“How did you begin to write? And why in English?”
By Danton Remoto, The Philippine Star 

June 20, 2011—Friends and strangers alike would ask me that question. But the notion of beginning still surprises me until now.

As a child, I loved to draw, to memorize in my mind’s eye images of the passing day. I also loved to read — I would finish reading my English textbooks in one week, when we were supposed to read them for the whole year.

I read ravenously and I read everything — the ingredients in a can of soup, the newspaper my father bought every day, the Philippine Journal of Education my mother subscribed to, the 10-volume Children’s Classics that an uncle had given to us.

I grew up in Basa Air Base, Pampanga, in a small white house with sloping roof and French windows. My father was a soldier, when soldiers were still honorable, and my mother taught music in school. The Distance to Andromeda and Other Stories by the peerless Gregorio Brillantes was the first book I bought with my own money. Listen to the reasons why he writes, spoken in the third person, perhaps to give the memory a measure of objectivity:

“The answer... was tied up somehow with the town in Tarlac where he was born, and the acacias beside the house where he grew up, the sounds that wind and rain made in them. In that house, its rooms suffused with a clear white light in his memory, he learned that words, combinations of them, could unlock the doors to fancy and fable: the strange lands visited by Gulliver, Lord Greystoke shipwrecked on the African shore...”

Memory is the mother of all writing, it has been said, and many of my memories are tied up with the books I read in English, or imprinted on my mind in English…

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Journalism as if Earth mattered
By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Philippine Daily Inquirer

June 22, 2011—I can’t resist this one, so let me say something about the matter before I proceed to the intended subject of today’s column.

When another round of fishkill occurred in Taal Lake a few days ago, was it a fisheries official who said that it was not a fishkill but “fish mortality”?  A grouchy copy editor would have red-penciled it were it not a direct quote, an example of jargon, euphemism, even obfuscation, that could be a story in itself.

In a how-to-write monograph that I often use when speaking about writing, veteran editor Edward T. Thomson, presents basic guidelines. One of them is “avoid jargon.”  He advises: “Don’t use words, expressions, phrases known only to people with specific knowledge or interests. Example: a scientist, using scientific jargon, wrote, ‘The biota exhibited a 100 percent mortality response.’ He could have written: ‘All the fish died.’”

Another advice: Choose short words instead of long ones. “Kill” is four letters while “mortality” is…

In his “How to write with style,” best-selling novelist Kurt Vonnegut points out that the longest word in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be?” (by Shakespeare) is three letters.  Imagine Hamlet saying instead: “Should I act upon the urgings that I feel, or remain passive and thus cease to exist?”

Vonnegut adds: “James Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.”

And so, with hearts breaking, let us say, “All the fish died.”

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Big dreamer
By Lyndon John S. de Leon, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Last night I finally had the guts to re-open “Bobby.” You might think I am crazy, but yes that is the name I gave to my scrap book. I guess those dried santan flowers which were once red, those fastfood receipts, those Juicy Fruit wrappers, and those old letters from a friend now resting in between the pages of Bobby prove that I am one sentimental junkie. So I turned the pages and saw my past unfold before my eyes. And it was on the the final page that I felt the deepest sadness, bitterness and regret. That page contains two envelopes:  one from the registrar of the University of the Philippines Manila, the other from the office of Sen. Mar Roxas.

For the record, I was one high school student who excelled in academics. Not a nerd, but not cool either – just one big dreamer. And two years ago, my big dream brought me to the UPCAT testing center in Ilocos Sur, as one among more than 60,000 graduating high school students who aspired to study at the University of the Philippines.

Months passed, and then I received my letter from the registrar of  UP-Manila. I had made it, the only one from our school that did. I was ecstatic. But only for a moment. Once I finished reading the letter, I immediately realized that studying in UP was next to impossible. Being an Iskolar ng Bayan can be costly.

My life story would make a good material for “Maalaala Mo Kaya.” I was an only child. I remember being showered with all the earthly pleasures a child could imagine: school bags with wheels, toys that came with kid’s meals, etc. But then that chapter of my life ended abruptly when my father, who was working abroad, had to come home after being diagnosed with throat cancer. He died when I was 10. My mom and I were left alone. We were broke.

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Wanna learn English, anyone?
By Jaime FlorCruz, CNN

BEIJING, June 10, 2011—One of my first jobs in China was teaching English through songs on CCTV, China's national television station.

That was in 1979, when the People's Republic was just coming out of the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. Ordinary Chinese still wore drab Mao tunics, and top officials debated whether the foreign cultural influences seeping into China were "spiritual pollution."

