Dreaming in English
By Danton Remoto, The Philippine Star

May 9, 2011—In her introduction to Stories, Kerima Polotan said: “Life scars the writer but he is not without weapons of vengeance. The art (of writing) is a prism that he can use to refract human experience. That one can write about something gives him courage to endure it; that he has written about it gives him, if not deeper understanding, some kind of peace. In other words, the writer is first a human being before he is anything else, prone, like much of mankind, to fits of joy and pain. What happens to those around him — and yes, to him — is legitimate material, but only if he is able to illumine it with a special insight.”

I enrolled at the Ateneo for a Management degree, but my heart was not in it. Every day, I went to the Rizal Library and sat near the books in PS 9991—Philippine writing in English. I would get the books, read the names of the Ateneo writers who have borrowed them (Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Rolando Tinio, Eman Lacaba, Freddie Salanga), and borrowed the books.

I talked to my father and told him I wanted to shift to Interdisciplinary Studies, so I could choose the English subjects I wanted to take—and have my Management subjects credited as well. He reluctantly agreed. So the next semester I was on a roll. During our first day in Modern Poetry on the third floor of Bellarmine Building, the teacher arrived in a brown jacket, his hair tousled by the wind.

My teacher was Professor Emmanuel Torres, and he taught us how to see. Before his class, I did not like poetry too much, preferring instead to read nonfiction, since I thought that was the real stuff. But Professor Torres introduced to us — in English translations — Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Verlaine and Rilke, Neruda and Garcia Lorca…

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Language and identity
By Jenny Ortuoste, ManilaStandardToday.com

In a multi-lingual country that has been colonized by foreigners such as ours, language and its use are inextricably linked to issues of national identity and geography.

Tagalog, or “Filipino,” is used as the country’s primary language, and is taught in schools along with English, embedded in the culture during the 40 years of the American Occupation. Spanish, spoken by families of the elite during 400 years of Madre España en Filipinas, has sunk into obscurity.

At different times over the years, either Tagalog or English has been the main medium of instruction, a matter that has always heavily been debated, even fought over. 

Cebuanos have contended in the past that there are more Cebuano, or Visayan, speakers, and that it should be the primary language. Tagalog is said to have been designated the national language only for purposes of convenience, being the language spoken in “the center” of the country, where the seat of the national government is located. It’s a case of a language being in the right place at the right time.

We are in a period where Tagalog is the medium of instruction, but many schools are placing an emphasis on the practice of English conversation, giving gold stars and other incentives to class sections that use it. Colegio de Santa Rosa in Makati, which my two daughters attend, is one such example.

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The lowdown on writing in English
By Samantha King, The Philippine Star

April 29, 2011—It’s hard to overlook the fact of our longstanding, love-hate relationship with the English language.

On the one hand you have staunch nationalists, advocates of nativism, some fiction writers and students of literature, nobly (or naively) clamoring for a return to our language roots, despite the fact that more often than not, they speak English better than the rest of us.

Meanwhile, you have housewives code-switching to English when wanting to inflict the full force of their superiority over helpless household help or unwitting street vendors  even when their use of the language barely reaches the thresholds of comprehension. Go figure.

To be sure, in a country where almost everyone can speak and understand the tiniest fragments of English, and where almost everyone actually uses said language, it’s hard to imagine ever drawing the line on our continued usage of it in the near future. In fact, as we go further along the path of globalization, modernization, and all those other words usually equated with progress; English, as our country’s second language, can only be pushed to the fore.

Supposedly, one glaring issue that arises is the matter of national identity being crushed in the wake of our mass adoption of English (if it hasn’t already been crushed by the weight of our decidedly Western-oriented consumer culture, that is). After all, when a language dies, so does its civilization. I’ve come to realize, however, that while this issue is completely valid, it’s also completely paranoid.

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So you want to be a writer
By Justine Uy, Philippine Daily Inquirer

April 30, 2011—Get yourself a pen and a sheet of paper. Write something--what that may be doesn’t really matter.

