If we are so good in English, why aren’t we rich?
By Prof. Emeritus Leonor Magtolis Briones, The Manila Times

MANILA, June 23, 2014—For decades, we have billed ourselves as an English-speaking country. We proudly claim that one advantage we have over other countries is our ability to speak English. We even laugh at nationals of other countries who, in our view, speak terrible English.

I also thought the same way, until I was interviewed by a foreign correspondent from a newspaper with the largest circulation in a foreign country. He said he was puzzled and asked, “If you Filipinos are so good in English, how come you are not rich?”

He was puzzled, he said. Thousands of Asians, particularly Koreans and Japanese come to the Philippines to study English so that they will have good careers and prosperous lifestyles. Many more learn English in language schools using call center technology. They are taught by Filipinos. Their students move on to higher studies or to better jobs while the lot of their Filipino teachers remain unchanged. How come, he asked.

Firstly, I answered him, not all Filipinos speak and write English correctly. Those who teach in English language schools are a special group; they undergo intensive training. The English they speak is not really typical of the English spoken by most Filipinos. Filipinos generally speak Filipino English and all its hilarious variants.

We are not necessarily an English-speaking country. We are a Filipino-English speaking country.
One reason is the educational system. Our cohort survival rate is appalling. This means that few Filipinos successfully finish elementary education; fewer still finish high school; and very few finish higher education. A farmer’s child who has not even finished elementary school cannot work in an English language school or a call center.

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HINDSIGHT – To the young writer: Be your own toughest critic
By F. Sionil Jose, The Philippine Star

MANILA, May 19, 2014—At the end of the school year, universities with writing courses sponsor workshops, enticing young writers to compete for admission. The competition is often intense and the young writer admitted to such a workshop considers it an honor, the first step to recognition, followed by publication and possibly winning an award in the annual Palanca Literary Contest.

Incidentally, the Palanca Awards is the longest inclusive and most expensive private effort crucial to the enrichment of Philippine culture. I salute the Palancas for this singular effort which, I know, has no equivalent in the region.

Workshops do not necessarily make good writers. The most they do is provide a venue for them to meet one another and their elders as well. They promote social bonding. And for the teachers a bit more money, too.

Most of the teachers in these workshops are unqualified. They may be good teachers but there is this old saying that “he who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.” They maybe adorned with Ph.D’s but they have no track record as creative writers. In fact, it is only writers like Gilda Cordero Fernando, Gregorio Brillantes, Rony Diaz, Menchu Sarmiento, Bambi Harper, Chayong Lucero and Charlson Ong who should be teaching creative writing primarily because they know.

Every so often, I get writers asking me to look at their manuscripts not so much as a novelist but as an editor. In my experience as one, it is not necessary for an editor to read an entire manuscript; usually, the first five pages are already an indication of the writer’s talent as evidenced by his language. Any writer must be precise in his use of words. This requires a vast vocabulary from which this precision emerges.

I am also often asked to give writing lessons because they do not see me in the workshops.

Is there a conspiracy among these second-rate writers turned academics to keep away our best creative writers from the young? Or are they so insecure, so protective of their turf?

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KRIPOTKIN: The workshop as wordfeast
By Alfred A. Yuson, The Philippine Star

MANILA, May 19, 2014—Early this Monday I would’ve checked in at Florentina Homes on Rovira Avenue in my adopted hometown that is Dumaguete City. No time for a quick breakfast, just enough to deposit my bag of a week’s shorts and tees and swimming trunks at the ground-floor Harrogate Suite that I will share with BFF Dokirok Gémino H. Abad, premier poet-writer-critic and the most affable, perpetually grinning suite-mate one can ever find — in the landscape of Philippine literature and well beyond.

Silliman University Prof. Philip Van Peel, who has welcomed me at the airport, will continue with his erudite escort service and deposit me at the city venue for the final week of the 53rd edition of the longest-running writers’ workshop in Asia: the Silliman University National Writers Workshop held for three weeks in May since 1952.

The 15 Fellows this year for Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction are: Jovy Almero of Ateneo de Naga University; Jose Jason L. Chancoco also of Naga City, a literature and law degree holder from Ateneo de Naga University and University of Nueva Caceres, respectively; Prescilla Dorado of University of the Philippines Mindanao; Jose Renato Evangelista of De La Salle University; Deil Jossaine Galenzoga of Silliman University; Johanna Michelle Lim, a creative consultant, art director, NGO co-founder and travel writer from Cebu City; Daniel Hao Chua Olivan Jr. who teaches literature in Ateneo de Manila University while pursuing his MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines-Diliman;

Rolly Jude Ortega of Sultan Kudarat and a graduate teaching fellow for creative writing at Silliman University; Camile Rivera, a Creative Writing student at UP Diliman; Jake Rivera who earned his BA Broadcast Communication, cum laude, from UP Diliman; Roberto Klemente Timonera who is currently earning his AB in Creative Writing at Silliman University; Christian Renz Torres who is currently taking his Bachelor of Science in Accountancy in Silliman University; Gracielle Deanne Tubera who graduated from the Ateneo de Davao University; Lorraine Janice Wood of Dumaguete; and Mae Young who earned her degree in Communications major in Broadcasting at UP Diliman.

Panelists for the first week, from May 5 to 9, were workshop director-in-residence Susan S. Lara, visiting American writer Robin Hemley, Jing Hidalgo, Danny Reyes, John Jack Wigley and Dean Francis Alfar.

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GOTCHA: Appalling dropout, flunker rates in PHL even among teachers
By Jarius Bondoc, The Philippine Star

MANILA, April 16, 2014—You’ve all heard of the soaring dropout rate among elementary and high schoolers. But did you know that the dropout rate of teacher trainees is just as bad?

For every 100 enrollees in teacher education, only 16 eventually graduate. And of the 16 teaching grads, only half pass the Licensure Exams for Teachers (LET) on the first try. Of the other eight who retake the test, only one passes to become eligible for public school posting. That’s according to latest statistics from the Commission on Higher Education.

This is not to yell, “Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone,” as the Pink Floyd did in their rock classic, “Another Brick in the Wall.” For, on one hand, it’s clear that the educational and licensing systems work. They are able thoroughly to screen only the best to become molders of the youth.

On the other hand, two maladies stand out: One, elementary and high schools do not churn out enough teacher potentials. Two, teacher educational institutions (TEIs) themselves fail to train passable grads.

Those are apparent in studies by the foundation Philippine Business for Education (PBEd):

• 601 TEIs for elementary and 795 TEIs for secondary teachers performed below their respective

The 601 TEIs out of 1,025 for elementary (59 percent) had lower passing rates than the already bad national average of 52 percent.

The 795 TEIs out of 1,259 for secondary (63 percent) had worse passing rates than the national’s 56 percent.

A big chunk of these bad performing TEIs are Private Non-Sectarians (55 percent), followed by State Universities and Colleges (27 percent), Private Sectarian (13 percent), and Local Colleges and Universities (five percent).

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English: A divider or equalizer?
Editorial, The Business Mirror

MANILA, April 9, 2014—The Philippines has a love-hate relationship with the English language. Some say that speaking a foreign tongue almost goes against the sovereignty and nationalism that every country needs. Yet, we take pride in the fact that the Philippines took the multibillion-dollar business-process outsourcing industry away from India, primarily because of our English-language skills, since the cost factors were almost identical.

While English came to our shores as a result of American colonization, it is very likely that we would still be English speakers, despite that fact. In more than 70 countries, English is either an official or semi-official language. Studies have estimated that 25 percent of the world’s population has some basic competency in English. That is over 1.5 billion people who speak English as a first, second or foreign language.

While 98 percent of the country can understand Filipino, English is often used to fill the language gap between people from various regions who speak other native languages or dialects and are uncomfortable speaking Tagalog, on which Filipino is based. Ideas are sometimes more easily understood in English, with its 250,000 common words, than the approximately 60,000 in Filipino.

The Philippines even created its own language of convenience called Taglish. We see it in the advertising slogans of some local companies: “Ito na ang break mo”; “Sa Puregold, always panalo”; and Max’s Restaurant’s famous “Sarap to the bones!”

While we may accept the use of English in the Philippines, there is a gap between Filipinos who usually use that language and those who do not. Major national and regional newspapers are in English, and even with local-language television news, in-depth reporting of global events in Filipino is limited. A sister publication of the BusinessMirror, Pilipino Mirror, attempts to bridge that gap with news written in Filipino and Taglish.

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PENMAN: The clarity of the classics
By Butch Dalisay, The Philippine Star
 
MANILA, March 31, 2014—I’ll be patting myself on my back when I say this, but I was fortunate and very happy last month to have received a Natatanging Guro award from the University of the Philippines, one of several awards given annually by the Chancellor of UP Diliman to recognize achievers among students, research and extension workers, the administrative staff, and the faculty. Teaching has few tangible rewards, and this was one of them — a substantial cash prize, a statuette of the Oblation that served as a trophy, a medal, and, of course, the applause of one’s peers, and a special peck from the wife.

I almost didn’t win it because I was initially too lazy to bother with the voluminous documentation of one’s work that the selection committee required. I’d won it once before, a few years ago, and that for me was recognition and incentive enough. But my department chair, the indefatigable Dr. Lily Rose Tope, persuaded me to do it not just for my sake but the department’s honor as well (the winner’s department also gets a modest amount for its special projects), and together we compiled a decent dossier of this aging professor’s contributions to academia.

Every awardee (there were five of us, I think) was asked to deliver a two-minute response, and instead of the usual thank-you’s, I decided to write and read a short poem for the occasion. Since everything good about teaching had probably already been said over the many years that award had been given, I thought I’d write something about the other side of teaching—the part where, despite your best efforts, you’re just not connecting with students who can make it abundantly clear that they would rather watch paint dry than listen to you lecture. Here’s that poem:

Disaster Preparedness and Modern Living
(To My Student in My Class on Homer’s Odyssey)

Today, once more, you unequivocally announce
By your sullen slouch and glassy eyes
That your hour in class with me is wasted time

That you and I would both be better off

Having coffee at the mall
Or running around the oval
Than figuring why Penelope stayed true to Ulysses…  

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Public Lives: The global pressure on education
By Randy David, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, March 9, 2014—Invited to participate in the external review of a Japanese university’s program to systematize its globalization thrust, I found myself in Tokyo this past week meditating on what the term “globalization” means for education.

Japan is probably the best place to observe how a nation attempts to adjust to the emergent realities of a globalized world while it jealously guards its distinct culture and identity. In many ways, Japan remains a closed society, tightly bound by a culture wrought during more than 150 years of deliberate isolation. Foreigners in Japan constitute no more than 3 percent of the population. It is never easy for a “gaijin”—literally an “outside person”—to live in Japan, no matter how well he or she is able to speak its language. Similarly, there is probably nothing more difficult for the average Japanese than to live outside his or her country.

This internal coherence is a source of strength as well as of weakness. Destroyed and defeated during World War II, Japan drew heavily from the willingness of its people to sacrifice for the nation’s good to rapidly rebuild its economy. By the mid-1980s, so robust was the Japanese economy that the government of Japan vigorously urged its people to internationalize, “to make friends with imports”—to buy more things from abroad that were of comparable quality but cheaper than Japanese-made goods. But this was an internationalization that still very much drew its motifs from Japanese pride and nationalism. The main purpose of that campaign was really to rally support for Japanese capital’s investment forays abroad.

In academia, internationalization was promoted by way of organizing more field trips to different countries where students could learn and appreciate other cultures, taking in more foreign students and faculty members, offering more courses in the use of English for different contexts, and teaching Japanese students to speak for their country while they are abroad… 

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Penman: Whatever happened to the new National Artists?
By Butch Dalisay, The Philippine Star

MANILA, March 3, 2014—I got a series of messages from a fellow member of the Philippine Macintosh Users Group a few weeks ago, but it had nothing to do with Macs or computers; of all things, it had to do with the actress Nora Aunor and the National Artist Award. I thought it was interesting and compelling enough to take up in this corner, since I’d been wondering about some of the same things myself.

Before I go one line further, let me say that I was a member of a fairly large lower-level committee that was part of the recent selection process for the National Artist Awards. I signed a non-disclosure agreement when I joined that committee, so nothing I say here will be emanating from our discussions in that committee, which will remain confidential.

What’s no longer a secret, since it’s emerged from other sources online, is that a number of people, including Nora Villamayor (a.k.a. Nora Aunor), have been recommended for recognition as National Artists. The recommendations of our committee went up to yet another committee or council for final evaluation, before being forwarded to the Office of the President for proclamation, prior to the conferment of the awards themselves.

So far, so good. The prescribed process was rigorously respected and followed by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, which oversees it (the board of the Cultural Center of the Philippines weighs in, I believe, at the last stage prior to sending the final list off to Malacañang). This was of keen interest to many Filipino artists and the cultural community — not just the names of the prospective NAs, but even more importantly, the process itself — given how the Palace, in the past and most recently in 2009, had cavalierly disregarded the rules and common decency to hand out the award to its favorites.

It’s been half a year, however, since that final list reached the OP — and so far, that’s where it’s been, gathering dust and gathering rumor. The loudest of these rumors has it that Nora’s run-ins with the law —presumably a question of morals — have held up her proclamation, as well as that of the others in her batch, and those before them…

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Kripotkin: Two for the road map to rapture
By Alfred A. Yuson, The Philippine Star
 
MANILA, March 3, 2014—This coming Saturday marks a milestone of sorts for Philippine poetry in English, with two important books being launched on the same day, thankfully, serially, in terms of hours.

Ricardo M. de Ungria’s 7th poetry collection, M’mory Wire (UST Publishing House, 2013) will fire up the general public on Saturday, March 8, 2-4 p.m. at Lopez Museum and Library, Benpres Bldg., Ortigas Center. The event is organized by the Adverbum 1 writers, who will fete the Davao-based poet barely a week after his return from representing our country at the Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua.

Collected in M’Mory Wire are over a hundred poems that didn’t see inclusion in De Ungria’s previous collections — whIch doesn’t mean that they’re dross; far from it. Our buddy Ricky we know to store poems for rainy days and sun days, from all kinds of periods, and commas, in his life.

Time there was, in fact, when he scribbled draft verses on tinfoil from Marlboro hard-packs. That was in the early ’80s, before he gave up the habit (of Marlboros), when we novena-ed together on Wednesdays and weekends at Penguin, Moviola, and other bars in Ermita-Malate. Sure as sure, some of that tinfoil poetry made it to this collection, let flown as it were via craftsmanship and bardic devotion.

The poems here would then cover four decades, so that they’re presented as cyclic folios or sections. The book is designed to read backwards, in the Western sense, that is. The cover opens to the right, as in a Japanese publication, and one reads the poem-pages from right to left.

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Commonness: Stripping clichés down to their naked truth
By Bong R. Osorio, The Philippine Star

MANILA, February 17, 2014—“It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then, like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.” —Stephen Fry

The world of commerce is besieged with management clichés that are utterly worn-out, and unashamedly fallacious. They are intended to communicate a platitude or condense a complex idea into a straightforward statement people can understand.

So, what’s wrong with using a cliché that everyone understands? In his book Corporate Punishment, author and employee engagement expert James Adonis takes aim at 38 well-known but overused business expressions.

“Clichés are far more irritating than inspiring, more insipid than inviting,” he says. “In their earnest attempts to look good and sound professional, businesspeople end up showcasing their lazy vocabulary and unimaginative minds.”

We’ve probably heard these clichés many times, and are shrinking even as we read them now. Here’s a sampling of how the author tries to bury clichés rather than praise them.

• There’s no “I” in “team.” Maybe in our own careers we remember being trapped in group assignments, where there definitely was an “I” in the team, because that “I” did most of the work while others shirked their responsibilities. “Effort in a team is never equally spread among the doers — and when we profess there is no ‘I’ in team, we’re less likely to notice those who are genuinely carrying the team to glory,” Adonis declares. “The result is that rewards and incentives aren’t discriminated toward those that deserve them…”

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Modern foreign languages at A-level going in same direction as Latin, Greek
By Tony McAleavy, CfBT Education Trust

March 25, 2014—By a strange paradox, both massive expansion and dramatic decline are taking place at the same time in the field of language teaching in England. The good news for those who believe in the importance of languages is that the new national curriculum mandates the teaching of a language other than English at Key Stage 2. The bad news is a bit more complicated. Many primary teachers say that they lack the linguistic proficiency to meet the new requirements and are daunted by the task of teaching a subject without sufficient support.

Meanwhile at secondary level, their counterparts are worried about the possible extinction of the subject at A-level. So while some primary schools feel overwhelmed that millions of children in England must now study the subject before the age of 11, secondary schools complain that only a tiny percentage of 16- to 19 year-olds in England continue to study languages post-GCSE.

These findings emerge from the annual Languages Trends survey, published jointly this week by CfBT Education Trust and the British Council. The survey shows that primary schools are happy in principle with the idea of languages on the curriculum, but, for them, “the devil is in the detail.” The overwhelming majority of primary schools – 85 per cent – welcome the forthcoming statutory status for language teaching at Key Stage 2. However, in many cases the amount of time allocated each week for language learning and the linguistic competency levels of classroom teachers are unlikely to be sufficient to meet the expectations set out in the new programmes of study. No fewer than three-quarters of primary schools are concerned about their readiness to meet the proposed curriculum requirements for reading, writing and grammatical understanding.

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“Society’s going to hell in a handcart and the English language is decaying”
By Tom Chivers, The Telegraph UK

August 8, 2013—Have we really become more selfish, and can we tell it from studying our word use? According to news reports of a study by Patricia Greenfield (no relation, I assume), we have, and we can. Apparently, using the publicly available and utterly brilliant Google Ngrams tool, Prof Greenfield examined more than 1.5 million books and found that the use of words such as “obliged” and “give” has dropped in frequency in English-language books, while words such as “get”, “child”, “unique”, “individual” and “self” have become more common.

I can’t get hold of Prof Greenfield's study so I have to be a bit careful about this, but I’m sceptical. I should note that the stories don’t seem to quite represent her own position: she is quoted as saying that her findings suggest an increase in “individualism” and “materialism”, which isn’t quite the same as “greed” and “self-interest” and “self-centredness”, which is how it has been reported. But even so, I think we should take the findings with something of a pinch of salt.

For instance, she suggests that the fact that “obliged” and “duty” have become less common reveals that we are less bound by these concepts than we used to be. But “much obliged” was once a commonly used phrase for “thank you”, in a way that it rarely is now; that could account for a significant amount of the drop. Likewise, while “duty” has dropped in frequency, “responsibility” has increased (and “obligation”, interestingly, has stayed steady). I think a large amount of the change could simply reflect random changes in word use.

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The Bard’s the (latest) thing
By René A. Guzman, San Antonio Express-News

March 17, 2014—William Shakespeare crafted some of the most magical collections of words in the English language, with plays and sonnets that still resonate with students of life, or at least of intro-to-literature classes. But the playwright who gave us classic literary lines such as “To be, or not to be ...” and “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” also has a more contemporary, even snarkier side. To wit, here are some Shakespearean wares that celebrate the Bard with modern bite.

“William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back: Star Wars Part the Fifth” by Ian Doescher ($14.95)

May the verse be with you again in this new Shakespearean version of the “Star Wars” epic “The Empire Strikes Back.” Doescher revisits that galaxy far, far away much as he did with his best-selling “William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope,” this time chronicling the paternal machinations of Darth Vader, the truly star-crossed love of Princess Leia and Han Solo, and the wisdom of Yoda with a ruff around his neck.

“Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies” by John McCann, Monica Sweeney and Becky Thomas ($19.95, available April 22)

Love “The Lego Movie”? Then you'll fall madly for this picture book that celebrates the Bard's comedies measure for measure, or rather brick by brick. The little yellow players perform abridged versions of “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” “The Tempest,” “Much Ado About Nothing” and “The Taming of the Shrew,” all with the plays' original language snapped firmly intact. Because on this brick stage everything is awesome.

“Thou Spleeny Swag-Bellied Miscreant” by Sarah Royal and Jillian Hofer ($12.95)

Oh snap, indeed. This arsenal of insults lets you mix and match jibes from Shakespeare’s plays to craft the perfect slur for any knave who dares engage in a battle of wits unarmed…

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Learning French, and the death of languages
By Frank T. Pool, News-Journal.com

LONGVIEW, Texas February 11, 2014—Last week the last native speaker of Klallam, an indigenous language of the Pacific Northwest, died at the age of 103, and John McWhorter questioned why we are still learning French.

McWhorter, writing in The New Republic, suggested that we stop pretending that French is an important language. After being a high-prestige language for a long time, he says “the era of Henry James is long past.” He asks, “One learns French to communicate with … who, exactly?”

English is a pretty arrogant language. I say this in a loving way. It is noteworthy that in the unspoken, unofficial social hierarchy of languages that English-speakers carry around in their heads, only two tongues have ever had more status than English.

Latin was the language of the church, of scholarship and later, briefly, of science. The last major scientific work published in Latin by an English-speaker was Isaac Newton’s “Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” in 1687.

Latin was a requirement for entry into Ivy League schools. In 1933 Harvard began do de-emphasize Latin requirements. Over the decades, fewer students in prep schools took Latin. Now relatively few students study the language, though they are always among the most interesting kids at any school, and the Latin teachers I have met are uniformly wonderful.

French, though, was the language of the medieval nobility, and later was the way rich and worldly Americans showed their sophistication, particularly in a time when we had an inferiority complex about European culture. As the lovingly acquired tongue of high-status people, it was a prestigious language.

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It’s ridiculous to claim English is “in decline” because of the Mexicans
By Samantha Leal, Latina.com

January 31, 2014—Ay, another day, another ridiculous statement to justify intolerance and mislead the public. Laura Ingraham, a right-wing pundit and Fox News contributor, is apparently operating under the belief that Mexican immigrants are looking to reclaim the western United States, wiping out any signs of English left in their wake.

Speaking on her radio show, Ingraham agreed when a caller said immigrants “have learned to game the system,” but took it even further when the caller remarked that she can’t go into parts of Colorado because she doesn't speak Spanish.

“No, your language is gone,” Ingraham said. “Your language–in fact, your language is not only in decline, the English language, Chris; it’s actually a sign of jingoism.”

For those not familiar, jingoism is a term that means (according to Merriam-Webster): the feelings and beliefs of people who think that their country is always right and who are in favor of aggressive acts against other countries.

This would be the appropriate time to laugh.

Let’s talk facts:

1) English in the United States is not in decline. Nope. Not true.

2) The Spanish language is increasing in use, but funnily enough, not among Hispanics. Si. It’s true. It’s non-Latinos who are picking up Spanish and teaching it to their children, while Latinos, like other immigrant groups before them, have decreased in the usage of their native language…

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English can’t be blamed for all the ills of this country
By Vivek V. Narayan, TheHindu.com
 
The increasing disparities in the country cannot be wished away by blaming English as its roots are far more deep-seated and lie in social realities

It is true that in India, speaking only English is often the surest sign of privilege. Post-liberalisation, the service sector boom has indeed led to the mushrooming of English-language classes all over the country. While these starting points of Sanjay Srivastava’s article in The Hindu (April 3, 2013, Op-Ed, “Alphabetical order to discrimination”) cannot be contested, the assumptions he makes are alarmingly similar to those sold by the very English-language classes he attacks: that the reason for the destitution of the lower classes is an inability to acquire English! While the sellers of English argue that therefore the lower classes must acquire the language post-haste, Srivastava argues that these “hapless victims” must not be subjected to “a soul-destroying system of measuring competence and skill.”

In thus erecting the straw man of English, Srivastava’s arguments mislead on many counts.

One, he isolates language from its social realities. Two, by failing to define “vernacular,” he does not consider how vernacular/regional languages have a history of standardisation that has denied the existence of dialects based on regional, caste, religious differences. Three, he ignores powerful Dalit critiques of the vernacular vs English debates. Four, he places undue faith in the powers of English to transcend caste/class barriers! Five, he perpetuates the rural-urban divide that plagues studies of contemporary India.

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New-age slang enters the dictionary
By Parinatha Sampath, The Times of India

May 4, 2013—Recently, a legal issue in Sweden might have landed the state in trouble, but it also brought to notice neologisms in the English Language.

The Language Council of Sweden, responsible for the addition of official new words to the Swedish lexicon, decided to include “ogooglebar” as a new word, defining it as “something that cannot be found on the web using a search engine.” However, since a particular search engine took offence and requested the state to withdraw this decision, the state agreed. Taking off from this issue, Bangalore Times pens down some recent interesting additions in the English dictionaries. While most of the additions are words that youngsters and, to some extent, even adults are familiar with, there are some others that require a little thinking...

Celebrities are instrumental in coming up with words and phrases through repetitive usage and some even make their way into the local lingo and eventually dictionaries. We decided to turn the tables and ask celebrities to guess the meanings of a few new inclusions. When DJ Rohit Barker was quizzed on what he thinks the word “crunk” could mean, he says, “Well, maybe it's a kind of dance, way of dressing or undressing.” Well, the word is defined as a “very excited or full of energy.”

When actress Jennifer Kotwal—who says her father is often baffled by the words she uses—was asked what she thought the word “bezzie” could mean, re-conforming the word, she says, “I have no clue. It sounds like some fruit-flavoured candy. ‘Bezzie’ in the dictionary has been defined as 'denoting a person's best or closest friend.”

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Japan should take English lessons from the Philippines
By Amy Chavez, Japan Times

December 27, 2013—I’ve just come back from a two-week trip to the Philippines, where English is an official language along with the local Filipino language.