Still, the CCTV station producers wanted to use national television to popularize English language, and they wanted a light program.

I was recruited to join a group of amateur musicians to produce "Let's Sing," a series of 30-minute specials to complement its weekly program, English on Sunday. Along with three Chinese performers, I would strum my guitar and sing English songs, including "Clementine", "Puff, The Magic Dragon" and "El Condor Pasa." Viewers learned new words, grammar and syntax as they learned the songs.

Station producers closely vetted the lineup of songs and narration we prepared. They vetoed a few, including Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." We produced 10 shows, which aired for weeks and replayed many times. We became local celebrities, occasionally recognized and stopped in Beijing's shops and alleys. Even today, the odd Beijing resident occasionally stops me and says he or she first learned English through my TV show.

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Young Blood: Independent thinker
By Marla Viray, Philippine Daily Inquirer

June 14, 2011—There comes a time in your life so unique when you suddenly know who you are and what you want. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, they say. It is a time when you stop grasping for random things that come your way. You get rid of all the accumulated clutter of the silly years that have gone by. You refrain from asking old questions and venture on finding answers to new ones instead.

My birthday falls on June 12, our country’s Independence Day. Since I turned 21 this year, I would like to think it was mine as well. But don’t get me wrong. I value the significance of our national holiday, although I find it nice that the entire country celebrates my birthday with flags instead of balloons and with patriotic songs instead of a birthday song.

My mom used to tease me that she almost named me Aguinalda, or Filipinas, or even Independencia. I am glad she used her better judgment and named me Marla. My sister Franz, who was born on Nov. 30, has not been as lucky. She is sometimes called Bonifacia or Andrea by friends and relatives.

It is no idle boast when I say that I have a relatively clear picture of my life already, at least career-wise. I no longer hope. Or maybe I don’t rely too much on hope. Fulfilling one’s dream is a process of grasping, realizing and knowing who you are and what you want. Knowing precedes achieving.
Still fresh out of college, I steadfastly pursue the profession I believe I belong to: journalism…

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I’m losing my Canadian English
By Rebecca Connop Price, Globe and Mail

WALES, June 20, 2011—English, I have learned, isn’t just one language. Depending on where you live in the English-speaking world, words can develop new meanings or spiral into new directions.

When I prepared for my move to Britain, I didn’t think my English would be much different from that of my British peers. I was wrong. My job as a writer and editor has forced me to examine these differences closely, and it has made me realize just how much language can create – and change – your identity.

I have found, to my great distress, that I am beginning to forget what I, as an English-speaking Canadian, should be saying or how I should pronounce it. When I left Canada at 23, having spent a wonderful four years in Ottawa and, before that, having grown up among the mountains in northern British Columbia, I felt strongly rooted to our great nation. I’m now married to a Brit, and as the years go by, I have begun to notice those roots becoming increasingly fragile. At 30, I’m heartbroken that I have left Canada, and that Canada is starting to leave me.

Before moving to Wales as an exchange student, I took a seminar on how to adapt to life in a foreign country. I was cautioned by the instructor at Carleton University that the people most likely to feel culture shock were actually the people who went to Britain, not those who moved to the different cultures of say Chile or Italy…

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Too much of our language has become a no-go area
By Cristina Odone, Telegraph.co.uk

June 12, 2011—For two years at my sixth form college in north Oxford, I was a “wop”. The pretty and posh girls who lived in my house thought it a perfectly descriptive label — I was Italian, wasn’t I? — and if it had a derogatory whiff about it, too bad: as a new girl I should learn my place. If I’d tried to get matron on side, she would have scolded me for being so wet. In 1979, only words like “wog” and “nigger” were morally loaded.

Today, much more of the English language has become a no-go area. “Coloured” as a term to describe Asians is unacceptable, “handicapped” is frowned upon and “gipsy” is not on. A Lefty who hears the word “chav” will bridle at the “class hatred” of the term; soon, the term “toff” will be a sign of discrimination, too. Which is why when Scope, the disability charity, reports that almost half of disabled people face discrimination on their way to and from work, I worry.

“Discrimination” is a loose term, and Scope uses it to include verbal as well as physical attacks. I would want to see any able-bodied nasty who assaults someone in a wheelchair charged. But there is a difference between shoving a disabled person and calling him a “spastic”. When police witness the former, they should prosecute; when they hear the latter, they should issue a warning, not a warrant.

Magistrates’ courts used to issue an order called “binding over to keep the peace”, which put offenders on notice that a repeat performance would land them in real trouble.