Keep going. Are your thoughts coherent yet?

Stop.

So, you’ve written something--a short piece of poetry or prose, a description of something you love or hate.

So you’ve written something. What does that make you? A writer?

Not yet, but perhaps, you could be.

Everybody’s got to start somewhere; Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Here’s what you can do to get started:

Grab a book, and then another. A great writer knows his literature. Read a book. You’ve heard your parents tell you a hundred times that reading improves your vocabulary--it does, but it doesn’t stop there. Reading allows you to discover what you want to write, and how you want to write it.

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Swap the management-speak for plain English
By Simon Caulkin, Financial Times

May 9, 2011—When the inquest into London’s 7/7 suicide bombings started in October last year, the coroner became increasingly exasperated. On the final day of evidence, she snapped. “All you senior people [of the emergency services] are allowing yourselves to be taken over by management jargon,” Lady Justice Hallett said. “You people at the top need to say, ‘We have to communicate with people in plain English.’”

There is much to mock in management-speak. In the Financial Times, Lucy Kellaway is brilliant at pricking the inanities and pomposities of corporate communication. Yet the idea that, in Lady Hallett’s words, “the use of plain English ... would make everybody just that little bit more effective” is so obvious that it leaves big questions in its wake. Why is the language of management so contorted? Why does so much of it seem to be about concealing meaning, rather than revealing it?

The answer, surely, is that the language faithfully reflects the insecurities and uncertainties within. As the financial crash has revealed, almost everything we thought we knew about organisations and their management principles was misleading or plain wrong…

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Mind your English language
The Guardian

May 12, 2011—While most people accept that language will change with use and time, Sarah Churchwell appears to justify the increasing Americanisation of British English (A neologism thang, innit, 10 May). Noah Webster may have produced the language that should be known as "American", but that should not be a reason, as Churchwell seems to imply, for British English to be altered to the American version. American is characterised by a plethora of "z"s and a paucity of "u"s, which doesn't even reflect the way we pronounce many of the affected words. Churchwell seems to view the French influence on our language as in need of purging. This has no justification. The French influence is part of the Latin history of English, as is the impact of Spanish and Italian.

American terms and spelling are imposed on us via the internet, but television and lazy journalism are also to blame. Not only is it "new" words, but creating verbs from nouns is common. Witness her own example "hierarchize". American versions of words are too common, as in "bathroom" or "rest room" for toilet, "airplane" for aeroplane, and "stroller" for buggy. Our English is a rich and varied language – it needs a strong defence.—John Edwards, Linlithgow, West Lothian

There's no need for Sarah Churchwell to come back to these shores and feel the underdog, just because she's an ex-colonial speaker of English…

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Perspective: The English language – “innit wonderful”
By John Adams, TheComet.net
 
May 12, 2011—Personally, I prefer to sit down to the challenge of a cryptic crossword, but I can see the attraction of Scrabble.

Anything involving words interests me. I love English being a living language which grows and changes, but sometimes I am appalled by what is spawned.

This week I gave a little involuntary shudder when I learned that a horrible new word much favoured by the youth of today has been included in the bible for Scrabble players.

“Innit” is among nearly 3,000 additions to the Collins Official Scrabble Words compilation, the tome used to settle many an argument among players of the game.

This example of street slang is particularly grating to my ears but at least I have, unhappily, heard of it. Others, including “thang” and “grrl” are complete mysteries to me.

Words from the internet, such as “Wiki” and “MySpace”, have also joined the quarter of a million already in the reference work, along with examples from Indian cookery, including keema, alu or aloo, and gobi.

The sublime chorus
By John Cornwell, FT.com

April 29, 2011—Not so long ago the Reverend Mary Garbutt, Anglican pastor of a village in Northamptonshire, performed a gruelling sponsored marathon. She read out loud the entire 823,156-word text of the 1611 King James Bible over three and a half days. She read for 14 hours at a stretch, with only occasional 10-minute breaks, while parishioners stood by with orange juice, cakes and throat lozenges. Croaking through the final pages, she burst into tears, she said, from a sense of “spiritual joy”.