English was brought to the Philippines during the 1896-1946 American occupation and it still enjoys official status. This does not mean that everyone understands or speaks English, but it does mean that exposure to the language is so widespread that those who do speak it can communicate quite fluently. I was also impressed that people who had never stepped outside the Philippines were nevertheless fluent in English.

How can a nation acquire a second language so proficiently despite some claims that as many as 27.8 percent of Filipino school-age children either don’t attend, or never finish, elementary school?

It’s all in the approach to learning English. The Philippines not only teaches English in its schools but also provides its population with another tool crucial to language acquisition: exposure.

In all parts of the country, English signs abound, and they are not there for foreign tourists. “Don’t block the driveway,” say signs on the roads in Cebu. “House for sale,” informs a signboard in front of a dwelling in the countryside. Company logos, road signs and advertisements are in English. (Think about it: Are any of those things taught in a regular textbook-based English-language class?) As a result, most Filipinos learn English both inside and outside the classroom. It is not just about teaching English in schools but learning it through life experience too.

When I stepped into a taxi in Manila, the driver was listening to a radio program that featured two pundits discussing a recent bus accident in both official languages. The discussion took place in Filipino, with the commentator repeating the arguments and conclusions in English. This not only encourages English acquisition; it also allows people like me, an English-only speaker, to understand the conversations and issues in the program. While the bus accident may have been newsworthy enough to make it into the mainstream English news, I never could have hoped to hear such in-depth analysis of the event from a local point of view in the way this radio program allowed me to.

I should mention that the commentator used natural English, not the slow, instructional English you often hear in Japan that is used specifically for teaching. Rather than being an English language-learning radio program, this was regular radio reporting in the Philippines.

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Research for teaching English? What’s the point?
By Mike Guest, The Japan News

November 11, 2013—My father-in-law couldn’t understand. He’s from the countryside, and the Kyushu countryside at that, perhaps the most down-to-earth demographic in Japan. Sure, he could understand a specialist attending a conference about advances in agriculture or new policies for rural development. But my case was different. I had told him that I was going abroad to attend and present at a research conference for English teachers.

A research conference for English teachers? What’s the sense in that? “If you’re a teacher, aren’t you supposed to already know enough about English and then just teach it?”

This notion is not just a product of unfamiliarity with the academic world. Medical professors and researchers at my own university have also often expressed perplexity as to what kind of research can be undertaken by English teachers. New pharmaceutical developments sure, advanced operation techniques, of course—going to conferences to present, network or learn about these makes perfect sense. But English? As one online commentator put it, “What do university English ‘researchers’ do anyway? Do they look under a microscope and discover a new verb? Do they go out into the field and tame wild grammar?”

These are reasonable questions. After all, English seems like a set subject. Vocabulary and grammar, the alleged cores of the language, appear to be established. It’s not as if someone is going to come up with a mathematical formula showing that the subject-verb-object pattern is actually invalid or that the word “car” is in fact an adjective. How can anything new be discovered through English research?

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Try adding specialist teachers
By Chris Clancy (letter-writer), Japan Times

April 28, 2013—The April 23 article “LDP looks to double JET Program’s ranks in three years” leaves this reader feeling it’s time to reassess English education in Japan. Increasing the number of Japan Exchange and Teaching participants twofold is not the answer.

The Japanese have long believed that anyone who speaks a foreign language somehow qualifies to teach it. Many participating JET Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) participants come to Japan as recent college graduates with little to no work experience, much less teaching experience. This is OK for the exchange aspect of JET, yet it does little to improve English ability among students.

Most ALTs return to their home countries after their JET experience, yet many continue teaching in Japan. The English teaching market here has become saturated as a result. Myriad private English conversation schools exist across the nation. This works against the English teaching profession in that the over-abundance of English speakers has resulted in low remuneration offered by these schools, staffing agencies and boards of education.

Decreasing the size of JET would likely benefit the profession.

Rerouting money saved from JET so that Japanese teachers of English can be sent abroad to improve their skills is often viewed as beneficial. However, Japan has been sending individuals and teams abroad for a long time now, and the most that these people usually do with whatever knowledge, insight or improved foreign-language communicative abilities they’ve gained abroad once they return to Japan is adapt them to fit traditional approaches.

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Learning language through nonsense– Japanese author of “Unusable English” speaks
By Philip Kendall, RocketNews24.com

January 20, 2013—Fantastic octopus wiring!

My brother has been observing the slugs since he got divorced.

Let’s start from where we left off yesterday. Get down on all fours.

No, these aren’t the ramblings of a man with concussion; these are genuine excerpts from Twitter feed and study guide “Non-essential English Vocabulary: Words that will never come up in tests,” a language resource for Japanese students of English that presents entirely useless but infinitely memorable phrases.

With more than 40,000 Twitter followers so far, Twitter feed curator and author Nakayama-san (otherwise known as @NISE_TOEIC)’s cheeky tweets are clearly resonating with English learners here in Japan, but why, when the rest of the nation is busy with earnest study, would someone take the time to create a Twitter account dedicated entirely to unusable English? Japanese website Excite Bit sat down with the Nakayama-san to pick up a few study tips and learn little more about the thinking behind the bizarre project.

Since I began my own personal foray into the Japanese language and bumped my head countless times on grammar, kanji readings and pronunciation, all sticking out in front of me like tree branches in a pitch-black forest, I’ve come to realize that – for me at least – learning whole phrases is infinitely easier than memorizing a list of words that you’ve never met before in your life…

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Transparency needed in press conferences
By Bill Tieleman, Vancouver.24Hours

VANCOUVER, January 27, 2014—We pride ourselves on being a transparent organization, open to all — potential members, curious onlookers, researchers et al. — Canadian Ethnic Media Association

Is it discrimination to hold ethnic-media-only news conferences where English-language journalists are deliberately excluded – or just political pandering?

Vancouver is one of the world’s most integrated and diverse cities, yet we still see ethnic media segregation.

Why do some ethnic media get invites while others seen to be more critical in their coverage are excluded?

And do so-called mainstream media perpetuate the need for politicians to meet separately with ethnic journalists because issues concerning their communities simply aren’t news to English-language outlets?

Tough questions, all prompted by 24 hours Vancouver’s Jeremy Nuttall, who broke the national story that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a secret and lengthy news conference in Vancouver this month – but only for invited ethnic media. Christy Clark is no different as the B.C. premier held an “ethnic media roundtable” last week that was crashed by 10 English-language media outlets after 24 hours Vancouver publicized it.

Still, Clark’s communication director Ben Chin told media that he didn’t “think” the ethnic-only events would change in the future.

New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix also held an Asian-media only “newser” this month, but allowed 24 hours Vancouver to attend when a request was made.

This is all wrong…

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Word for Word: Book prizes can be a fishy business
By Anakana Schofield, Irish Times
  
August 19, 2013—When I learned I’d been shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award for my debut novel, Malarky, and would be travelling to Toronto for the award event, I immediately invited everyone in Toronto who had ever done me a favour.

As I don’t know many people in Toronto, this included a woman working in the Bloor Street Mac makeup shop I’d met once. Sadly, she did not reply.

Happily, I gathered a further four women to join me. My entire focus for that event was on the snacks we would be served on the night. I would anticipate them, study them and live tweet them.

I’m a vocal critic of book-prize culture. In Canada, being shortlisted for a prize has become almost the only way of finding any volume of readers (beyond, say, blood relatives and God’s great 83 people who buy literary fiction), and I’m fearful of the truncating effect this has on our reading. Thus I was surprised to find my book nominated for two of them.

As Malarky is an episodic, form-challenging novel that explores grief and sexuality, I was convinced it hadn’t a flat hope on a hill of winning. So I happily set aside my philosophical opposition and let my speculative taste buds take over.

I sent several dispatches to my publisher and the event co-ordinator, asking about the food and whether – please, please – they could have some without flour. They replied that, yes, they could oblige this gluten-allergic shorty, but were more concerned about travel arrangements and making sure the writers would all be available for a television slot at 7am the next day, because whoever won the prize would be interviewed.

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English proficiency needed in the globalizing world
By Kim Seong-kon, The Korea Herald

July 10, 2012—In Korea many people tend to mistake English professors for language and grammar instructors. That is why whenever people discover I am an English professor, they begin to ask many questions about what they can do to study and learn English. It never occurs to them that I am a scholar of English literature, not an English teacher. Even if they knew however, they would think, “English literature is written in the English language, so what difference does it make?”

One of the questions people ask me most frequently is, “How can I master English?” or “What’s the shortcut to learning English?” But as an English literature scholar, I am unsure of what to tell them. Though I am inclined to respond, “To be honest, I don’t know,” I do not want to disappoint them, especially after seeing their faces full of expectation. So I always try to conjure up something to satisfy their curiosity.

