I WILLINGLY CONFESS that, when it comes to foreign languages, I have the sort of ear that Van Gogh had for music. That worries me about as much as not having a third foot growing out of my left buttock.

Shakespeare managed to make himself pretty well understood using English alone, and what was good enough for the Bard will suit me just dandy. After all, I'm too old for a job as ambassador to Lower Slobbovia, I loathe French restaurants and I don't anticipate having a flat tire in suburban Montreal.

This train of thought (or "el traino de thoughto," in Spanish as spoken in Fountain City, Tennessee) is prompted by yet another report from the multilinguist lobby to the effect that we are all doomed to a particularly contagious form of ostracism if we don't go around prattling to taxi drivers, hot dog vendors and their ilk in French or Urdu or Proto-Patagonian.

The report is the work of the Nuffield Languages Inquiry, which suggests that the fact that English is the global language of science ("3. . .2. . .1. . .Abort! Abort!"), technology ("computer crash"), the language medium for global investment ("sell, dammit, sell!"), aviation ("Mayday! Mayday!") and medicine ("green apple quickstep") is making us all a bit arrogant and insensitive to our non-English speaking brethren and sistern.

The Nuffield folk say we ought to start teaching foreign languages to the brat set from about age 7, presumably to build up their confidence about shopping for their joints and E-tabs in France, finding their way unerringly to Malaysia's hash houses and perusing the latest AK-47, Uzi and claymore mine supply catalogs in the Czech Republic.

Now I'm all in favor of multi-culturalism. I am very partial to hot tamales and tacos and enchiladas with lashings of ketchup, and Vienna sausages, and pizzas with anchovies and pepperoni (hold the mushrooms, please), and there's nothing to beat beluga caviar with buttermilk and cornbread.

But somehow, I've managed to enjoy these and other tastes of foreign lands without bothering Linguaphone about it. Besides which, it wouldn't do any good. I have a solid lack of linguistic knack stemming from the day when, on one of Mrs. Pace Moore Johnston's Latin class tests, I ran up against "lapsus lingui."

It means "slip of the tongue." About an inch and a half below the huge "F" she had scrawled across my exam paper, I had translated it as "lopsided language." I still think it was a marginal call on her part.

I followed this up with a squeak-by in high school Spanish (I think because Mrs. VanGilder was thoroughly entertained by my recitation of "El Camino Real" in Ol' Black Joe Southern), and then setting a record low exam score in French at Duke. (I couldn't get those pointy things and squiggles over the letters right.)

In short, on a comprehension scale of 1 (easy) to 10 (difficult), French rates 17.9, slightly ahead of differential calculus in Swahili (15) and exceeded only by setting the timer on the VCR (53 and rising).

Never mind, because I'm convinced that to get by on expeditions abroad, you don't need a degree in languages. A working certificate in chutzpah will suffice quite nicely. I cite the case of a great and dear friend, American, who came to London looking for a job at the news agency that employed me.

In the course of the interview, he was asked to demonstrate his claimed ability to speak all sorts of foreign languages. "Certainly," my pal replied, and proceeded to reel off his Italian ("Eye-o want-o uno eggo"), French ("Eye-vous want-vous une-vous egg-vous") and Russian ("Eye-ski wantski une-ski eggski").

The boss, a droll black-Irish type with a sense of humor normally approximating that of a boomslang with an infected fang, was so bemused that he gave the guy a job.

I learned early on the bruises and scratches that can come from tripping over the language barrier. On my first journey abroad, I wound up in Heidelburg on one of the hottest June days on record and nearly prostrate with thirst, only to discover that Germans don't believe in public water fountains.

I dived into a bar in my frantic quest for water, and from my parched brain conjured up the only German phrase I think I ever knew: "Sprechen-sie Deutsche?" Once I had asked the German barkeep in German whether he spoke German, I had exhausted my supply of German words - and the German's reply in German was pure Greek to me.

(Eventually, with an increasingly desperate set of hand signals that could have meant anything from "Your donkey has a flat tire," to "What time does the zeppelin leave for Uranus?" I finally got across my plight. The barman meandered to the kitchen, filled a stein with water from the faucet and banged it down in front of me. He muttered something and probably just as well for me that it was in German.)

In the years since, I have broadened my linguistic abilities a bit, primarily by absorbing a collection of dirty words and insults in six languages, including Vietnamese.

Alas, that didn't always extend to the written word. I had a favored brown tie, a gift, that I wore for fully six months before someone told me that the two words woven a score of times into the fabric in silk thread were "f--- you" in Italian.

For all that, I remain convinced that while the Nuffield Inquiry's heart may have been in the right place, its head was definitely up its derriere (that's French - which proves you don't have to know the language to get the idea). Jeremy Clarkson, a British television broadcaster, has it right:

"We don't need to learn foreign languages. It is up to the world to speak English."

C'est vrai, Monsieur Jeremy, c'est vrai.

Thought for the Week: Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

"Notes From A Tangled Webb" is syndicated by: