Mother Tongues

Helena Drysdale

Globalisation and the drive towards cultural and linguistic homogeneity is dubbed the "World Bitch" in Helena Drysdale's latest travel book. In 1996 she and her husband rented out their house and loaded two very small daughters into a mobile home and set off on a tour of Europe's remotest linguistic corners. She visits the comfortable Aland Islanders, the angry Basques, the newly minted Macedonians, the thriving Catalonians, the surprisingly unattractive island pair of Corsica and Sardinia and Italy's "Germans", the South Tyrolers. She journeys through France, Spain, Belgium, Scandinavia, Italy, Greece and Denmark. One of the highlights of the trip is to Europe's far north: Samiland. Here in northern Norway is a marginalised population living a shanty town existance, according to Drysdale's account, in one of the world's richest and (we fondly imagine) most equitable societies.

A journey round Europe's fringe languages is a journey into paradox. You might expect to find the most successful minority language groups in areas with a natural geographical definition like Corsica or Sardinia. Or in the Basque Country in Spain where an accident of tribal history has preserved a distinct ethnic group in a tiny space. Or in France, with its long history of democracy and principled government. But Drysdale finds it in Catalunya, long oppressed under Franco and now lively and prosperous and linguistically confident. And yet it's in Catalunya that the Drysdales experience the drabbest scenery. They long to escape. And near Barcelona their vehicle is twice broken into.

It's tempting to romanticise minority communities. And you get the feeling the author is hoping to find brave little peoples battling against an oppressive dominant culture. But usually it's more complicated than that. In Brittany the separatists ganged up with the nazis during the war. And the Basques have that problematic link with IRA terrorism. And the sudtirolers? She doesn't come right out and say it but you can tell what the author's thinking. Why would anyone technically part of the Italian state want to act quite so, well, German?

And cast aside romantic notions of introducing your tiny children to culture and adventure by means of carting them around Europe in a in your tin can on wheels. Children need routine, they crave the boring and the familiar. In Esther Freud's Hideous Kinky a mother bums round Morocco while her daughters pester her to be allowed to go back to school. Something similar occurs in Mother Tongues. At one point in Sardinia the Drysdale parents are appalled by the amount of litter but the Drysdale daughter points out wistfully that she likes litter - "it reminds me of London". And asked to name her favourite place out of all the places they've visited all the poor tot can manage is Stockwell.

Amusingly, and sometimes rather sadly, precious interviews with local notables are torpedoed by parenting problems. At one point an elderly Corsican lady begs her to get rid of "your noisy children" before she'll continue with their interview. On another occasion a Belgian academic talks linguistic theory while happily chomping his way through a knickerbockerglory blissfully unaware (unlike the author) of the agony he's inflicting on the Drysdale daughters sat opposite him with simple choc-ices. It cuts both ways. Youngest daughter takes her first tottering steps while the Drysdales politely follow a lofty linguistic discussion in a Danish living room. Having blagged the access they can hardly jump up and celebrate those first steps.

Of course, a book substantially dealing only with EU countries (Macedonia is the exception) misses out on dozens of countries and hundreds more stranded minorities. What about Bosnia, Cyprus, the Russians in Riga, the Hungarians in Romania, the Asians in Britain? Ms Drysdale, if you're reading this, is you camper van still roadworthy? Any chance of ... an encore?