Brits and languages
ALEX DEAN
On holiday, Brits are often reduced to pointing and repeating the question a little louder. Expectations have long been so low that we’ve ceased to feel embarrassed about our lack of fluency in foreign tongues; even so, the rate at which we are now drifting towards out-and-out monolingualism should be cause for alarm. Among young people, the basic proficiency afforded by studying a language through to GCSE at 16 is falling away—total entries have been plummeting since at least the turn of the millennium, with no end in sight.