But once police start investigating insults, danger lurks…

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Exams system risks “damaging teenagers’ reading ability”
By John Newton, Telegraph.co.uk

June 5, 2011—Well read is well bred. An education that does not provide the tools and the hunger to read beyond the narrow confines of a subject is, in the wider sense, no education at all.

Comments by Professor Sutherland at the Hay Festival this week warn us that current students are no longer inclined to read tougher texts; they are encouraged to read what takes their fancy rather than what nourishes the soul.

He makes the further point that before university, single texts or heavily defined bodies of literature are taught to the exclusion of those "not on the list" in the headlong, unseemly lurch towards the first A-level module.

One of the most sinister semantic changes to the way we teach our children happened some years ago when we ceased to teach to a curriculum, but delivered a "specification".

By definition a specification is specific. A curriculum is simply a course – as broad and varied as the teacher deemed it necessary and worthwhile to be for their students.

My first encounter with A-level English literature was a thorough reading of Othello. It was not a set text…

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The booming market for English teachers in China
By Michelle V. Rafter, SecondAct.com

June 16, 2011—If you're considering teaching overseas as a way to see the world and enjoy an encore career, look east to China.

Private schools there are on a hiring tear because many Chinese parents want their children to learn English to thrive in a global economy. China is becoming the fastest-growing private English education system in the world, according to a survey by Disney English, a Magic Kingdom subsidiary that runs 22 Chinese academies that teach English to preschoolers. Another recent study says that China's private education market is projected to grow 45 percent between 2009 and 2012.

Some English language programs in China are soliciting people 40 and older to teach. Their ranks include the Teacher Ambassador Program, a joint venture between United World College, a chain of 13 international colleges and schools, and the U.K.-based Ameson Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes East-West cultural and educational exchanges.

The program, called TAP for short, currently is hiring recruits with bachelor's degrees and prior teaching experience to work in high schools in 13 Chinese cities this fall…

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Government schools pander to English craze
By Asha Krishnaswamy, Deccan Herald

BANGALORE, June 19, 2011—English is certainly becoming the language of choice for parents of school children across the State.

The recent decision of the State education department to carve out English medium sections in the existing higher primary schools seems to be in line with the demand- driven and need- based education  that parents aspire for their children.

Perhaps the craving for English medium learning explains the declining trend of enrolment from 6th to 8th  standards in Kannada medium government schools as opposed to the aided and unaided English medium schools where the enrolments have shown an upward spiral.

It may become unpalatable for pro-Kannada organizations and Kannada litterateurs to digest the hard fact that even in rural areas and tier II and tier III cities across the State, the demand for education in English medium is on the rise. There has been an overall shift of four per cent from Kannada to English medium private schools  from 2006-07 to 2009-10 at an average rate of 1.33 per cent per year.

In terms of numbers, the decrease is 6.28 lakh students during this period of which 2.02 lakh may be due to demographic changes. In case of the rest 4.26 lakh students, there may be a lateral shift to the private sector schools…

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Shift in policy on medium of instruction is imprudent

June 23, 2011—The government decision to give grants to English medium primary schools is not in the interest of Goan children in particular, and Goan society in general. Those who spearheaded the movement for English have failed to realize that primary education in Konkani is essential to empower Goan children to learn English better. This statement is based on the opinion of educationists affiliated to UNESCO and other renowned educationists.

While announcing the shift in the policy, chief minister Digambar Kamat said it will enable the poor to get enrolled in English medium schools which will empower them. In the same breath he said that English is just one of the options and that those who want to get their wards admitted in Konkani or Marathi medium schools have the choice to do so.

Many teachers and concerned parents, who have no faith in Konkani, have jumped to the conclusion that English at the primary level will help students tackle the challenges of the future. This attitude is not uncommon…

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English in India: No longer a colonizer’s tongue?
By Usree Bhattacharya, Times Of India

June 17, 2011—Among the list of demands made by yoga guru Baba Ramdev, at the center of a sensational political maelstrom in India, is the necessity for instruction in vernacular languages, a topic of debate with a long history in India. He first created waves when he came out in strong support of regional language instruction back in March, stating: "In no other country is a videshi [foreign] language the medium of instruction in schools, except in India. By trying to introduce English as a medium of instruction in schools there is a deliberate attempt by a few to destroy our culture, language and heritage." Through a particular kind of discursive posturing that taps into nationalistic sentiment, he aligns himself clearly in the vernacular camp in the debate.

