I am a big fan of Mike Skinner (aka The Streets). But his 3rd album, which is out today, is getting slated a bit.

Mike's crime is to write about his new reality: celebrity.

So – with that awkward lead in – let me apologise for writing to you again from on-board a big aeroplane.

I am on an inter-continental flight out of Zürich on Swiss (the re-born Swissair).  So far the staff have addressed me in three languages.  I have responded in two.  But I am sure there are more to come before we land.

None of them appear to be deficient in any other ways, to make up for their ability to speak several languages.  That's what their market requires, so that's what they have to do.

I have worked with many companies that have said 'English is our business language'.  And then used that as an excuse to make no efforts to recognise or support the fact that their customers actually speak another one.

Back in Canada it used to drive my wife crazy that it only took one uniligual English-speaker from the another part of the country to make dozens of bilingual Quebecers have to run a meeting in English.

I have no claim of purity here.  I too speak louder to Germans and Italians if they don't understand my English.

But surely it's the market that dictates the language that we offer services in, not the business.

Have 1.3 billion Chinese been in secret camps learning English since birth, to take on the world?  No, they pick it up as required.

I remember having an argument with a doctor working for Agriculture Canada as I offered him a lift home one night.  He said he'd avoided a bilingual education for his son because he knew that it would distract from his ability to learn and excel in other important school subjects.

I told him about growing up in Africa and how I'd meet little kids in slums, without proper nutrition and no education, who spoke 3, 4, 5 languages.  "I guess those kids are all just smarter than your son?"

He didn't have an answer.  But my wife (whose business colleague he was) hit me with a rolled up newspaper.

Can anyone tell me what is going n in the USA these days?  I have been away a while, but I get the sense that language is slowly becoming a service issue there too.

/df