Most of the time, I tell those people, “There’s no shortcut to mastering English. I can only give you a piece of advice out of my own experience.” Then I provide them with three answers, which I believe are the most effective ways to learn a foreign language: enjoyment, motivation and immersion.

The importance of enjoyment in language acquisition cannot be stressed enough. You should learn English with pleasure, not pain. If you are a movie buff, for example, watching movies and television dramas is an excellent way to learn English. If you like music, listening to pop songs is another effective way to improve your English. If computer games are your thing, you can also learn English by playing games. I learned English by watching movies and listening to pop songs, both of which were my personal favorite pastimes.

Since then, 50 years have passed and now my own daughter speaks fluent Japanese thanks to her indulgence in Japanese games, animations and comics. Although no one forced her to study Japanese, she naturally acquired the foreign language while joyfully playing games, watching animations and reading comic books.

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Advice to foreign tourists: Don’t expect English-language service
By Olena Goncharova, Kyiv Post

Foreigners coming for the Euro 2012 football championships had better make room in their suitcases for a Ukrainian or Russian language guidebook. They’re going to need it, judging from this Ukrainian’s attempt to get around the city with a friend, both of us pretending to know only English. We visited theaters and cinemas, bookstores and cafes in order to find out who could communicate with us, and ranked the experience. In general, it was a disappointing one.

Although English is widely taught in schools from early childhood, the world’s most widely spoken language still hasn’t sunk in enough for many Ukrainians to be able to have even an elementary conversation.

So if you can read this, thank a teacher.

First we went to Taras Shevchenko National Opera House, a logical stop for a foreign tourist, and bought a ticket. After 10 minutes of queuing, one man tried to cut in front of us. He made the booking clerk nervous. The man’s mood brightened considerably after he heard us speaking English, and he began to smile.

“Hello! Do you speak English? We would like to buy two tickets for Iolanta on April 11,” I asked the clerk.

“On the 11th?” he asked in response.

Then he turned to the woman standing behind him. They started to point at the poster and asked us whether we want a ticket for April 11. We assured him that was the case and asked about the prices in the third row.

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Lessons in a common language
By Alicia Clegg, Financial Times
 
April 18, 2012—It is hard to imagine Gina Qiao, Lenovo’s talkative head of human resources, at a loss for words. But when her employer announced, following its acquisition of IBM’s personal computer division in 2005, that it was adopting English as the company language in place of Mandarin, she was speechless.

“It was the toughest time of my whole life,” she recalls in rapid accented English, punctuated by the occasional malapropism and mixed-up tense. “I couldn’t communicate. I couldn’t express my ideas. Because I couldn’t say anything, I just felt maybe I am not so smart.”

The feelings of frustration and loss of confidence that threw Ms Qiao off her stride are an increasingly unfortunate feature of a global marketplace that has elected English as the de facto language of international exchange. As managers create teams that straddle national borders, knit together companies that are merging and look for ways to speed up the sharing of knowhow, their attempts to impose a common language on a multilingual workforce can create winners and losers.

During a language transition, bilinguals are often called on to act as intermediaries linking headquarters and local operations, which puts them in a privileged position and can lead to job offers. But for those forced to master a whole new vocabulary and grammar just to hold down the job that they were already doing, a language change can feel like a professional step backwards from which it is hard to imagine ever recovering.

“(Companies) very much underestimate the psychological stress that a language change can cause,” says Rebecca Piekkari, professor of international business at Finland’s Aalto University.
In some cases this may be because the cosmopolitan elites that run them speak several languages already and mistakenly assume that their subordinates do too…

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Learning English language in Thailand: Hype or necessity?
By Kuldeep Nagi, NationMultimedia.com

April 2, 2012—Lately there has been increasing debate about the status of English language in Thai society. Many arguments are made for and against the relevance of English language and its usefulness. Arguments made by Thai politicians take us back and forth about the role of English language and distracts us away from the realities of this new century. This nationalistic faction believes that imposing English language on Thai people is against their culture, heritage and their unique identity. The same group also argues that Thailand was never colonized so why bother to learn English. For them English is the language of the British colonies. It has no place in Thai society. Some others with a myopic vision believe that Thai peoples hould not be made to feel insecure and inferior because of all the hype about importance of learning English.

It is an historical fact that in the 17th century the British did not go around the world to impose their language; they went places with an intention to do trade. Later, they forcibly occupied many countries in Africa and Asia. And of course they occupied North America and USA as well. In their more than 300 years of history in Africa and Asia they conquered many countries. It was followed by the creation of their own system of education, transport, communication and governance…

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It’s English but not always as we know it
By Stewart Riddle, NewZealandHerald.co.nz

Jun 13, 2013—English is rapidly becoming a lingua franca in international communication for commerce and trade, education, science, international relations and tourism.

It is the fastest growing language in the world, with more people speaking English than ever before. School children in India and China are learning English at a staggering rate as their countries emphasize the importance of English as a ticket to participating in the global economy.

So why then do we continue to link this evolving internationalizing language with a small island in Europe that once upon a time controlled the world?

Perhaps it is about time we got rid of the “English” and start calling it something else - international, standard or common language?

It is important to understand that there is not one English language; there are many. In fact, in Australia we don't even speak and write English. We use Standard Australian English, which is not the same English that you might find in the United Kingdom, the United States, India or China.

There are countless blends, pidgins, creoles and mixed English languages. At the same time that English is becoming the language of internationalization, it is also becoming localized in different parts of the world as multiple world Englishes flourish.

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English: the linguistic equivalent of rock’n’roll
By Toby Manhire, The Internaut

February 13, 2013—More often than not, the domination of the English language in international discourse is put down to an accident of history. But for leading German commentator Alan Posener, that’s only part of it.

“There are many reasons for its dominance,” writes Posener, who was born and in part bred in Britain, in Die Welt (and translated at the terrific WorldCrunch site), “the heritage of the British Empire, and the post-world-war economic hegemony and cultural influence – ranging from Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe to Elvis Presley and Snoop Dogg – of the United States.”

But it’s more than that.

The main reason is the elasticity of the language and the broad-mindedness it communicates. If English grammar is rudimentary, the linguistic equivalent of rock’ n’ roll, the English vocabulary is huge. There are very few things that can’t be expressed in English, and if it can’t be said in English then a word is lifted from another language – like “kindergarten,” for example. If it doesn’t exist in English and a word isn’t lifted from another language, it’s because what it represents doesn’t make sense to thinking shaped by the English language: a case in point, Schicksalsgemeinschaft (companions in fate).

Posener points to a new German novel which imagines a world in which the first world war had never happened, and German had become the universal tongue of science, academia, politics and so on.
It’s not an altogether implausible scenario, he says, but in respect of the language, at least, the world could count itself fortunate.

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English translations of Chinese laws? Don’t call us.
By Dan Harris, ChinaLawBlog.com

May 27, 2013—Pretty much every week someone asks me for an English translation of a Chinese law or cites one to me as an explanation for a decision they made or are contemplating.

China’s laws are too precise/too vague/too changing/too real world/too dependent on regulations to use English language translations of one or two laws for making final decisions. An English language translation can in many cases give you a good “feel” for a situation or a starting point for how to proceed, but the risk of that translation being very wrong or just enough wrong to make a big (or even just a little difference) is just too great for you to rely on it without more.

And every year or so we get a company comes to us as a new client seeking our help in getting them out of some sort of trouble they find themselves in with the Chinese government for having accidentally violated some law due to a mediocre translation or one that simply did not include all of the laws and regulations on the subject.  In figuring out how to legally proceed in China, in many instances even a good translation is not nearly enough because decisions on how to proceed might require interpretations of local regulations or even knowledge of local quirks. Many times one of our China-based lawyers (or even one of our China lawyers in the US) will get on the phone and call a government official (or two) to get their views on how the relevant government body interprets/enforces particular laws/regulations and/or treats particular situations.  Chinese government officials are virtually always willing to talk these things out and they are often surprisingly helpful, even if they do not always provide the expected or desired answer.

So what do I tell those who ask me for English language translations of Chinese laws?  I send them the following form email:

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The Chinese language contract is what matters
By Dan Harris, GlobalSources.com

April 26, 2013—One of my favorite “trix” employed against American companies doing business in China is the dual language contract, where the English language version is silent on which language controls. We often see this from companies that come to us for the first time with a contractual problem.

Dual language contracts can be incredibly dangerous. If you have a contract in both English and in Chinese, which language controls? Well, if both of the languages say that one language controls, that one language will control. So for example, if both the English language and the Chinese language versions say that the Chinese language version controls, then the Chinese language version will in fact control. Similarly, if both versions say that the English language version controls, then the English language version will control. These are the easy and safe examples.

