ABSTRACT
French will continue, however, to be the most widely taught modern foreign language in British schools by virtue of the sheer momentum it has gained through staffing, resources and popular expectation. With approximately seventy million mother-tongue speakers, French ranks only eleventh among the main languages of the world, but it is an official language of the United Nations alongside the more widely spoken Chinese, English, Spanish and Russian, and is spoken in a number of European countries. Spain is an ever-important holiday resort for British tourists, British trade with Spain is considerable, and trade links with South America are growing in importance. According to Crystal, Italian has approximately sixty million speakers and ranks only fifteenth in the list of world languages, but it is an important community language in Britain. Claims of various degrees of similarity might of course be made for any one of the EC or non-EC languages listed by the DES as potential National Curriculum modern languages.