First, he crafts the problem in the rhetoric of exceptionalism, as if it were unique to Indians. Even the most cursory review of the field of international education will reveal that this is a patently false claim (English, Spanish, and French, for example, find favor as media of instruction in many contexts where they may be considered "videshi," from Baba Ramdev's perspective). Second, conceptualizing English as "videshi" is problematic, given that it is Constitutionally recognized as the secondary official language; enjoys a considerable linguistic circulation as a second or third language; and has quite a bit of history within this land. However, none of this has the effect of rendering its colonial ("foreign"?) antecedents invisible: the term "videshi" clearly acts as a colonial marker…

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Hinglish is in vogue in Patna University
By B. K, Mishra, The Times of India

PATNA, June 12, 2011(TNN)—What is the medium of instruction in Patna University (PU) colleges and departments? It is neither Hindi nor English. Ask any faculty or scholar of PU about it, and he would say that it is a mixture of Hindi and English. Hinglish, indeed.

Teachers of almost all the subjects, save languages, deliver their lectures in a mixture of Hindi and English, so that students coming from different backgrounds might easily comprehend them. Four to five decades back, most of the lectures delivered in any subject, whether belonging to pure science or social science, used to be in English alone. But, nowadays, the situation has changed.

PU geography department head Ras Bihari Prasad Singh said that in the beginning of his teaching career, he used to teach in English only, but these days students demand lectures in Hindi. Hence, he has to resort to the use of Hinglish in classroom teaching for wider comprehension of his lectures. Even students find it convenient to use the mixed language.

The former head of PU's English department, Shaileshwar Sati Prasad, said the impact of Western culture reflected in Indian TV has led to the appropriation of western formats and their Indianization to suit local tastes and languages. One outcome is the development of Hinglish. He, however, felt that the growth of this hybrid language under the influence of the corporate world would reduce our sensitivity towards our own languages.

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Urdu vs. English: Are we ashamed of our language?
By Amna Khalid, The Express Tribune

June 21, 2011—Most Pakistanis have been brought up speaking our national language Urdu and English. Instead of conversing in Urdu, many of us lapse into English during everyday conversation. Even people who do not speak English very well try their best to sneak in a sentence or two, considering it pertinent for their acceptance in the ‘cooler’ crowd.

I wonder where the trend started, but unknowingly, unconsciously, somehow or the other we all get sucked into the trap. It was not until a few years ago while on a college trip to Turkey that I realized the misgivings of our innocent jabber.

A group of students of the LUMS Cultural Society trip went to Istanbul, Turkey to mark the 100th Anniversary of the famous Sufi poet Rumi. One day we were exploring the city when we stopped at a café for lunch. The waiter took our orders, and continued to hover around our table during the meal. We barely noticed him until he came with the bill, and asked us:

“Where are you from?”

“Pakistan”

The waiter looked surprised, and then asked whether we had been brought up in England. We answered in the negative, telling him how Pakistan was where we all had grown up and spent out lives…

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Gripping translation of classics
By Dr Amjad Parvez, Daily Times

June 14, 2011—Living anywhere in the world, it is not easy to accept the fact that most of the world does not speak English. Also most of the best literature may not be written in English language. Thus all of us living in this globe have equal right to read and understand what others have created in their mother tongues. This situation necessitates that the best of translations are made available in all languages and for that purpose skilled writers must be prepared to work in the art of translation.

This is very difficult task as even a bad choice of translating a word from one language to the other can make hell of a difference. So, many believe that there is no such thing as literal translation especially while translating poetry in which not only the words but the sounds also plays an important part.

The most quoted example is that of translations of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables which when translated by a Hugo’s friend in 1862 and then by Norman Denny later entailed large portions of the translations being edited making the translated novel incomplete. When Julie Rose carried out her research, she found the translators’ contempt for Hugo. One therefore needs to be impersonal when in act of translation. Rose observed that one almost enters into a trance-like state to be able to sustain Les Miserables.

Abul Farah Humanyun gives his own recipe of translating works of other languages into another. He provides this recipe in his book titled Sunehri Kahaniyan, a recently published book containing translation into Urdu of short stories written in English, Hindi, Turkish, Chinese, Punjabi, Persian, German, Spanish and Bangla.

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Ten-year national action plan for a trilingual Sri Lanka
By Sajitha Prematunge, DailyNews.lk

June 23, 2011—Nearly 90 percent of Sinhala speaking people cannot communicate in Tamil and cannot communicate effectively in English. Whereas 70 percent of Tamil speaking people in Sri Lanka cannot communicate in Sinhala. But the new Presidential initiative on a trilingual Sri Lanka plans to change this.