It is everything else that so often gets American and British and Canadian and Australian companies in huge trouble.

If you have an English language contract and a Chinese language contract that are both silent as to which version controls, the Chinese language version will control in a Chinese court and in a Chinese arbitration. So what this means is that if your English language contract says that a product must be strong enough to withstand 500 pounds of pressure and your Chinese language contract says that the product need only be strong enough to withstand 300 pounds of pressure and neither contract version says which controls, the Chinese version will control and the product need only be strong enough to withstand 300 pounds of pressure.

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Language support for newcomers at risk of being traded off
Prof. Chris Davison and Dr. Michael Michell, Sidney Morning Herald

SIDNEY, June 10, 2013—While politicians proudly proclaim the achievements of our multicultural state at local community events, the NSW government is quietly dismantling a key plank of multiculturalism since its inception in the 1970s—the dedicated statewide funding and provision of English language services to migrant and refugee students in state government schools.

The English as a second language program provides specialist ESL teacher support to newly arrived and ongoing English language learners in public primary and secondary schools across the state. It now comprises 896 teaching positions staffed by about 1600 specialist ESL teachers, supporting more than 130,000 migrant and refugee students.

Under the government’s Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) reform, the ESL program is about to undergo a fundamental change. The NSW Department of Education and Communities is moving to replace these state-wide arrangements for ESL teaching positions to schools.

Under the LSLD policy, school principals will have complete discretion over the use of ESL resources within their funding allocation, including ''trading-off'' teacher positions when determining a mix of staff within their school budgets. The policy threatens to take public education back 40 years, to a time when refugee and migrant students were left to ''sink or swim'' in classrooms.

Given what’s at stake for English language learners, one would expect the government would proceed with caution. And there is no shortage of cautionary tales.

Implementation of similar school-based management policies in Victoria in the 1990s under the Kennett government resulted in long-term erosion of ESL services.

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Language needs gatekeepers but change is inevitable
By Warwick McFadyen, WAToday.com

February 3, 2013—“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

(From Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll)

Like, you go Humpty Dumpty. You were one revolutionary egg in the free-ranging field of etymology. Never mind master of the universe, you were master of the lexiconverse. Your exchange with the innocent Alice came to life this week through the letters page of The Age.

Over the past fortnight or more, the page has been pummeled with the voices of the outraged, the despairing and resigned. There’s nothing new in this, and no it’s not about our politicians or public transport. It’s about our language, or rather the pet hates of the writers towards the overused and the overwrought members of English.

Humpty rather forcefully tells Alice he gives a word the meaning he chooses. You can’t avoid the ovoid’s directness, but was he right? Apparently not, perusing the comments. We’re not a happy little bunch of Vegemites at all.

It goes without saying, if you will, that having gotten this far, some persons might want closure on back-to-back impacts on the language. But having said that, at this point in time, the enormity of the currently and constantly dumbing down of how we speak is actually incredible…

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What is the role of the English-language Saudi media?
By Dahham Al-Enizi, Al-Sharq

November 07, 2013—According to statistics, there are at least nine million expatriates in the Kingdom including at least five million non-Arabs. A quarter or more of these are fluent in English, and undoubtedly, they follow the local English language media. This may be the only source of information they have on what is going on around them as far as local culture, news and government decisions are concerned. There are three English-language media outlets in Saudi Arabia, the two newspapers Saudi Gazette and Arab News and Saudi TV Channel Two.

The two newspapers and the TV channel know the importance of presenting news and should be providing details of local events.  However, this is not always the case. The 4th Conference for Saudi Litterateurs held in Madinah in late August is an example. I was one of the guests at the three-day conference. I read the two newspapers daily in the hope that I would find news about this important  literary and cultural event. However, all I found was one picture on the inauguration ceremony and two lines indicating that there was a conference for men of letters in Madinah under the auspices of the Emir of the region and in the presence of the Minister of Culture and Information. This was all that was published!

The newspapers did not provide enough space to cover the conference, the participants, the subjects tabled, the recommendations or any information that could be presented to English-speaking readers despite the importance of the conference. Even Channel Two did not provide sufficient attention to this cultural event.

Furthermore, when several women in Al-Qassim region staged a demonstration demanding the release of detainees being held on terror charges, a story was published stating only that there had been a demonstration. The story said that security men dealt with the situation as required, but it did not deal with the reasons for the demonstration in the way that Arabic newspapers did.

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Teach us English but without its cultural values
By Dr. Khalid Al-Seghayer, SaudiGazette.com

January 29, 2013—Recently, some local Arabic newspapers reported that some Saudi families had registered strong complaints about a Saudi university’s including inappropriate pictures and the components of Western culture in selected English textbooks. This, again, revives the controversial issue of teaching the English language along with or without the English culture in which it operates. As a result, educational stakeholders who are responsible for English programs, especially in the higher education sector, mandate that international publishing companies produce what are called Middle Eastern English textbook versions for use in the Kingdom.

The view of those who call for not incorporating cultural elements in the teaching of English is that teaching cultural values is a form of cultural invasion or, more accurately, a form of linguistic globalization that emanates from cultural globalization. These individuals feel that teaching Western values to Saudi students will result in eroding their identity. Those opposed to the teaching of English culture instead call for including only Islamic and local cultural values in textbooks used by English programs in the Kingdom. In examining this highly sensitive linguistic topic, two questions need to be asked: What is so significant about teaching culture, and why is culture such an important element to consider in the foreign language classroom?

Let us first state what most language educators believe and then answer the aforementioned questions. It appears that culture, as an ingrained set of behaviors and modes of perception, is highly important in foreign language learning. Language is a part of culture, and culture is a part of language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture.

The world in which we live requires people who can communicate effectively in at least one other language and who have related cultural insights and understanding. This cannot take place unless the culture of the language being taught is fully integrated in the curriculum in a systematically planned way.

Without cultural insight and skill, even fluent speakers can seriously misinterpret messages they have read, and the messages they intend to communicate can be misunderstood…

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English literary works by Asian authors growing steadily
By Pramod Kanakath, JakartaGlobe.com

February 28, 2013—Literary works written and published in English by Asian authors are growing at a steady rate. Does this speak anything of the collective English language skills of non-native speakers in Asia as we have entered the second decade of the 21st century? Are literature and language complementary?

While literature is growing, English still remains an alien language to an unaccountable multitude across Asia. Literary figures apart, there is a so-called gentry who may pride themselves on being excellent listeners, speakers, readers and writers in the global language. This group is mainly formed of academics, businessmen and employees from private companies.

In some countries like India and in Southeast Asia, English literacy is also a touchstone to determine one’s cosmopolitan identity. But the man on the street is yet to wear the international identity uniform. 

At the same time, there are some countries where English only rises to the occasion, purely demanded by situations. A bank official I talked to in a southeast Asian country struggled every moment during our conversation over a transaction. A street vendor in a touristy area in the same country did not just talk but even spoke to me about local cultures in clear though grammatically inaccurate English. The latter deals with foreign tourists and needs to twist his jaw differently to suit the Anglo-Saxon delivery.

The capability of learning English effectively depends a lot on the structure of the vernacular tongue of every community in Asia. Speakers of Indo-European family of languages tend to pick up English words and sentences easily as its structure is identical with that of their own languages.

However, the absence of different tenses, different word order (e.g. adjective after the noun unlike in English) and other linguistic variations make it difficult for some in southeast Asia to make a smooth conversation…

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English language and higher education
By Francis Robinson, The Express Tribune

March 12, 2013—For over 30 years, I have been engaging with graduate historians from Pakistan.

Some have been students, who have come to work with me for a PhD or DPhil, in the universities of London or Oxford. Some have been scholars already in post in Pakistan’s universities, who have been funded by the excellent Higher Education Commission (HEC) scheme, which enables university staff to develop their research skills.

A few already have PhDs, but many do not; they come for periods of three, six or 12 months. Others, I have encountered as the international external examiner of their PhD dissertation submitted to a Pakistan university.

I regret to say that with a few honourable exceptions, the English of this PhD work is poor, and on occasion, unacceptable.

There will be sentences without main verbs; with poor punctuation; sentences which contradict the meaning of what has gone before; words incorrectly used; a general failure to understand the use of the definite and indefinite article; and a general inability to carry an idea from sentence to sentence through a paragraph.

The outcome is language through which meaning can often only hazily be discerned. Sometimes it cannot be discerned at all.

The object of a PhD dissertation is for the candidate to be able to demonstrate that he/she commands a field or sub-field of knowledge and is able, by doing research in primary sources, to contribute to that field with new ideas and/or new facts.

