Starting the List.

Right then, I’ve decided I need to start making a list of the things I want to do in my next life. Number one is to learn some languages. I haven’t done that this time round. I once had just enough French to get a free 200-pack of Gauloises fags from a French lorry driver I helped with some directions, but that’s about as far as it got.

So why languages? Because language is a major component of culture, and as such it has its benefits and drawbacks. The benefit is that it unites people who speak the same language and helps give them a sense of cultural identity. The drawback is that it tends to divide people who speak a different language, and thus encourages cultural intolerance.

‘He talks funny so he must be foreign, and if he’s foreign it’s OK to shoot him.’

Exaggeration, maybe, but it is a psychological fact that we’re inherently inclined to be mistrustful of people who speak a different language, and more likely to behave in an offhand, unfriendly or aggressive manner towards them. It seems to me, therefore, that speaking only our native language makes us prone to being more insular. The British have a bad reputation in that regard. We’ve always been reluctant to learn other peoples’ languages. If they want us to accept them, they have to speak ours.

So it further seems to me that learning languages must have the opposite effect; it surely must make us more expansive and accepting in our attitudes to people of other cultures. In other words, it must promote a sense of equality. And that has to be a damn fine thing.