A salient feature of the Presidential initiative for a trilingual Sri Lanka is the redefinition of language. “The initiative will not promote Sinhala and Tamil as mere instruments of communication, but as a holistic cultural package,” said Presidential Advisor and Coordinator of the programme ‘English as a life skill’ and the initiative for a trilingual Sri Lanka, Sunimal Fernando. “Language is an expression of culture. Knowledge of Tamil culture will facilitate empathy and affection for its culture in the Sinhala people and thereby encourage people to learn the Tamil language. The same goes for Sinhala.”

Under the trilingual initiative Sinhala and Tamil will be promoted as vehicles through which modern ideas, views, technologies and modern sciences among a host of other subjects could be discussed, discoursed and debated. English will be promoted as a life skill for occupation, employment, accessing knowledge and technology and for communicating with the rest of the world. English is basically a tool for communication.

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Black English: An underrated bilingualism
By Russell Evans, Chantilly.Patch.com

June 22, 2011—Heritage High School in Ashburn is a gorgeous school. The main hallway is reminiscent of a college hall with high ceilings and well-appointed floors and walls. Despite the school’s newness, there’s a sense of weight, a sense of importance to the building, most likely derived from its stately appearance.

When I taught Spanish at Heritage in early 2009, I appreciated how much the school reflected the growing diversity of Loudoun County. The school seemed dynamic. The energy beamed through the students, through their engagement and their appreciation of each other’s differences.

Everyday when I drove off the exit from the Greenway, which I was sure had been completed several minutes before I got there, I knew my Spanish students were there to play ball.

***

During my teacher training, I was told to teach what’s relevant, not what’s interesting. I can appreciate the need to maintain curricular structure, but that doesn’t mean I'm good at it. At Heritage I was a “leave replacement” teacher, so it should come as no surprise that a number of my lessons went astray as we moved towards the end of our 75-minute block.

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The dictionary isn't the law. The law is
Language Johnson, The Economist

NEW YORK, June 14, 2011—Dictionary fetishism has returned to the news. Back when the Oxford English Dictionary admitted "LOL" and a few other internet-related neologisms to its collection, someone complained that the OED "is supposed to have dignity." I commented then that many people don't seem to know what dictionaries are for. They aren't for having dignity.

They also aren't for defining words so closely that America's Supreme Court should rely on them to determine the meaning of contested words. Yet that's just what justices are doing. This understandably alarms people like Jesse Sheidlower, an editor for Oxford's dictionaries. The lexicographer told The New York Times that "It’s easy to stack the deck by finding a definition that does or does not highlight a nuance that you’re interested in." Justice Stephen Breyer, for example, is a fan of the OED itself. Yet this is one of the more promiscuous dictionaries, highlighting as many different historical meanings and modern senses as it can by scouring the written corpus for different uses of a word. Its rank-ordering of senses is certainly not intended to be legally dispositive, so that the first sense listed can be used by judges across the ocean to enforce contracts or put people in prison.  In fact, as the Times points out, since dictionary-makers use sources like the Times to determine how words are used (ie, what they mean), the Supreme Court is, probably without knowing it, relying on the Times.  And the Times is writing about this, closing the loop.

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National Spelling Bee reminds us that some kids still care about English
By Phil Giannotti, NJ.com

June 5, 2011—“Cymotrichous.”

I didn’t know what this word meant. I didn’t know how to use this word in a sentence. I certainly didn’t know how to spell the word! However, thanks to Sukanya Roy, who spelled the word correctly to capture the Scripps National Spelling Bee championship earlier this week, I now know the word “cymotrichous.” I know that it means “having wavy hair”. Most importantly, I have expanded my vocabulary.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is always fun to watch. Part of me likes seeing kids struggle under the enormous pressure of spelling words that I never knew existed. Another part of me enjoys that they are usually able to spell the words based on context and etymology, a feat that is incredibly impressive for adults, let alone adolescents and pre-teens!

The Bee has always been popular, with nationally televised airings and a 1999 documentary, “Spellbound”. I have always found watching it to be entertaining and educational. When I checked out of my 8th grade regional spelling bee the word that tripped me up was “minstrel,” which I spelled “menstrual.” I finished in third place and couldn’t figure out why everyone was laughing. But this past week the kids had to contend with words like, “polatouche,” “rougeot,” “abhinaya,” “capoeira,” “cheongsam,” “opodeldoc,” “zanja,” “Jugendstil,” “galoubet,” “anaphylaxis,” “brachygraphy,” “sorites” and “bondieuserie.” At least when I lost, I had actually heard of the word I was given and the word I misspelled.

