Editorial
In anyone's language
by Pamela Stirling
France is New Zealand’s nearest neighbour. With the exception of dots such as Norfolk Island, the maps show – voila – that the French territory of New Caledonia is actually closer to us than Australia. And so, in the spirit of conviviality, this column was going to start with a line or two in French. But we can’t. Workplace safety rules.
The owner of an Auckland factory recently explained, after threatening to fire workers who spoke Hindi at work, that all New Zealanders should be required to speak English – even in the lunchroom – because this is a health and safety issue. He wants to be “absolutely confident of product integrity and quality”.
Come to think of it, so do we. And since the only thing that most of us here can reliably do in French is order a fried pencil case, there’s a real health concern. What’s more, as the Auckland factory’s company director told the press, foreign languages are downright – excuse all this use of a French word – foreign. “People don’t want jabberwocky or gobbledygook going full bore … It’s very rude.”
Unbelievably, most of our international customers are just that rude. Only 20 percent of EU citizens speak English. Even the English now learn a second language as part of the core curriculum. Canada is officially bilingual. Most of Australia’s major states have made a second language compulsory.
Here, only 25 percent of students learn a language other than English – we rank near the bottom of developed nations. Only three of our 19 teacher training providers offer tuition in international languages to primary trainees. We have the extraordinary situation where many teachers cannot speak the language they are teaching.
None of that ought to stop us having a go. Tony Blair once stunned reporters by saying in French that he had always fancied the French Prime Minister – who promptly blushed and explained that Monsieur Blair was probably confusing the expression avoir envie de – meaning to desire – with the verb to envy, envier. Envy, desire, heck, you have to feel both about Blair’s confidence in another language. The French PM himself once said, in English, at a function in England that “the cook was delicious”. John F Kennedy’s famous words “Ich bin ein Berliner” actually translate as “I am a jam doughnut”.
Yet, the goodwill and sentiment of solidarity behind those gestures broke major barriers. And for a country so dependent on exports, we’re vulnerable if we don’t at least try to understand other languages and cultures.
General Motors once tried to launch the Nova car on the South American market. Unfortunately, “Nova” was too close to the Spanish words no va, so that the name translated as “doesn’t go”. Sunbeam once entered the German market with its Mist-Stick hair-curling iron. Problem? Mist in German means manure. And the American Coors beer slogan “get loose with Coors”, translated into Spanish as “get the runs with Coors”.
No one wants howlers in their marketing slogans. But we have to learn to enjoy occasional gaffes. Dick Hubbard used to ban the Samoan language at his workplace. He now says that languages bring vitality, as long as safety is not compromised. Hubbard laughs about the time he was speaking at an important function on Nuie. He mentioned that he lived in New Zealand in a small house. He used the words fale tosi; fale meaning house and tosi meaning small. There was a stunned reaction. In Nuiean, a fale tosi is a toilet.
A J Hackett, in the early days of his bungy-jumping company in Normandy, wanted to present the annual accounts. He was thinking of the French words desposer, and bilan, being balance sheet. It was only after a week of weird reactions that he realised his howler: he was telling people to liquidate the company.
Katherine Corich, founder of multi-million-dollar Sysdoc Group, made a superb gaffe when teaching 17-year-olds in France. One young man asked, “Oh, Mademoiselle, what ees a significant fact about New Zealand?” Corich tried to reply, “There are three million people and 75 million sheep.” Except that the word for sheep is moutons, and English-speaking people often make a mistake in pronouncing the difference between an “ou” and a “u”. So, instead of moutons, Corich said mutants: 75 million mutants. The students looked at each other and finally one of the class put his hand up and said, “Ah, mademoiselle, ’ow does ze country function?”
Good question. If only we knew how to reply.
