summit, in Hanoi, Vietnam, last year. Earlier this year, France lodged an official protest with the European Commission about the way English is supplanting French as Europe’s prime working language. As part of its campaign, France has made it clear that it will block the appointment of the next president of the EC if he or she does not speak fluent French.
But, for better or for worse, English is becoming the ‘industry standard’, in much the same way that VHS became the videocassette standard and MS-DOS, Wintel and TCP/IP have become computer standards. Perhaps it’s the fact that English developed as a melting pot of the major European languages. Or maybe that it’s an ‘open standards’ language – accessible to all, and not owned by any one country.
Sonja Huerlimann, account planner at Advico Young & Rubicam Zurich, predicts that English will become the first foreign language taught in Swiss schools. The New York Times reports that young French people are flocking to Britain to improve their English-language skills, which are appreciated in much of Europe but considered a threat to the primacy of the French language back home. The Netherlands has successfully touted the English language skills of its people to promote itself as an ideal location for multinational companies to set up their European headquarters.
Paradoxically, even as Europeans increasingly choose to adopt English as their ‘trading language’, many find themselves more able than ever to slip back into their minority languages and dialects back home – linguistic diversity is thriving in Europe. In Spain, young Catalans, Basques and Galicians have grown up being allowed to talk languages that were banned under General Franco. In Italy, it was recently discovered that Italian had not been officially registered as the national language. While amending this oversight, legislators took the opportunity to register eighteen regional dialects and languages.3
Despite its reputation as being English only, the Internet is providing a low-cost medium for minority language speakers dispersed across Europe and beyond to network in languages ranging from Albanian to Welsh. Visit http://www.partal.com/ciemen/europe.html for a sample.
In the coming millennium, expect Europeans to apply global – local thinking to language. For functional global communication, English is bound to emerge as the best option. For local, personal and cultural purposes, local languages will continue to be the entrance tickets to parallel worlds. The losers in this process will be those poor souls who speak only English.
What’s Next in the UK
The United Kingdom – what’s next even for just those two words begs a lot of questions. Namely, how far into the new millennium will the country still be a kingdom, and how much longer will it remain united?
But starting this section on a negative – or even a questioning – note would run counter to the spirit of the times for the UK. The country is on a roll, Cool Britannia, fêted by feature writers the world over, once again regarded as a world-class style capital. And it’s been lauded not only as a style leader, but also as being ahead of many other European countries in terms of its preparedness for the New Economy. ‘The UK is seen in some quarters as a model for a more commercial, entrepreneurial Europe,’ says Adrian Day, of leading brand consultants Landor Associates, based in London.
The buzz has spread all over the world, but probably the sweetest satisfaction comes from changed perceptions close to home. France has tended to regard Britain with amused and slightly bemused hauteur – a trendy tourist guide of the eighties was entitled London, 100 Years Behind and 10 Years Ahead. But many French are now seriously wondering whether Britain is leaving them behind. Unprecedentedly large numbers of young French people are crossing the Channel to find work in Britain and polish their English – some 60,000 of them are in London’s financial district alone, according to Le Figaro. Even the leader of the French parliament, Laurent Fabius, recently lavished his charm on Britain’s Prime Minister, according to a report in the Financial Times: ‘We are curious about you, dear Tony Blair, your personality and style, which have made more than one of us feel old-fashioned.’
Who would have expected it? Through the late 1980s and much of the 1990s, Britain seemed to be suffering a hangover from the Thatcher Revolution. The eighties boom peaked in 1988 and was followed by gloomy years of waiting for the return of the elusive ‘Feel Good Factor’, a buzzword used by the Conservative government of John Major (who succeeded Mrs Thatcher). House prices languished, homeless people were everywhere and politicians faced incessant accusations of corruption and wrongdoing – the so-called Sleaze Factor. Ironically, the Feel Good Factor only returned at the landslide victory of the re-engineered ‘New’ Labour Party under Tony Blair in May 1997.
Postwar Britain has been characterized by boom-and-bust cycles, and time will tell whether the latest upswing will fall into the patterns of the past or break them. New Labour has certainly declared its intention to change the country. Much of the spadework was done by successive Thatcher governments in the 1980s; they were responsible for breaking the power of the labour unions, abolishing restrictive working practices, privatizing state monopolies and forcing the notions of good housekeeping and profitability on both the public and private sectors. And New Labour’s macroeconomic thinking is not a million miles from Mrs Thatcher’s.
Blair’s honeymoon period has extended well beyond 100 days, although some of his high-profile showbiz supporters (e.g. the Gallagher brothers of Oasis) have already deserted him to protest against reforms of the welfare system. And there must be some doubts as to whether the Cool Britannia aura will survive untarnished until the new millennium – after all, fashion is fickle.
But, as Landor London affirms, the British at large have a sense of optimism, believe that the country is changing and that New Labour is modernizing it. So Tony Blair and the British people may well still find themselves on an extended honeymoon when the millennium turns. In any event, with a landslide majority behind him, Blair is one of the few current world leaders who can be confident of being in his job when the year 2000 dawns. For Britain, it’s a fair bet that the years straddling the turn of the millennium will go down in history as ‘The Blair Years’.
United? Kingdom? For the first time in many, many years, there is a real prospect of London handing over or ‘devolving’ powers to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, provided that mutually acceptable formulas can be devised. In the case of Northern Ireland, it would be a truly millennial achievement to leave behind violent civil conflict and find a formula acceptable to both the Republicans, who want the province to join the Republic of Ireland, and the Unionists or Loyalists, who want it to remain part of the United Kingdom. The early years of the next millennium are unlikely to see any substantial alteration in the sovereignty of Wales and Scotland. Any change in the composition of the United Kingdom will come with Northern Ireland.
As for the monarchy, the tragic death of Princess Diana in August 1997 triggered a heated debate about her estranged in-laws, the Royal Family and the continuing loyalty of the British to the monarchy. Polls at the time showed a marked cooling off of feeling towards ‘the Royals’ and their relevance to modern British life. (Then again, this is an era in which the Royals are reputed to employ paid spin doctors whose remit goes far beyond that of the traditional press secretaries, and in which the Blairs appear to be professionally styled prior to major appearances.) On a less emotional tone, would-be constitutional reformers used the occasion to renew discussion about whether it is appropriate for the people of a modern, postindustrial nation to be ‘subjects’ rather than ‘citizens’.
The future of the monarchy, at least for the first half of the next century, is likely to be decided by emotional criteria. Public discussion of the Royals – meaning street level rather than media – tends to focus not on constitutional issues, but on personalities and, occasionally, on money. Recent polls have indicated that Prince Charles has recovered a lot of the ground he lost at the time of his ex-wife Diana’s death, while Prince William has inherited his mother’s good looks and goodwill. According to a report in the San Francisco Examiner, ‘Recent polls have shown that about 60 percent of Britons want the monarchy to continue. In the aftermath of Diana’s death, support for the monarchy dropped to between 40 and 50 percent, the lowest