I know what you mean about the Dutch speaking English. It’s been decades since I was last there but one retained memory among many was a conversation with a taxi driver in Amsterdam. Now I recognise taxi drivers in international cities have an incentive to speak foreign languages but his capability was well above and beyond the call of duty.

Because the Netherlands is not one of the big three or four or even five countries in the EU in population terms, it often tends to get overlooked in international comparisons. However, I recall from trawls through economic data several distinctive features about it - high productivity in industry even by American standards and the highest percentage of graduates among adults for a country in western Europe. Yet another was that it rivals Britain for being the least religious country in Europe as measured by attendance at worship. Quite whether there is some connection I can’t say but the tradition of liberalism and a spirit of open minded inquiry in the Netherlands goes back a long way. Descartes, one of the most historically esteemed of the French philosophers and mathematicians seems to have spent most of his adult life living there to escape the attentions of the church authorities in France.

What economists here will know is that the Netherlands has a highly distinguished tradition of economics, with Tinbergen, and Frisch of Norway, being the first Nobel laureates in economics and Tinbergen having a genuine if under-recognised claim to be among the cofounders of the Keynesian revolution in the 1930s.

Of course, there are historic ethnic links between the territory of what became the Netherlands and Britain from what is called the English invasions in the 5th and 6th centuries, somewhat before the Vikings and Danes arrived here in numbers. By invitation of Britain’s Parliament, William of Orange became William III, joint sovereign with his wife Mary of England, Scotland and Ireland (1689-1702), a time of special importance in the evolution of Britain’s unique constitutional arrangements.

The significance of the invitation by Parliament is that it established the principle that sovereigns reign by Act of Parliament and not by the Divine Right of Kings. There was a backlash with some here complaining about a foreigner becoming king, which lead on to that marvellous satirical poem, The True-Born Englishman (1700), by Daniel Defoe, a native Londoner perhaps better known internationally as the author of Robinson Crusoe: http://www.blackmask.com/books63c/trueborneng.htm

The legacy of this episode in Britain’s history established England, in the words of Voltaire living here in exile 1726-9, as the “land of liberty” which “has succeeded in controlling the power of kings by resisting them” and had established “a wise system of government in which the prince . . has his hands tied for doing evil, in which the aristocrats are great without arrogance and vassals, and in which the people share in government without confusion.” - quoted from Julian Poppit: A Land of Liberty? (OUP 2000)

Curiously perhaps, historic links have continued with the huge Anglo-Dutch transnational companies, Shell and Unilever.

Not learning the native language of the country you reside in may not necessarily hinder your professional career, but it will be fatal for your social life in that country.

Please do not make the mistake of assuming that pidgin, patois, or “international” tourist and business English with its hundred-word vocabulary, simplified tenses, and situational stock phrases, can replace a primary language as a means of social discourse.

And in response to the comment about 50% of all young Europeans professing to being fluent in English: I have just returned from a series of trips through a number of European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Italy) and I can assure you their confidence is badly misplaced.
I live in the Netherlands, which is somewhat exceptional in the sense that a large minority of young people, possibly as high as one in four, can carry out a conversation in English of some sophistication, enough to converse fluently at the high-school level with a native English speaker. This is not the case in Germany or Switzerland, where tourist English is the most that can be expected, and certainly not in Italy: in Sicily I met exactly one native capable of carrying out a conversation in tourist English, and most people spoke absolutely no English whatsoever, not one single word of it (much to my discomfiture, because my Italian is very rudimentary).

English is the defacto lingua franca, the most widely spoken second language, and its spread is, in my opinion, a Very Good Thing Indeed, but English as global patois is not the same thing as a replacement for various mother tongues. And the suggestion that anything beautiful should be written in English, not Norwegian or whatever, is impractical, as it assumes that non-native English speakers will have a command of English at the same level as their native tongue. This will not happen until two functions are fulfilled: (1) All primary and secondary education takes place in English (2) English is primarily spoken at home. (Ask any English teacher in the US or UK in a district dominated by recent immigrants). The chances of both occuring on a global scale are nonexistent.

English as a global lingua franca? Yes. As the global mother tongue? Impossible.

“When in Rome . . .”

Your commitment to learning the languages of countries in which you live and work is thoroughly commendable, not to say a testimony both to your abilities and sensitivity, but regretfully or otherwise it is not a successful prescription for a world language to facilitate international communication.

