Two of the very best
By Butch Dalisay, The Philippine Star

MANILA, August 29, 2011—We can’t let this week pass without paying tribute to two of our very best writers, who sadly passed away recently within a day or two of each other — Kerima Polotan-Tuvera and National Artist Edith Lopez Tiempo. Both women were consummately dedicated to their craft, and their loss diminishes the ranks of those among us who believe that the care with which we write is as important as what we write about. One way or another both of them helped me out early in my writing career, for which I have been deeply thankful.

I didn’t know Kerima too well; we may have met just once or twice, very likely at a Palanca awards ceremony that she attended to accompany her daughter Kimi, herself an accomplished fictionist. Late in life she became something of a private person; in the 1970s, when she published and edited Focus magazine, she kept the literary ambitions of young writers alive. One of those was me; my first nationally published short story came out in Focus in 1974.

Whenever I get the chance to, I teach her classic short story “The Virgin” to a generation of writing students who seem to have forgotten how to handle romance and desire with both subtlety and power. Published in 1952, “The Virgin” deals with the proud but lonely figure of the spinster Miss Mijares, who finally yields to her own inner importunings in the story’s climactic finish:

“In her secret heart, Miss Mijares’ young dreams fluttered faintly to life, seeming monstrous in the rain, near this man — seeming monstrous but sweet overwhelming. I must get away, she thought wildly, but he had moved and brushed against her, and where his touch had fallen, her flesh leaped, and she recalled how his hands had looked that first day, lain tenderly on the edge of her desk and about the wooden bird (that had looked like a moving, shining dove) and she turned to him with her ruffles wet and wilted, in the dark she turned to him.”

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By any other name
By Jenny Ortuoste, ManilaStandardToday.com

The debate on Filipino language and identity remains hot as ever, the flames stoked higher recently by Ateneo de Manila University student James Soriano’s essay “Language, Learning, Identity, Privilege.”

It was incendiary and set off an explosive string of comments pro- and -anti on the Internet. I have issues with language and identity myself and have written about them here before. But Soriano’s essay, on first reading, stank of the arrogance of privilege and caste. Referring to Filipino speakers as merely the people who wash our dishes or fetch us from school is at the very least insensitive.

On a second, deeper reading – no, still nothing.

Other writers have “deconstructed” the piece and claimed to have found it “satirical” and like Mideo Cruz’s art, meant to provoke. But why ascribe depth when there is none? The work, hardly well-written to begin with, screams that it was crafted by an unformed, immature personality that reminds me of nothing more than a social climber.

Soriano’s was a straight-up statement of fact and I object to the over-readings. Take it at face value.

From all over the world, reactions poured in. Says the California Dreamer (a Pinoy living in Los Angeles): “The fellow might have a serious attitude problem, but it was not about his attitude but his proposition. There’s always privilege and entitlement, especially where access to knowledge is unequal…”

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Language, learning, identity, privilege
By James Soriano, Manila Bulletin

MANILA, August 24, 2011—English is the language of learning. I’ve known this since before I could go to school. As a toddler, my first study materials were a set of flash cards that my mother used to teach me the English alphabet.

My mother made home conducive to learning English: all my storybooks and coloring books were in English, and so were the cartoons I watched and the music I listened to. She required me to speak English at home. She even hired tutors to help me learn to read and write in English.

In school I learned to think in English. We used English to learn about numbers, equations and variables. With it we learned about observation and inference, the moon and the stars, monsoons and photosynthesis. With it we learned about shapes and colors, about meter and rhythm. I learned about God in English, and I prayed to Him in English.

Filipino, on the other hand, was always the ‘other’ subject — almost a special subject like PE or Home Economics, except that it was graded the same way as Science, Math, Religion, and English. My classmates and I used to complain about Filipino all the time. Filipino was a chore, like washing the dishes; it was not the language of learning. It was the language we used to speak to the people who washed our dishes.

We used to think learning Filipino was important because it was practical: Filipino was the language of the world outside the classroom. It was the language of the streets: it was how you spoke to the tindera when you went to the tindahan, what you used to tell your katulong that you had an utos, and how you texted manong when you needed “sundo na.”