These contributions will generally be made in the framework of an argument that creates an overall context in which these contributions can be understood. Command of English and its niceties is essential to be able to achieve this end.

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Stupid news and armchair politicians
By Rakyat Jelata (pseudonym), Aliran.com

May 16, 2014—Don’t under-estimate those armchair politicians and ‘commentators’ who still watch the stupid news! They’re not as ignorant or as easily led as politicians may think, writes Rakyat Jelata.

The mainstream media broadcasters still have the attention of a large number of viewers in Malaysia. Despite the grammatically skewed English, strangely pronounced words, pidgin English, language mix-and-match across the board spewing forth from local interviewees, news presenters, news anchors, right up to some of the nations top officials and ministers, citizens and residents avidly watch these broadcasts.

Locals just love ‘sandiwaras’, the melodramatic antics of celebrities, politicians, amateur politicians, and comedians.

All this – information, misinformation and recycled information – has in a way produced what may be hailed as a positive effect on many locals, in the know of mainstream media news. Joe and Jane Blogs are now ‘experts’ on current affairs in Malaysia, whether or not they ‘buy’ into the ongoing but much flogged ’1 Malaysia’ concept touted by the ruling BN.

To their credit, Joe and Jane Blogs have developed the habit of imbibing this mish-mash of information with a pinch of salt (or may be more than a pinch of salt). They have actually got into the habit of thinking critically. Kudos to the masses, even if politicians and those supposed experts appear to give little credence to their views or take them seriously.

Politicians with political agendas of their own scarcely take notice of cries from the floor. As with every popular soap opera over the mass media, Joe and Jane Blogs form their own individual opinions of the scenes presented to them.

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Challenges of teaching English

April 24, 2013—Unlike the hard sciences, the teaching of English in schools has to be the work of much ardour.

It is not a question of dealing with equations or formulas but with conveying feelings and registering emotions. That's why English cannot be taught dispassionately.

A teacher of English has to be moved by empathy and emotions.

Over the past 22 years, I have worked with, met and observed scores of good, dedicated English Language teachers but whenever talk turns to the subject of poor teaching, fingers inevitably get pointed at a teacher’s race, level of education or years of teaching experience.

Truth is, good teaching has more to do with a teacher's personality, character, attitude, values, personal beliefs and intelligence than anything else.

Yes, a good English Language teacher is an organised person. Her lessons are well-planned, her preparation thorough and her teaching progresses from simple to the complex and abstract.
She is aware that teaching is her core business and she takes it seriously.

I have, in fact, seen English language teachers teach with such attention to detail that it is as if their lives depended on it!

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The joy of language barriers
By Shirley Wade, HuffingtonPost.com

April 22, 2013—I am living in a distinctly exciting, frustrating, and creativity-enhancing environment. As a Fulbright Scholar applicant, I applied for a country where I would not need to be fluent in another language. I was awarded my first choice—the Republic of Georgia. Now that I am here, I am immersed in the Georgian language. I decided to attempt learning not only this language but also the unique Georgian alphabet, for this is such a rich environment in which to learn. Moreover, I am teaching Georgians who are working at becoming more adept at speaking and writing English. This has presented me with some wonderful experiences, most of which I never anticipated.

When I first arrived in Georgia, I was limited to a few words - hello and thank you. To be honest, there were times I mixed them up. Gamarjobat (hello) sounded very similar to Gmadlobt (thank you) to me, especially if I tried to speak quickly. Now, I rarely mix them up, but the Georgian letters comprising “hello” and “thank you” still appear as squiggly lines until I get out my Georgian alphabet flashcards and look closely at the individual letters. Even as I stumbled with the words at first, my native Georgian speaking neighbors, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, and colleagues were friendly and forgiving to me.

Without speaking a word, my husband and I are recognized as foreigners. With our Irish heritage and its accompanying lighter coloring, our different style of clothing, and our mannerisms, we stand out as different from the norm. This can be endearing. It is not uncommon for us to be followed by school children when we are walking through the streets of the city. They want to practice their English that they are learning in school. We ask them elementary phrases such as “ How are you?” to which they reply, “I am fine, thank you, and you?” They smile and seem proud of their abilities as we engage them in simple conversations. The widespread teaching of English in Georgian schools has proven to be very convenient for us as well. Indeed, when we encounter problems with our rental house, our non-English speaking landlady sends for a neighborhood teenager to serve as a translator.

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Government-driven EFL training: Is Mongolia left behind?
By Jerick Aguilar, MongolNews.mn

April 23, 2013—Mongolia is an example of an EFL, or English as a Foreign Language, country.  The first and official language here is Mongolian, and English is just one of the foreign languages that Mongolians speak aside from Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc. In comparison, there are also ESL, or English as a Second Language, countries.  The United Arab Emirates is an example where Arabic is the official language, yet most, if not all, of its citizens and residents speak English.

Another EFL country is Tunisia where the government has implemented a national training initiative that targets its jobless youth for enhanced skills training.  There was a time when unemployment was chronic in Tunisia, reportedly at around 30 percent, and many experts believe that this was one of the major reasons that contributed to the recent revolution there.

The Tunisian government has a “free education for all” policy which has, on one hand, enabled thousands of students to receive university degrees over the past years.  On the other, many of them have not acquired key skills that employers are seeking. The educational system has been producing graduates for the sake of producing them, so quality has been compromised by quantity.

Particularly with big local companies and multinational corporations in Tunisia, one of their job requirements is for a potential employee to have adequate skills in English.  Unfortunately, such demand has not been met by the already huge supply of university graduates in the country. The Tunisian government, thus, wanted to address this skills gap. Launched in 2006, this national program, aimed at helping unemployed university graduates, sets out to provide them training in the English language as well as in information technology.

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Franglais row: Is the English language conquering France?
By Agnes Poirier, BBC.co.uk

The French parliament is debating a new road map for French universities, which includes the proposal of allowing courses to be taught in English. For some, this amounts to a betrayal of the national language and, more specifically, of a particular way at looking at the world—for others it’s just accepting the inevitable.

It all started with a faux-pas—to use a French phrase commonly borrowed by English-speakers.

On 20 March, when French higher education minister Genevieve Fioraso unveiled the proposed road map, she mentioned that there were only 3,000 Indian students in France.

In order to attract more foreign students, she added, French universities would have to start offering courses taught in English.

“We must teach in English or there will only remain in France a handful of experts discussing Proust around the table,” she said.

But Proust was an unfortunate choice. The author is actually one of France’s best literary exports and the reason why many students in the world take up French at university.

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Composites: German language and “Things Fall Apart”
By Jalees Rehman, M.D., HuffingtonPost.com

May 29, 2013—”Shorter sentences and simple words!” was the battle cry of all my English teachers. Their comments and corrections of our English-language essays and homework assignments were very predictable. Apparently, they had all sworn allegiance to the same secret Fraternal Order of Syntax Police. I am sure that students of the English language all over the world have heard similar advice from their teachers, but English teachers at German schools excel in their diligent use of linguistic guillotines to chop up sentences and words. The problem is that they have to teach English to students who think, write and breathe in German, the lego of languages.

Lego blocks invite the observer to grab them and build marvelously creative and complex structures. The German language similarly invites its users to construct composite words and composite sentences. A virtually unlimited number of composite nouns can be created in German, begetting new words which consist of two, three or more components with meanings that extend far beyond the sum of their parts. The famous composite German word “Schadenfreude” is now used worldwide to describe the shameful emotion of joy when observing harm befall others. It combines “Schaden” (harm or damage) and “Freude” (joy), and its allure lies in the honest labeling of a guilty pleasure and the inherent tension of combining two seemingly discordant words.

The lego-like qualities of German can also be easily applied to how sentences are structured. Commas are a German writer’s best friends. A German sentence can contain numerous clauses and sub-clauses, weaving a quilt of truths, tangents and tangential truths, all combined into the serpentine splendor of a single sentence. Readers may not enjoy navigating their way through such verschachtelt sentences, but writers take great pleasure in envisioning a reader who unwraps a sentence as if opening a matryoshka doll only to find that the last word of a mammoth sentence negates its fore-shadowed meaning.

Even though our teachers indulged such playfulness when we wrote in German, they were all the more harsh when it came to our English assignments. They knew that we had a hankering for creating long sentences, so they returned them to us covered in red ink markings, indicative of their syntactic fervor…

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English-language tests fail to clarify teachers’ proficiency
Editorial, South China Morning Post

May 27, 2013—The latest outcome of a test for local teachers has again put the issue of English-language proficiency in the spotlight. While the pass rates for reading and listening skills remain relatively high, at 89 and 78 per cent, performance in the written exam leaves a lot to be desired. Only 45.2 per cent of the 1,357 candidates passed the test, though that is better than last year’s pass rate of 38.5 per cent. The result for the oral exam is not reassuring either, with a pass rate of 52 per cent, two points up from 2012.