Rector Garbutt’s project was just one of many readings, conferences, broadcasts and exhibitions in recent months to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible (KJB), which falls putatively on May 2. For centuries the dominance of the KJB was unchallenged among English-speaking Protestants, and still is among many American Christian faith communities. At his inauguration, President Barack Obama took the oath of office from Lincoln’s copy of the KJB.

Reputedly the most read book in English, it now competes with scores of subsequent translations that have strived to reduce obsolete expressions; yet it still sells some 250,000 copies each year. Despite the stumbling block of its archaic language and spelling, the KJB retains for many an impression of peerless sublimity. All those “begats”, “knoweths” and “spakes”, and occasional sheer gobbledegook – “Moab is my wash-pot ouer Eom wil I cast out my shooe” (in the spelling of the 1611 edition) – interpenetrate with cadences of pure poetry. No translation in English outshines the elegant simplicity, for example, of the KJB’s first verse of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

The anniversary has prompted publication of a stack of celebratory books, not least Oxford’s fine facsimile presentation edition in imitation leather and gold leaf…

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Teaching English as foreign language can lead to lifetime gap-year experience
By Jessica Moore, TheIndependent.co.uk

April 28, 2011—Forget about speed dating. Those looking for love could do worse than sign up for a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course. "We're calling it the China love affair," jokes Vicky Cunningham, senior marketing officer for Bunac, a gap-year provider offering work, teaching and volunteering experiences abroad. "A guy and a girl have just come back from our six-month China programme, doing teaching internships. They met out there and fell head over heels. The girl has now decided to pursue a career in teaching, too, so she's found love and a career off the back of it."

While romance is not guaranteed, TEFL boasts a reputable qualification with excellent rates of employment and exciting opportunities to work all over the world. "Teaching English as a foreign language is really popular," says Cunningham. So Bunac ships those with TEFL qualifications to Cambodia, China, India, Ghana, Peru and South Africa. "All of the projects we offer are constructive, but TEFL is something you have on your CV and, if you've put it into practice, a skill you can use again in the future. It's not just helping out, it's a hard-and-fast qualification, and you can earn with it."

What's more, it's open to anyone over the age of 18 who speaks fluent English. Honor Baldry, a spokesperson for i-to-i, a UK provider of TEFL courses, says: "There are very few barriers. We say if you can speak English, you can teach English."

You don't need previous experience and there isn't a selection process – just choose a programme and cough up the fees…

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English has real staying power as a world language
By Harold Raley, Galveston News

May 8, 2011—As I pointed out in a previous column, English has become, for all practical purposes, the lingua franca of the entire modern world, nudging out French, which on a smaller scale held that role in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Other examples of international or intercultural languages in earlier times were Latin during the European Middle Ages and Greek in the early Christian era.

Curiously enough, Latin, which prevailed in the Western Mediterranean and parts of Europe, never was the universal language of the Roman Empire.

In the eastern provinces, including Palestine, Greek was the predominant language, although the local Jewish population spoke Aramaic, which had replaced the original Hebrew.

In part, the later division between the Latin-speaking Western, or Catholic Church, and the Greek-speaking, or Orthodox Church was also a linguistic divide between the two predominant languages of the Classical world.

In the foreseeable future, English probably will continue to be the lingua franca of modern times.

For a few decades, Russian made a bid for world prominence, but the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt it a lethal blow.

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Language fails me
By John Kanelis, Amarillo.com

April 27, 2011—I have concluded that the English language does not have words that describe adequately the outrage I am feeling over the "birther" debate (such as it is) that has swirled around the president of the United States.

President Obama released his long-form birth certificate today. That should signal the end of the discussion -- yes? -- over whether he was born in the United States of America in August 1961. Well, it should. But it won't. There will be certifiably crazy individuals out there who will insist that even the written proof of the president's birth is insufficient.

I cannot locate the words that describe the outrage I am feeling over all this. So, take your pick. I'll leave it to others.

