The majority of young Europeans learn to read simple words within a year. The British take two to three years to achieve the same result. Would the world language be particularly badly chosen?
IN THE READING TEST, ENGLISH WINS THE PALM FOR THE MOST DIFFICULT LANGUAGE
Linguists don't like to talk about "easy" or "difficult" languages: they fear hierarchies. However, all is not relative when it comes to idioms. And English is at the center of a paradox: the cliché of "easy language" sticks to it. However, in the field of learning to read anyway, this reputation is frankly missing the mark.
A professor of cognitive psychology, Philip Seymour of the University of Dundee in Scotland, has just provided proof of this in the largest comparative study to date. He observed, in 15 countries, schoolchildren taking their first steps in reading. Most of them can decipher simple words after a year. English-speaking schoolchildren take two to three years to achieve the same performance. And the precocity of education in Great Britain (5 years) probably has nothing to do with it, notes Philip Seymour: Danish children, who start writing at the age of 7, are also in the back pack. them, we find the Portuguese and the French. But the record for slowness does indeed belong to English speakers.
Why ? It's the very nature of English that is in question, thinks Philip Seymour. In recent years, as part of the same European research program that enabled the Scottish study, linguists have identified two characteristics that make languages more or less accessible. The syllabic structure first. It can be very simple, as in the open syllable of type "ba" familiar to Romance languages and to babies. Or much more complex, as in the syllable closed at both ends by a group of consonants ("sprint"). Second characteristic: the simplicity or "opacity" ("depth") of the spelling. The simplest systems offer a constant and predictable correspondence between a sound and a graphic representation.
In "opaque" systems, this correspondence is changeable and unpredictable. However, of all European languages, English is the champion of complex syllables and opaque spelling.
In terms of difficulty, the other Germanic languages are also ranked well, while the Romance languages are placed more on the side of simplicity. But the prize for transparency goes to Finnish, a language outside the Indo-European family.
Like what, we must not confuse exoticism and complication. If English is particularly difficult to access for native speakers, isn't it also for others? Philip Seymour does not enter into the subject: it was not the subject of his study, he says. One of his colleagues, the linguist Mark Pagel of the University of Reading, does not hesitate to point out, in this week's New Scientist magazine, the "irony" that there is to note that “The international lingua franca is also the most difficult language to learn”. And he recalls that English did not win the day because of a supposed "natural superiority", but by "historical accident". In the words of fellow linguist David Crystal *, the language of the industrial revolution has repeatedly found itself "in the right place at the right time."
So if chance had it that English would become the global language, would that chance have done things particularly badly? The question arises in an area quite different from education, that of aviation safety: it is estimated that 11% of aircraft accidents are due to poor language communication. ** The same problems would occur with any other international language, notes David Crystal. Not at all, replies Kent Jones, a retired Chicago civil engineer who has made the "dangerousness" of English his hobbyhorse. Few languages have so many ambiguities, he argues. It is true that, for millions of wealthy English speakers, an acceptable pronunciation is an unreachable dream. By the way, do you master the nuances between "bate", "bet", "bit" and "beat"?
In any case, specialists agree on one point: English is an "easy false language" which deceives its world with its comely grammar. Funnily enough, some continue to celebrate this supposed simplicity in incomprehensible jargon that they believe to be English.