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Americans’ sad war over language
By Ruben Navarrette, Ventura County Star

June 4, 2011—What's wrong with a Connecticut high school requiring that students speak English before receiving a diploma? Or the owner of a diner in North Carolina putting up a sign that warns customers: "No speak English, no service"?

Maybe nothing. Or maybe a lot. It all depends on the motives. When you're dealing with an issue as emotional as language, what matters isn't just what is done but why it is done. It's easy to claim you're instituting a rule for someone's own good, but what if it's really for your own comfort level?

I've written about language for nearly two decades, and I can always count on getting angry letters from readers. They begin by insisting how people need to speak English so they can succeed in our society. But then, one or two paragraphs later, they wind up saying what they really mean: People need to speak English so that others can understand what they're saying and know whether they're talking about them.

By the way, it would help the readers' argument that we should learn to speak English if their letters weren't often peppered with misspellings and faulty grammar.

Also, let's consider the historical context. Since the nation's founding, Americans have been squabbling over language while trying to sort through some major contradictions.

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Building language barriers
By John Van Doorn, The North County Times

June 8, 2011—At the end of the 19th century and early in the 20th, a certain scholarship arose around the English language stating, in essence, that formal rules for grammar and usage were passe and that the language's future lay in the mouthings of the "common people," as one distressed historian put it.

The word "correct" faded away.

As it turned out, that approach has won. The language has been reduced, through ignorant, uncaring or defiant usage to what we hear and see today, all day, in every forum. It gets commoner and commoner.

To some of us ---- call us fogeys, call us pedants (but do call us) ---- these sights and sounds are unmanageably painful; we like the beauty of the language correctly deployed and always have.

Several such phrases caught my ear as I shuffled around North County this week.

They are not new and may have been around for months, weeks or yesterday. I'm guessing years.

Let me share: "No problem." I hear "no problem" perhaps 20 times a day. Del Mar, Del Dios ---- you name it. Someone thanks a waiter for his service; the waiter says, "no problem." Another excuses himself for interrupting a conversation…

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A call to take back the English language
By Commander Coconut, Orlando Sentinel

June 9, 2011—I need your help.

Send me your assaults on the English language — cutesy spellings, icky images and ghastly or highfalutin place names. For instance, the misspelled shopping center Mall at Millenia (with just the one N, it should be pronounced with a long E), Kalurna Kottages, Seminole Towne Center, Trafalgar Village, the C'est Cheese fromage shop, Merry Pop-Ins Child Care, Ashwipe Chimney Sweeps.

And don't get me started on all the stupid centres and theatres (as if we didn't have enough crosses to bear without using Brit spelling).

•Speaking of words, I don't care for "look" and "now" as transitions. President Obama uses "look" before sentences way too much, and TV reporters and anchors are always saying "now."

•Jane Lynch overload: Now she's going to host the Emmys. Let's hope she doesn't win another one.

•The MTV Movie Awards: The "Twilight" actors are really boring, and I can't keep all the Emmas straight — although I think the one who looks like Lindsay Lohan is Emma Stone.

•Here we go again: A few weeks back, I commented on J.Lo and her humongous hips, and I received several emails saying that huge hips were good and to leave poor, rich J.Lo alone. As if…

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Why Americans no longer say what they mean in plain English
By Lara Marlowe, The Irish Times

IRELAND, June 25, 2011—In the preface to Pygmalion , George Bernard Shaw famously wrote that every time an Englishman opens his mouth he makes another Englishman despise him.

This is less true in America, where social mobility and democracy have blunted linguistic markers, while in politics there’s a premium on imaginative language that makes an apathetic public sit up and take notice.

But Democrats are handicapped by their split electorate, explains Timothy Meagher, a fourth generation Irish-American and professor of history at Catholic University. Republicans tend to be white and working or middle class, while Democrats encompass the poor, ethnic minorities and Americans with university degrees.

“The language that appeals to educated Democrats is more formal, more academic,” says Meagher. “College professors love Obama, because his language is beautifully crafted. But other groups can find it alienating.”

Race further complicates Obama’s linguistic choices. In his efforts to be a “regular guy”, the president calls people “folks” and drops his ‘g’s. “If he indulges too much in colloquial English, it sounds like black argot,” says Meagher.

“It’s easier for white politicians to descend into folksiness.” Obama’s intelligence and Ivy League education can be a political weakness that make him appear distant and cold, Meagher explains. “Dropping his ‘g’s can seem hip and cool to blacks and young whites, but older whites, and especially middle-class whites, may hear language that conjures up images of poor blacks. Do white Americans see someone like them, or someone who crosses a boundary? He’s boxed in by American stereotypes.”

