A RECENT Johnson column on the treatment of Catalan sparked hundreds of comments. My colleague argued in favour of multilingualism in Spain on the grounds that speakers of Castilian Spanish should be “proud to learn their country’s other languages”. This post will offer a different proposition: though this form of multilingualism is clearly useful, it may be more valuable for Spaniards to concentrate on learning languages spoken outside their own country.

Given that there are roughly as many speakers of Catalan as there are of Swedish, Castilian speakers considering how best to use their language-learning time might prefer to focus on a tongue that yields broader opportunities. Spain is still re-orienting its economy towards export competitiveness and away from over-investment in housing: France and Germany are its largest export markets and English remains the default language for international business. Yet the number of Spaniards able to speak English, German or French fluently is not high. They are moderately proficient in English, according to Education First’s (EF) index, which puts them at the lower end of the spectrum compared with other Europeans.

With unemployment stuck above 20%, many Spaniards are making the effort to gain additional skills or to take advantage of the EU’s free movement of labour. Castilian speakers may well feel that learning Catalan does not provide the benefits of studying English, French or German—or indeed Portuguese, Arabic or Chinese. More.

See: The Economist

Subscribe to the translation news daily digest here. See more translation news.