi, thanks for coming. I have a bit of trouble getting inside the head of somebody who wants a book like that as a Christmas present.

Laughter

I'm a bit disturbed by the whole situation here anyway. Outside the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the scent of the flowers is drifting across the landscape.

And here we are in a room with no windows, talking about a change in language.

Do you ever get the feeling that you took a wrong turning sometime in life?

Laughter

Anyway, here we are, we're going to do it.

As Marcus said, there's a handout which we're giving out at the end, which you can get at the end, which summarises pretty much what I'm going to say so you don't need to listen.

Laughter

You can get it from the table outside which has the box of university press books on.

And there we are.

When I was a lad at school a few years ago, I...

Laughter

Stop being a...

Laughter

I was terribly good at French. I used to get tough marks in French.

An odd thing was for a year we had a French boy in my class, his parents must have been in good for work, and we had this French boy.

And he always came bottom in the French exams. I mean it, really bottom.

You can guess why, his English wasn't very good so he couldn't translate and he didn't understand terms like past participle.

He was just a native French speaker.

But you had to wonder a bit about teaching methods where the native speaker comes bottom in the test.

But I came top. I was terribly proud of myself. I saw myself as a brilliant future linguist.

And some years later I went to live in France and I got a terrible shock.

I found that the French had not learnt French from the Clarendon French course.

Laughter

They got it all wrong.

Laughter

The rules. It was really a terrible experience.

And I came to the conclusion, and I've stayed with that conclusion since, that the main problem with languages is the native speakers.

Laughter

They talk too fast, they don't follow the rules.

And what is more they change things without consulting you.

Laughter

I lived in France for about eight years, quite a long time ago.

And I got really good at French. I could swear in French, I got good French slang.

I was proud of my French.

Well that was about 30 years back.

And now when I go to France, if I try out my French slang, I get those looks.

Laughter

What planet has this guy come from?

Laughter

They changed it all.

And I had a rather similar experience with German.

I devoted a great deal of time once to learning the rather complicated German spelling rules.

And dammit, you had a spelling reform.

Laughter

My time was wasted.

Well these things don't bother me too much because I'm not a teacher of French or German.