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Where are the English speaking Tanzanians? 
By Sharifa Kalokola, TheCitizen.co.tz

June 20, 2011—With countries such as Britain tightening up on the level of English language skills for international student visas, a significant number of Tanzanian students who look West for better tertiary education are having to invest a great deal more than others in improving language proficiency. But there are major concerns that the new generation is still not up to the mark when it comes to English language abilities.

By all indications, English is fast taking place in Tanzania as the language of trade, travel and diplomacy due to the free economy that has opened doors to foreign investment. This suggests that learning English may be as important to even young Tanzanians, who want to make it in the competitive labour market in the country.

However, while this fact has been known for a while now, it appears there is still slow progress as far as learning the country’s second official language is concerned. In fact, the old generation of scholars seems to be more proficient in the language than the new academicians.

“We need not underestimate the students as far as their English is concerned because we have a few of them whose command of the language is not that bad,” observes Faraja Kristomus, an assistant lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM).

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Rethink English test for maids
Letter from Ajit Kumar from Tan Saw Bin, TodayOnline.com
 
June 4, 2011—The English test has produced a lose-lose-lose situation for employers, maids and agents. What any employer needs is a maid who can do housework well. Good work ethic and honesty are important.

Agents stand to lose profits when a candidate maid fails the test, so naturally, agencies pre-screen candidates primarily for their ability to pass the English test. This has shrunk the supply pool and affected the quality of the maids one can get.

The English test is no guarantee of language skills either; cases of miscommunication still abound. Why not instead let the employer and the maid declare to the ministry the common language(s) in which they can communicate? This would allow the employer more leeway to choose a maid based on their real priorities.

In language-critical situations such as a visit to the doctor, the employer then must make sure someone who can translate accompanies the maid.

I can cite the case of a maid fluent in English, who had deceived the family into believing she had been changing the water in the flowerpots every two days as instructed. The family was shocked when inspectors fined them after finding mosquitos breeding in the pots.

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Totally nice! Why Danes love to speak English
By Justin Cremer, CPHPost.dk 

DANSK, June 2, 2011—It’s an experience familiar to many newcomers in Denmark. You’re overwhelmed by a language that at the outset appears to be nothing more than mushmouthed gurgles when suddenly you overhear a conversation something like this:

“Jeg sagde til min manager, gurgle gurg gurgle teamwork. Han er gurgle gurg old school. Gurg gurgle out of this world.”

“Yes, gurg gurgle. Men gurgle gurgle better safe than sorry. Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, eller whatever, gurgle gurg. Gurg gurg you name it.”

That Danes blend so many English words into their day-to-day conversations not only catches the ear of non-Danes desperate to understand what’s being said around them, it also catches the ire of Danish language purists like Jørn Lund.

As a member of the Danish Language Council, the director of the Danish Language and Literature Society, and the author of several books on the language, Lund has seen Danish change considerably over the course of his thirty-plus year career as a professor and researcher of the language.

“Danes’ articulation of the language has changed dramatically,” Lund told The Copenhagen Post. “In just four generations, Danish has gone from where most people spoke a dialect to where only five percent do today. Each generation has taken part in this transformation process, and standard dialect-free Danish is similarly in constant development. It is possible to determine the age of a Dane within ten years’ precision based on their pronunciation.”

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The classic English style of a true IPA

June 6, 2011—As an expatriate Pom who has lived in New Zealand for more than 16 years, I still occasionally get tripped up by the Kiwi language.

To me, Manchester is a rainy city in Lancashire, a dairy is a place where cows are milked, chips are hot and usually come wrapped in newspaper, lollies are fruit-flavoured icecreams on a stick, football is played with a round ball, and the word tasty describes anything flavoursome, not just a specific type of cheese.

And don't get me started on beer. While the rest of the world uses the term "draught" to describe any beer served on tap, here it identifies a specific style of sweet, mildly hopped, amber coloured lager that's uniquely Kiwi. Confusing, or what?

But what winds me up even more are some of the country's best-selling draughts, which are labelled as ales – or, worse still, as India pale ale!

India pale ale dates back to the 18th century, and was first brewed in England to be sent by boat to the troops serving in the sub-continent.

In the days before refrigeration, brewers knew the only way they could make a beer to withstand the rigours of the three to four-month sea journey was to make it very strong and hoppy – alcohol and hops both have antibacterial qualities – so that's the kind of beer they sent.