Whether the results should be a cause for concern is open to debate. The alarmist would say the poor performance is evidence of declining English proficiency among the younger generation. It may even be tempting to blame the teachers. If they are proved to be unqualified to teach, students can hardly be expected to speak and write properly.

Teacher groups, however, contend that the results are misleading. The exam is open to teachers and those who want to join the profession. While it is true that only those who pass the exam are qualified to teach, it remains unclear whether the results reflect the standard of serving or of would-be teachers. As the exam has been in place for more than a decade, it can be argued that most serving teachers would have either passed or have been screened out. Those sitting the exam in recent years are probably the ones aspiring to teach. The high percentage of failure shows that the test is an effective tool for keeping the incompetent away from the classroom.

Regrettably, it is difficult to prove which argument is valid without further information. The government is still reluctant to disclose the profile of the candidates in the exam each year, making meaningful analysis difficult, if not impossible. The public is left wondering what to make of the exam results.

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Our standards of English language going down the drain
By Wangari Buku (letter to editor), Nation.co.ke

NAIROBI, May 27, 2013—For some years now, I have watched with dismay as our standards of English go down the drain.

From broadcast to print and social media to work place and conversations, our command of spoken and written English is wanting. Our children are taught a mediocre version, and are exposed to too much TV and read less, and so cannot express themselves articulately in English, even after university and beyond.

Take newspapers. There are spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, with some sentences reading like a nursery school child’s first attempt at grammar. Example: “...no any evidence...” Even the news crawling at the bottom of TV screens is often mis-spelt.

But pronunciation and diction by news anchors beats them all, starting with the irritating use of the word “august”, pronounced “augaast” by news casters to describe Parliament, whereas it should be pronounced in the same way as the month August!

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English has stolen from too many cultures to count
By Matthew du Plessis, Mail & Guardian

SOUTH AFRICA, June 14, 2013—If language is wine upon the lips, as Virginia Woolf once told her husband over a bottle of Blue Nun, English in SA must be a bottle of Tassenberg: a blight upon the tongue, to some; to others, a luxury. And enough of it should see you all the way through varsity.

English has always been a bastard tongue, stealing and ­stolen from too many cultures to count. Frankensteined on a faraway island from the blood and phlegm of wave upon wave of foreign invaders, it fed first on the words of its oppressors, then their ambitions. And then it escaped, and set about the ­business of empire.

English had exhausted itself of its colonial ambitions by the time it found me, and was in the process of being sold off for parts.

Growing up in the Eighties I was vaguely aware that the only language I knew was only grudgingly tolerated by the establishment as a necessary nuisance. Had you suggested that there were nine or more other languages that were decidedly worse off in South Africa, I’d have laughed (politely, always politely) and then run off to see if I could find the simulcast dub for Rabobi on Radio 2000.

But that was the business of the outside world, and for the longest time the English language and the fictions it has proved so good at conjuring served to insulate me from any of the harsher realities that waited rather literally just beyond the doorstep: The house I grew up in in Port Elizabeth was barely a hop, skip and a jump away from where Steve Biko was detained by the security police before being tortured and taken to Pretoria to die. Of any of this I had not even the slightest inkling, in my insulated world. The police station itself barely registered; more important was the library across the road. The greatest indignity I felt as a child was being denied permission to borrow more than five books at a time.

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Advanced Norwegian is sometimes better than English
By M. Michael Brady, TheForeigner.no
 
Native Norwegians may occasionally tell English-speakers learning their language that Norwegian is the superior language. They say this is because it has words not found in English.

But that’s true of almost all language pairs, because seldom do two languages have one-to-one correspondence between their vocabularies.

Norwegian does have some handy words not found in English, though. The terms for relationships within families tend to be more specific. For example, the English word “cousin” for the child of an aunt or uncle is problematic because it’s not gender specific. Norwegian has two words: kusine for a female cousin and fetter for a male one.

Likewise, actions sometimes are more easily described in Norwegian.

A Norwegian contractor might lament “streiken forsinket bygningen” – the exact equivalent of an English-speaking contractor remarking that “the strike delayed construction” – but Norwegian has an advantage in expressing the opposite of something happening earlier than expected.
The opposite of forsinke (“delay”) is forsere. There’s no direct equivalent in English, so an English speaker must use an explanatory phrase to express what can be said in one word in Norwegian.

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Broken English, Broken Graduates
By the Editors, Leadership.ng

October 29, 2013—At the passing-out parade of the last batch of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), the Kano State coordinator of the scheme, Mr Sanusi Abdulrasheed, disclosed that about 89 per cent of corps members could not write good application or communicate effectively in English. Rather, the NYSC administrator said, the corps members, a majority of whom hold a first degree or its equivalent, prefer to communicate in “broken English,” a variant of the language that linguists refer to as “pidgin.” Of course, it does not conform to standard usage and not acceptable in academic curriculum.

Ordinarily, Abdulrasheed’s statement could have been regarded as another red herring or an exaggerated opinion of some critics of the state of affairs in Nigeria. But he said the finding was revealed in a research undertaken by the NYSC management nationwide. Revelation of this embarrassing trend, therefore, came from a credible source.

It is no news that the nation’s education system is in a shambles. It is also discomforting that most fresh graduates are no longer employable. This indictment is not only for the corps members. Their schools, the society and the government should share in the embarrassing verdict. A system that shuts down schools for a half of the academic year cannot produce quality graduates. A student that is ill-equipped with the grammar of the official language of communication is bound to code-switch and make largely ungrammatical expressions. It has been found that most of the tutorials in our institutions are delivered in unorthodox English. Some teachers are equally guilty, if truly mastery of English was a pre-requisite for appointing them.

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Despite a troubled history, Argentina still needs the English language
By Gill Harris, TheGuardian.com

March 10, 2014—In a Studies of Youth Literature class at the University of Buenos Aires, my teacher picked on me, the only native speaker, to read aloud from our copy of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Never has my rather ordinary south-east London accent been met with such raptures. I felt like a parrot who surprises their owner with a perfect rendition of Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 18. One girl told me I had “beautiful sonority”. I was inundated with requests for conversation exchange. But, while Her Majesty's English was winning the hearts of my classmates, right outside the door of the classroom (my faculty being notorious for its political zeal) hung a disfigured picture of Margaret Thatcher emblazoned with the angry words: “Brits Get Lost”, among other less savoury phrases.

While living in Buenos Aires last year, I came to realise the importance of a good grasp of English for students and young, aspiring professionals in Argentina. Regardless of their attitude towards Great Britain more generally, verbally the British empire is still ever-present in Argentina today. In recent years, Argentinians, fervently patriotic by nature, have reluctantly acknowledged that learning English is crucial if they want to succeed in a country racked, as theirs is, with economic turmoil.

Currently the Argentine economy is in dire straits, almost as bad as the crisis in 2002. Amid rising temperatures, rising tempers and rising supermarket prices, Argentinians, led by their president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have become increasingly hostile towards foreign parties.

Fernández points the finger at those who refuse to bury the hatchet on the large international debts the nation has racked up in recent years. Not for the first time, Argentinians lamenting over extortionate costs find themselves cursing the colonial spectre under their breath.

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Singapore’s language disconnect
By Michael Y.P. Ang, TheIndependent.sg

SINGAPORE, July 17, 2014—Question: Which country once allowed a foreign corporation to set up shop on its soil and prohibit local staff from speaking its national and two other official languages?

Answer: Singapore.

The foreign company was American book and music retailer Borders, whose Singapore staff were permitted to converse only in English in 2002.

To be entirely anglophone or not to be?

Speaking at a secondary school’s anniversary dinner last Thursday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that Singapore might have become a completely anglophone country if not for the government’s bilingual policy.

Herein lies the disconnect. If being a strictly anglophone society is not ideal for Singaporeans, why was a foreign corporation allowed to enforce an English-only policy, forbidding its Singaporean staff from conversing in other official languages?

It was understood that the policy was a response to customers’ requests, raising the question: Were those customers Singaporeans or English-speaking foreigners? Whoever they were, it was a sign of cracks within the multilingual and multiracial fabric of our society. Apparently, some people were intolerant of unfamiliar languages.

For all its talk of building a multiracial society, why does the government tolerate the incoveniences suffered by Singaporean minorities whenever they face a customer service agent with inadequate language skills? Such agents are usually China nationals allowed by the government to work in Singapore despite not being conversant in our lingua franca.

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