Tapescript Section Unit 1, Part 1

Let's face it – English is a crazy language. There is neither egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don'tgroceand hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2meese... One blouse, 2 blice?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you boteyour tongue?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a "slim chance" and a "fat chance" be the same, while a "wise man" and "wise guy" are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while "quite a lot" and "quite a few" are alike? How can the weather be "hot as hell" one day and "cold as hell" another?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it?

Unit 1, Part 2

The "Swiss malaise" - pessimism about the survival of Swiss culture and identity - has intensified recently with the debate about whether to surrender to or fight off the encroachment of English as the federation's unofficial fifth language.

Switzerland has four constitutionally recognised national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh, but educationalists and politicians now acknowledge that English has become the lingua franca of choice between these groups. These days, when young Swiss people from different language areas of Switzerland encounter each other they prefer to communicate in English. Not only are they likely to speak English better than another national language, but it also neutral, allowing them to avoid the thorny issue of whose language to use.

Some commentators are in favour of this trend. A social linguist at the University of Bern argues that Switzerland is becoming more, not less linguistically diverse. He predicts that membership of other linguistic groups, notably speakers of local Swiss-German dialects, will soon surpass that of the Romansh community.

"If one takes Romansh as a yardstick for distinct linguistic communities, then Switzerland has 10 languages, not four," he says. "So a common language is essential to ensure communication among these diverse groups."

But for the guardians of Switzerland's existing national languages the prospect of English becoming a lingua franca is viewed as a threat to the very fibre of the federation. If the Swiss lose their familiarity with other national languages, so the argument goes, it will not be long before they lose interest in their neighbours' cultures and communities, and the patchwork quilt of Swiss identity will fall apart.

The battle over what to do to protect national languages is being fought in schools, where the demand for English language teaching and the pressure to introduce it as early as possible is mounting, especially in German-speaking Switzerland. In Zurich a new language curriculum called "Schools Project 21" has overturned one of the foundations of Swiss language education, namely that all children must learn a national language as their first foreign language. Under the new scheme English will be taught in Zurich's primary schools from year one, with French classes starting five years later.

The rise of English has exposed a failure to teach national languages effectively in schools.

This is the finding of the recently published report, which was commissioned to evaluate and coordinate the teaching of foreign languages in Switzerland. The report concludes that the best way to teach languages is to expose children to them early, not as the subject of lessons but as languages of instruction - geography taught in French or history in English.

But there is a limit to the number of languages that can be introduced in this way, and that is why the Italian-speaking Ticino canton is most vocal in its objection to change. Ticino's schools fear that Italian will be reduced to the status of a minority language in German and French cantons, which will choose to teach each other's languages over Italian.

"The report severely underplays the importance of Italian instruction by degrading it almost to the level of an immigrant language. There is still a big difference between Albanian, Serbo-Croat and Portuguese, and the constitutionally defined national language of Italian," says a school administrator.

The debate in Switzerland over language has revealed that antipathy, not solidarity, between communities is the reality, and the much vaunted multi-lingual society has never existed.

As one observer comments: "The Swiss get on so well with each other because they don't understand one another."