Exactly! That's why I don't believe that explanation for a second  . If it would have been so easy for Mycroft to eliminate the snipers, Sherlock's whole faking death stunt would have been unnecessary.

I'll give you my own answer to this one. It is by no means original I've seen it flying around tumblr for one.

John was actually the only person who had to believe that Sherlock was dead, it had nothing to do with the snipers.

Why?

Well Sherlock was obviously going after Moriarty's network. Now what would have happened had John known that Sherlock was alive and doing so? He would have wanted to come along and that could no be allowed.
Sherlock says to John that letting him (John) believe him dead for all this time was Mycroft's idea and I think Mycroft conceived of it because he has seen how Sherlock acts when John is in danger. Not the "fake" danger Sherlock often puts him in, but the real kind such in the end of TGG. In these cases Sherlock panics and can't think straight, basically he's too emotionally involved and don't know how to handle it, something that would likely be fatal when going against Moriarty's network.
And therefore John cannot come. But if John knew Sherlock was alive, even if he initially agreed to stay away, sooner or later he would try to find him and help him, thus John must think Sherlock dead.
So the "faking his death" had nothing to do with John's ability to keep his mouth shut, now there wa a bit of blather if I ever heard it, but rather with how Sherlock would have reacted to having John along with him.

Well, the problem with John accompanying Sherlock, whose job is taking down a worldwide criminal network, is that not everybody in the world speaks English.

Sherlock is a brilliant linguist; John is not. Trying to create a plausible explanation for a companion unable to speak the language(s), whilst up against profoundly dangerous opponents, is an open invitation to early death; it is unsurprising that neither Mycroft nor Sherlock was prepared to take that risk...

Willow wrote:

Well, the problem with John accompanying Sherlock, whose job is taking down a worldwide criminal network, is that not everybody in the world speaks English.

Sherlock is a brilliant linguist; John is not. Trying to create a plausible explanation for a companion unable to speak the language(s), whilst up against profoundly dangerous opponents, is an open invitation to early death; it is unsurprising that neither Mycroft nor Sherlock was prepared to take that risk...

From where do we know that John speaks nothing but English? Yes, English is the only language we actually hear him speak, but then the same can be said for Sherlock (see below for more on this). Besides this doesn't mean that he can't speak anything else and perhaps speak it well. And do we know anything about how good/bad he is a learning a new language?

As for Sherlock we can assume that he probably speaks German (Many Happy Returns) and Serbian (The Empty Hearse) but we have no idea of how good he is since we don't actually hear him speak it. Also he knows nothing about the various Chinese languages (The Blind Banker). As for any other languages he may be proficient in we can only guess (the horror, the horror).


@crazybbcamerican. It was the only solution I could come up with that covers the facts that we know and doesn't rely on too many supositions and inferences,

Ormond Sacker wrote:

Willow wrote:

Well, the problem with John accompanying Sherlock, whose job is taking down a worldwide criminal network, is that not everybody in the world speaks English.

Sherlock is a brilliant linguist; John is not. Trying to create a plausible explanation for a companion unable to speak the language(s), whilst up against profoundly dangerous opponents, is an open invitation to early death; it is unsurprising that neither Mycroft nor Sherlock was prepared to take that risk...

From where do we know that John speaks nothing but English? Yes, English is the only language we actually hear him speak, but then the same can be said for Sherlock (see below for more on this). Besides this doesn't mean that he can't speak anything else and perhaps speak it well. And do we know anything about how good/bad he is a learning a new language?

As for Sherlock we can assume that he probably speaks German (Many Happy Returns) and Serbian (The Empty Hearse) but we have no idea of how good he is since we don't actually hear him speak it. Also he knows nothing about the various Chinese languages (The Blind Banker). As for any other languages he may be proficient in we can only guess (the horror, the horror,

Actually, we do have the discussion between Mycroft and Sherlock on language derivations; it took Mycroft a couple of hours to get to grips with Serbian, and I'm pretty sure that if it took Sherlock much longer than that Mycroft would have pointed it out. Loudly. And I think it is unrealistic to suggest that Sherlock didn't speak Serbian very well because he was clearly good enough to get the guy beating him up freaked out about his wife.

Being good at languages requires not only a particular type of brain but also time devoted to learning languages; the more languages you learn the better you get, and the easier it is to learn others. Most English people are appalling linguists, and in order to get into medical school you need a set of A levels focussing on science, not languages; John would then be in medical school for at least five years, and some more years in hospitals getting his qualifications, before he tootled off into the army. He never displays any interest whatsoever in learning another language, and never shows any signs of knowing any languages other than English.

This is not a good CV for someone venturing into taking down a world wide criminal conspiracy
 

zeratul wrote:

Well as Sherlock is shown as a kind of Asperger he may have also a special ability for languages. There are people who know languages just like it flew to them...

 
And, of course, there is a vast difference between the written and the spoken form of languages; one can be ignorant of the vast numbers of Chinese characters in the written language, but the spoken form is pretty straightforward.

Or so I am told by people who understand this sort of thing; I am as bad as John when it comes to other languages. At school I did Latin, French and German; the only exam that I have ever failed was in the oral German.

My best friend, at school and ever since, moved to Germany many years ago; her work ranges from teaching English as a second language, to writing technical books about insurance for people who speak German, but even she could not coach me well enough to get me through the oral exam

Sherlock Holmes wrote:

I always imagined John would need some basic knowledge of Farsi in order to serve in Afghanistan. Most soldiers can speak a little in order to converse with the locals.

 
Sadly for that line of thought there are over 40 languages and 200 dialects spoken in Afghanistan; the two official languages are Pashto and Dari, and they are the most widely spoken, but as is obvious from the large numbers of languages/dialects involved there will be a lot of people who speak other languages. Conversing with the locals would be on for Sherlock, but John would have been at sea.

I can see where the language issue would be very important and also just the simple fact that it would be easier for one person, adept at disguise, to stay hidden under-cover more easily than two people could. They are such opposites physically and, as a team, would be easy to spot if someone in the know was really looking. As hard as it is for me to admit, John would have been a liability on the two-year clean-up campaign.

As I already said in another thread: I have several doubts with the theory.
But I believe that Sherlock has to be dead in the eyes of his enemies - and John. I agree that he would have wanted to go with Sherlock and that he couldn't pretend to mourn. I think that "liberty in death" of THoB was a hint to this events. That Sherlock could only act freely if he wasn't in the spotlight anymore.