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English-speaking diaspora should unite, not backbite
By Debito Arudou, Japan Times

June 7, 2011—There has been an ill wind blowing around Japan, and I don't just mean the fallout after Fukushima. I'm talking about the nasty attitude non-Japanese (NJ) residents have towards each other, even in this time of crisis.

One would think that difficult times would occasion people pulling together to help. There has of course been plenty of that, but on balance there has also been, as I wrote last month, a particularly unhelpful tendency to bash and badmouth NJ as cowards and deserters (as neatly demonstrated by the new word "flyjin").

But this is a mere complement to the perpetually uncooperative nature of many NJ in Japan, particularly in the English-speaking community. Despite its size and stature in this society, this community has not yet fostered a comprehensive interest group to look out for the civil or political rights of NJ.

Not for lack of trying. I personally have led or been part of several groups (e.g., UMJ, The Community, Kunibengodan, FRANCA), but none garnered enough support to be an effective lobbying force. I'll take my share of the blame for that (I am more an organizer of information than of people), but my efforts did not stop other people from organizing separately. Yet 20 years after a groundswell in the NJ population, and despite the unprecedented degree of connectivity made possible by the Internet, minority interest groups and antidefamation leagues for the English-language community have been lackluster or lacking.

Contrast this with the efforts of other ethnic or language groups in Japan…

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Emma Donoghue’s Room among finalists for $20,000 Trillium award

TORONTO, June 1, 2011 (The Canadian Press)—Emma Donoghue's Room is among the six finalists for the $20,000 English-language Trillium Book Award.

Donoghue, who won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Room and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General's Award, is up against James FitzGerald for What Disturbs Our Blood, Rabindranath Maharaj for The Amazing Absorbing Boy, Ken Sparling for Book, Paul Vermeersch for The Reinvention of the Human Hand, and Michael Winter for The Death of Donna Whalen.

The awards also honour French fiction titles, English-language poetry and French-language children's literature.

Winners receive $20,000 while finalists get a $500 honorarium. Publishers of the winning titles receive $2,500 to help promote the books.

Finalists for the French fiction prize are Estelle Beauchamp's Un souffle venu de loin, Murielle Beaulieu's Laisse-moi te dire, Andree Christensen's La memoire de l'aile, Michel Dallaire's Pendant que l'Autre en moi t'ecoute, and Didier Leclair's Le soixantieme parallele.

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France’s crumbling language barrier
By Christina Slade, The Australian

June 1, 2011—We chose to avoid royal wedding fervour in April to frequent a cathedral other than Westminster: Chartres, that great wonder of early gothic architecture and stained glass, close enough to Paris for friends to join us for lunch.

Elizabeth is French, Tom American, and they teach journalism at Sciences-Po in English. I was astonished. L'Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris (institute of political study, or Sciences-Po, for political sciences) is one of the grandes ecoles, those breeding grounds of the French oligarchy, for whom English remains at best an annoyance.

What is more, the so-called Toubon ruling outlaws university courses in languages other than French, except for language courses and institutions designed for foreign students.

The 184 or so institutions that comprise the grandes ecoles provide a separate and far more prestigious route for high-achieving French students than the university system.

Set up after the French Revolution to produce a scientific and administrative elite, each specialises in a particular professional track, more like a faculty than the generalist university.

Entry is by highly competitive examinations: students normally study in a preparatory college for two years after the baccalaureate, which would qualify them to study at a normal university. Most desirable are the sub-group of 23 elite grandes ecoles. Students emerge with skills, networks and, in general, magisterial French.

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Language and literary
BY Emily Prucha, PragueMonitor.com

June 3, 2011—The other day when my Czech friend Jolana and I were exchanging emails about her fall English language classes, she raised an interesting question: She wanted to start a small English-language library for her students to give them greater exposure to the language in different contexts, but feared that "normal" Czech parents might be intimidated reading to their children in English. Without giving the question much thought, I responded that I wasn't sure either. I couldn't really picture one of the non-English speaking parents of the children I teach feeling very confident picking up a borrowed English book and reading it to their child. Even some of the parents I know that speak English choose to communicate with me in Czech.

Jolana doesn't live in Prague, so I suggested that she think about initiating some of the activities that Class Acts has successfully brought to Prague's bilingual community, such as starting a children's story hour in English, with a confident English speaker leading the reading, or founding a book club for older children who are already readers. Finding additional enrichment activities for the children in ways that are not dependant on the parents' English abilities seemed to be a good path to follow. I even added that, personally, I almost never read my children Czech stories at home, except short rhymes and poems. For me, reading storybooks to them in Czech goes beyond my language abilities…

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