The language (or languages) spoken in a society help to define its identity. That is as true of Britain as of every other nation. Most countries, like Britain, have one or sometimes more official languages. To become British, for instance, a person must prove knowledge of English. Equivalent provisions exist in almost all other countries.

Language rules can be positive or negative in effect. In linguistically polarised Belgium, the rival tongues are a permanent source of tension. In others, they are a source of vibrancy; Catalonia’s renewed sense of itself, for example, is grounded in the distinctness of its language and by a history of discrimination against it. Elsewhere, the issues are more tangled. Sinn Féin’s current demands for Irish language parity in Northern Ireland are holding up the restoration of devolved government there. They do not reflect widespread Irish speaking (only 6% of Northern Irish people speak Irish) so much as a determination not to be defined, through the language spoken by unionists, as British.

Modern Britain has a decent tradition of nurturing minority languages. But Britons have long been getting more parochial about speaking foreign ones. Three-quarters of UK residents can’t hold a conversation in any language other than English. This linguistic monoculture would be even more hegemonic if it were not for bilingual migrants. It reflects many things, but the decline in language teaching is one of the most important. GCSE entries in most foreign languages tend to fall each year. A long decline in the numbers with language qualifications has translated into a loss of those able to teach them.

The upshot is that the UK is mired in the relegation zone of European linguistic proficiency. Across the European Union, just over half of all students (51%) study two or more foreign languages. In Finland, France, Romania and Slovakia the proportion studying two or more languages is 99%, and in Luxembourg a heady 100%. In Britain, by contrast, the figure is a dispiriting 5%.

The standard excuse for Britain’s neglect of foreign languages is that English has become the world tongue. What this really means is that English is the world’s preferred second language, not its first. In the EU, for example, 94% of language students take English, with French a distant second on 23%. In such circumstances, some in this country (though not British business leaders) say: why should Britain bother to learn other tongues when so many have learned ours?

There are several answers to that. The most important is that the lack of foreign languages risks the British mind becoming locked inside an Anglosphere of Britain, Ireland (sometimes), the British Commonwealth and above all the United States. These are significant links. But the famous remark that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language holds true, especially in the Donald Trump era. The Anglosphere is a minority of the world, its wisdom and its trade. While other countries speak their own languages and English too, the British just speak English. Where’s the advantage there?

Theresa May’s government talks about “global” Britain. On the Brexiteer right, this tends to mean an Anglosphere within which the privileged and prejudiced can nurture a reactionary fantasy of British greatness. Mentally and materially it is a retreat from the world, not an engagement – as much a prison as a liberation. A genuinely engaged Britain must not just hunker down in the Anglosphere, the Atlantic and the past. It must remain wholly engaged with the real world, with Europe above all, because that is where these islands are – and that means understanding what our neighbours and allies are saying too.