Neither the Romans nor we British had the courtesy to adopt the customs, practices and languages of the territories occupied in the process of creating empires, which is why we have Roman roads and laws on which to build, why English is a world language and why so many countries had railways and Parliamentary government thrust upon them. In the last quarter of the 19th century, in a typical year Britain was investing 40% of its savings overseas - Paul Krugman: Peddling Prosperity (1994), p. 259.

Unfortunately, Karl Marx was allowed settlement rights in Britain and free use of the reading room in the British Museum Library after he was hounded out of mainland Europe in 1848. There is something hugely ironic about the soothsayer of the inevitable doom of capitalism writing his turgid tomes of prediction in what was the foremost capitalist power of his time.

In my opinion, the advent of the Internet and electronic communication in general has greatly augmented the necessity of proper English skills. If you want to stay current with your knowledge, be it in business, IT, or science, you’re out of luck without English. Nevertheless, I consider it more than just courtesy to learn the local language of the country I live in ASAP. In five months, I intend to relocate to the Netherlands and find a new job. Sure, almost everyone there speaks English but it’s me who is foreign so I better adjust to the local culture. Language skills are an integral part here.

When in Rome…

Classical Chinese was written by many Japanese who could not speak it, and had great importance as an elite written language. Early Japanese-language literature was by women because the men were writing Chinese. During the XIX c. Japanese and Chinese diplomats communicated in writing when they couldn’t speak to one another — there’s a book about this which I can’t dig up.

Japanese and Korean have their own readings of the Chinese, distantly related to the Chinese readings — Roshi = Laozi.

A bicultural Japanese / American told me that in Japan the use of Chinese characters is a prestige / class / style trait. Everything can be written in the syllabaries, but its tacky and ignorant to do so. (I would bet that some of Japan’s best scientists use many fewer Chinese characters than other educated people).

The idea of learning English by listening to Styx is very funny.

“the Zipfian distribution of weblog traffic” - this is true Abiola, but it begs the question as to whether European blogging can become a separate domain, or will always be part of the US blogsphere (this is not anti-US BTW, it’s simply saying that we may have other interests than Davis/Bustamante, Rush Limbaugh or the Plame affair). Put it this way, London doesn’t have to be small because New York is big, but Liverpool does get to be small because London is big.

“Is it just a matter of time to catch up with the US in this respect or will the language barrier keep us from reaching the goals of a really useful (effective) exchange of ideas?”

This is a very big and important question, important not only vis-a-vis blogging, but for the whole EU project. My own feeling is an optimistic one. I think we Europeans are ‘late adopters’, but we will come. The big issue is to get blogs to a wider audience. Following up on Abiola’s structural point, we have too many closed nets. We need to have more ‘connectors’ in Granovetter’s parlance. Obviously having one or two blogs that break into the ‘old media’ like Tacitus, Calpundit and Talking Points Memo have would help.

Meantime I am sure that group blogs like fistful and crooked timber are one way forward. Incidentally if you are out there reading this and want to be blogrolled, contact one of us.

Thinking about your comment it strikes me that
there are a large number of americans who are
well-informed about what people think in Britain
and Australia compared to, say, ten years ago. More
astonishing, the political discourse in these
three countries is now merging. Or perhaps I should
say the tendency toward common argument is stronger
than ever before.

On the other hand the number of americans who have
any understanding of the different tides of thought
in, say, Germany, has barely changed.

The reason for that, I believe, has everything to do
with the situation that if you are an english speaker
and do not speak german it’s so difficult to find
authentic voicings of germans in english.

I don’t think language barriers have much to do with it. The real problem is the Zipfian distribution of weblog traffic, and the difficulty newcomers have in getting linked to by the most widely read bloggers, particularly given the America-centric focus of most such individuals.

The truth is that most Americans, even the relatively well-informed ones, don’t care too much what goes on in Europe, as long as it has no immediate bearing on America’s domestic affairs. If you were willing to subcontract as loyal partisans of the GOP or the Democratic Party, I’m sure your traffic would soon skyrocket, as the likes of Calpundit, Atrios and Instapundit sought you out for ammunition for the cause, but I wonder if that’s the sort of niche you’re really seeking to occupy.