Suffice to say that this so-called discourse will not stop. The fruitcakes will find a conspiracy somewhere, just as they did with the blowing up of the U.S.S. Maine, which started the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the idea that President McKinley had the ship blown up; or with Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the notion that FDR provoked the attack; or with the JFK assassination, and the idea that Lee H. Oswald was part of a grand conspiracy and cover-up; or with 9/11, and the goofy notion that President Bush ordered the demolition of the Twin Towers; or that the moon landings were a hoax.

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Universities teaching in English without thinking
By Hanne Leth Andersen, CPHPost.dk

May 12, 2011—The quality of Danish degree programmes suffers when we increasingly use English as a teaching language.

Mikkel Zeuthen, the chairman of the National Union of Students, recently described the “toe-curling” experience it can be to take a course taught in English by a Danish instructor. Universities cannot ignore the situation, but change requires an awareness of why it is suddenly necessary to expand English instruction so greatly.

A 2010 study by the Danish Evaluation Institute (EVA) concluded that the quality of instruction in programmes taught in English was generally good, though there were sporadic shortcomings. The truly toe-curling mistakes were relatively few, but the impact of poor language is enormous when it comes to education.

In addition, many instructors feel that they are neither effective nor have as much personality when they need to use a foreign language to express themselves or to discuss complicated and complex topics with students. Likewise, studies and general observation show that students are less active when they need to interact using a foreign language.

We lack a basic discussion of the reason why English-language programmes are being offered and what their goals are. Why are more programmes being offered in English?

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Why English is tough in Japan
By Hiroki Ogawa, TheDiplomat.com

May 13, 2011—In accordance with changes in Ministry of Education standards made back in 2008, Japanese students in the fifth and sixth grade last month began mandatory weekly English lessons. The objective of the programme, dubbed Gaikokugo Katsudo or Foreign Language Activities, is to foster an interest in other languages and cultures generally, although English remains the priority.

But the programme is also a response to international and domestic factors. For one, there's TOEFL score data from 2004-2005, which placed Japan second to last in Asia in terms of English language skills with 191 points—only one point higher than North Korea. There's also the fact that other countries in the region have introduced mandatory English lessons in their elementary schools, and Japan is therefore keen not to be left behind. The programme even has the support of top business federation Nippon Keidanren, which sees it as a means of increasing the competitiveness of future Japanese knowledge workers internationally.

Yet looking at the specifics of the programme, and some of the critiques it has received, the effort strikes me as a little superficial, and gives the impression that the Ministry is treating learning English as an end in itself.

The reality is that raw English ability alone is unlikely to produce any significant change, even assuming that Japanese students go on to have basic conversational skills in English (which is often not the case anyway)…

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Don't listen to the purism pedants, English is doing just fine
By Rob Forbes, The Sydney Morning Herald

May 13, 2011—Everyone enjoys criticizing the language use of others. Complaints about the language of politicians and media personalities are a perennial of the letters section of a newspaper; many fear more generally that our language is heading downhill fast.

Julia Gillard has copped flak in particular for her broad Australian accent. One letter writer expresses her disgust at Gillard saying ''ledders'' instead of letters. Vocal coach Dean Frenkel has criticised her for her heavy ''twang'' and encourages her to articulate her vowels in a ''far more understated way''.

Some critics even notice where media presenters place stress on certain words. One pointed out a ''disturbing'' trend towards saying ''reesearch'' instead of research.

Others express fear that new forms of communication are wreaking havoc on the English language and will leave it impoverished and simplistic: author and journalist John Humphrys has warned that texters are ''pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary''.

But these commentators are just the latest in a long tradition of linguistic doomsayers, and they are as wrong as they have always been about declining language standards.

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Language, Aaj and Kal
By Lindsay Pereira, Mid-dayOnline.com

MUMBAI, May 11, 2011—Is Hinglish -- that curious mix of English, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi-- fast becoming the language of choice in urban India? A recent book release, the intriguingly named Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish, proves that the hybrid is very, very, hip.     

At least two men, both named Salman, would agree. The first, last name Rushdie, once claimed it was his linguistic agenda and practice to 'chutnefy English.' The second, last name Khan, used the line, 'Tu kya mujhe henpecked samajhta hai?' with much sincerity in a film titled, Biwi No 1. Both were born and brought up in what was once called Bombay, before people with an unusual concern for language and its subversive power went on a renaming spree.

Today, in Mumbai and other Indian metros, the hybrid dialect called 'Hinglish' -- as a sub-form of languages mutually comprehensible by their speakers -- is now favoured by a significant number of people.

These numbers have propelled it into everything from advertisement tag-lines (hungry kya?) to cinema (Dil Maange More), music (rain is falling chamacham cham) and the colloquial language of youth (where's the party, yaar?). It also explains the ubiquitous presence of massive campaigns like Coke's 'Life ho toh aisi' and McDonald's 'What your bahana is?'

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Nothing regional or foreign about a language
The Times of India

May 4, 2011—Poor Goan parents have finally realized the bitter truth: They are being emotionally and economically blackmailed by the government who is playing the maim bhas card and denying them grants, thereby preventing their children from being educated in English during their formative years.

It is not a communal issue, but surely an issue of caste and class divide, that we need to face aggressively.

"Give me English and I shall give our society prosperity and eliminate disparity and discrimination which has been bogging down the downtrodden masses of India" should be the battle cry of every Parents Teachers Association (PTA).

The caste and class divide in India is over 3,000 years old. Even after the British and Portuguese abolished the ritual of sati, brought in gender equality and practical women empowerment, the casteist forces, even up to this day, after decades of self rule, have not been able to weed out untouchability and propagate inter-caste marriages.

Honour killings and caste differentiation are in our blood. Those who have arrogated to themselves the power to perform rituals, pujas and perennial control of religious institutions, have deprived the masses from becoming priests or pundits.

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A journey through English-language publishing in India
By Urvashi Butalia, Himal South Asian
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May 2011—A little over three decades ago I made my first, accidental, entry into the world of publishing in India. I was just finishing my Masters degree, and wanted to make a decisive move away from English literature to something more “relevant” to my life in the thriving, bustling, politically alive city of Delhi. The university was a hotbed of furious political debate, the women’s movement was just taking off—surely, I thought, there has to be more to life than Spenser and Milton (much though I loved them). At the time, a friend worked as a secretary in the Oxford University Press office in Delhi. Perhaps, she suggested, I should do some freelance work there and see how I liked it. I thought it was a brilliant idea.

At the time, a great deal of publishing activity in Delhi was concentrated along two roads. The longer one, Asaf Ali Road, lay just outside the wall of the old city, while a shorter strip, Ansari Road, lay just beyond. Ansari Road housed large and small publishers alike, and during the lunch hour many of them (almost all male) could be seen at the samosa and paan stalls, exchanging gossip and news, while small lorries and hand-drawn carts loaded with packets of books made their way to publishers’ warehouses.

I remember walking into my first job in the Indian branch of the Oxford University Press (OUP), on Ansari Road, feeling a great sense of trepidation…

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A conscientious objector in the war on words
By Andrew Biggs, Bangkok Post

May 8, 2011—Two weeks ago, I found myself in the middle of a major security breach at Sydney airport. Security scanners went on the blink, resulting in more cancellations than a Kajagoogoo reunion tour.

Those of us lucky enough not to have our flights cancelled ended up being delayed for at least three hours.

You would have been proud of me, dear reader. I never once stamped my foot nor shouted ''Do you know who I am?'' while waving an Andrew Biggs doll in the faces of airline staff. Instead I took a more Buddhist approach to the situation by donning my iPod earphones and flicking on a self-created playlist entitled ''Aural Prozac'' (Yanni, Susan Boyle, Ronan Keating, etc).

When I did finally get on my flight the captain made a short announcement.

''We apologise for the delay,'' he crooned. ''The scanners had some problems and there were a lot of planes that were sequencing at Sydney airport.''

Wait a minute. The scanners I understand. But the planes were what?

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Certificates of the poor state of our educational system
By Abdul Rahman Muhammad al-Sultan, ArabNews.com

May 14, 2011—The decision of the Council of Ministers to teach English from the Grade IV reflects the keenness of our leadership to develop education and find a solution to our education deficiencies. Regardless of the importance of this move, it will not be a solution to the low English-language standards of the graduates of public schools. In fact, the standard of these graduates in science and mathematics, which are taught from the first year, is no better than students' grasp of the English language. The important question is: Why do students study English for six years without achieving good results?

The biggest problem facing our educational system is that our methods have not changed. We never solved these problems. We are like a sick man without a proper diagnosis. And based on the wrong diagnosis, the doctor prescribes the wrong medicine. The doctor doesn't try to re-diagnose and the patient doesn't seeks a second opinion.

Therefore the problem of education in our country is not in the few years the student spend studying a certain subject but rather the low grasp of what he or she has learned due to many factors, including the low standard of teachers…

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Blame yourself for killing your own language
By Lwando Norman, TimesLive.co.za

ZAMBIA, May 8, 2011—Mondli Makhanya's "Will this nation allow its languages to die out - from sheer neglect?" (May 1) resonates with me. But I am convinced that we, as blacks, are guilty of decimating our own languages.

Apartheid and colonialism taught us to hate everything about ourselves: the colour of our skins, our hair and even our languages. Speaking English is seen as being progressive and educated. We have internalised the lie that we have to master the language if we are to prosper economically.

The Japanese, the Germans, the French and many other nations hardly speak any English, yet their inventions and innovations form part of our daily lives.

I am always appalled when I hear black people proudly tell you that their children can speak only English. In shopping malls, we make sure anyone within earshot can hear how clever our kids are as they show off their Model C accents.

In black families nowadays, the first words children learn are English!

How can we expect others to respect our languages when we don't respect them? The initiative by the former minister of education, Naledi Pandor, to introduce an additional African language in provinceswas resisted by - wait for it - black parents!

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Madame Pourquoi
By Temitayo Olofinlua, 234next.com

May 8, 2011—Learning a new language is like entering a desert with blindfolds. You have no knowledge of what to expect. There are sand blasts and wind gusts from every side, yet you keep trudging along. That is a mild description of my road to learning French. The only tool I took with me was fun. I wanted to have fun on the journey. Fun here translates into: ask questions.

Why did I decide to learn French?

First, it was the desire to have a mastery of another language. Well, learn something different from the known. Having spoken English, Yoruba and a bit of Pidgin for a great part of my life; it is a bit boring, don’t you think? A part of me thought: wouldn’t it be great to gossip in another language? Wouldn’t it be absolutely interesting to maneuver two world languages well, to hit their heads together as if in a duel?

Yoruba and English are languages that just stumbled on me, or was it I who stumbled on them?

Bottom line is, I do not really understand or appreciate the process of learning them. For Yoruba, I grew up in a Yoruba-speaking environment, my parents speak my native Ijare dialect at home; and yes, I studied Yoruba as a subject in school…

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Select right candidates for teaching courses
By YY Tam, TheStar.com.my
 
May 8, 2011—A friend of mine had recently requested that I help an English Language undergraduate write reports for two projects.

It came as a surprise as I couldn’t understand the undergraduate’s reluctance in writing the reports since she was a qualified teacher who was now pursuing a degree programme in English.

It was only later that I found out that she could not write the report as she was not competent in English.

Needless to say, there are many questions that need to be answered. On what basis is the selection of English Language teachers done? What sort of training do they go through?

How is supervision and assessment carried out during the course? Are they closely monitored? What remedial programmes are provided for them?

Even more worrying is the fact that the undergraduate and many more like her will soon become English Language teachers. For them to be language teachers, they must have an adequate grasp of the language to be effective whether they are posted to primary or secondary schools, or rural or urban schools after graduation.

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