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Communicators must stay relevant in the digital era
By Bong R. Osorio, The Philippine Star

August 22, 2011—Businesses of every configuration are evolving at an alarming rate and the phenomenon is changing the commercial environment just as fast. The breadth of these changes affects many companies, from the emergent role of social media to the morphing nature of content and the access through which corporate and product messages are delivered. In such a milieu, the challenges for communications professionals is to adapt to these changes as quickly as they occur, keeping customers, employees and other stakeholders engaged and motivated while adding an ever-expanding list of skills, tools and resources to their toolkits. In addition to the digitization of content, communicators must come to grips with a workplace that hosts four — soon to be five — generations, the need to quickly spot and act in response to issues, the truth that every employee is now a prospective communicator, and a wearing away of the wall between employees and other stakeholders.

Last week, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) brought Shel Holtz, an IABC Fellow and principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, to talk about the future of the communications profession and how one can stay relevant in the digital era. Holtz’s presentation was preceded by a talk on the Philippine digital landscape delivered by Donald Patrick Lim, managing director of MRM Worldwide. Here are a dozen pick-ups from the master class.

1. The converging trends in the digital world. There are three of them: the declining trust in traditional institutions, the ascent of word-of-mouth, and the eroding barriers to social media engagement…

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The writer within
By Butch Dalisay, The Philippine Star 

August 15, 2011—Like I mentioned last week, I’m teaching a roomful of undergraduates this semester, in a course I haven’t taken on in a long time — Introduction to Creative Writing, or CW 10 as it’s called at the University of the Philippines. What makes this particular class an even more interesting challenge is that none of my students is an English or CW major — they come from degree programs like Business Administration, Fine Arts, Marine Biology, Physics, and Psychology. I presume that they chose this course as an elective, a break from the usual; and because of that, and given UP’s tight curriculum, this will likely be the only writing or literature-related course that many of them will take.

That’s why, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I do my best to make the class a fresh and memorable experience for them; it may be a silly wish, but 20 years from now, when they’re caught up in their jobs and families, staring out windows and trying to figure where life has taken them, I’d like them to remember me and my class, to smile, and to feel empowered and revived by the option of writing a poem to make sense of things.

It may not be a great poem, and I’m under no illusion that somewhere in my classroom sits a mute, inglorious Milton, although there’s always that possibility. I do believe that in every person lies — if not the writer within — then at least one good poem or story waiting to be told, and it’s my job to get that piece out of him or her, and to tweak it to perfection, or as close as we can get to it. For many, that one shot at literary authorship will be achievement enough. For a few — a very few — it could be the start of a lifetime’s work.

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Peace, language and journalism
By Rina Jimenez-David, Philippine Daily Inquirer

BOGOTA, August 4, 2011—“FOR you, the Spanish language is the language of old and rich people, but for us, English is the language of the imperialist and the elite,” said Rosa Emilia Salamanca, coordinator of the Colombian leg of the “Comparative Learning Series” between groups of women from the Philippines and Colombia.

Salamanca was commenting on the language gap between our two groups, since none of us in the group were either old, rich, imperialists or members of the elite. But the reality was, we would have to speak in the tongues of colonialists and imperialists if we wanted to understand each other.

“Women, Peace and Security” is the theme of this exchange between two groups of 10 women each vitally interested in the intersections between gender, conflict and peace-building, and willing to see for themselves the roots of the conflicts besetting each other’s countries, and to listen to the stories of survivors, protagonists, advocates, peace-keepers, politicians and policy makers.

So the 10 of us are here in this city, in the first part of the exchange, listening first to resource persons recall the roots of the armed conflict in Colombia rooted in the displacement of peasants, the current hunger for land and exploitation of oil and mineral resources, and the complicating factor of the cocaine trade.

Later, it was the turn of the Colombian women to explain what they and their organizations have been doing to promote the role of women in peace and conflict resolution…

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A Nightmare Of My Choice
By Sara Dumaup, Manila Bulletin

MANILA, August 6, 2011—When I found an edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for only P20, I bought it right away. Of course, at the time I had no idea what Heart of Darkness was about. All I knew was that it was a classic, it was in the bargain bin, and at 72 pages, it looked like an easy read.

On the cover leaf, I wrote: An addition to my self-education, 31 March 2009. Then promptly forgot about the book for the next two years. If only I knew then how prophetic my own words would be. Or how painfully they’d bite me in the ass!

I’ve been trying to read it for over a month now. A month of frustrated reading and re-reading with nothing seeming to stick. Desperate, I’d thumb through it over meals. I’d highlight line after line until my pencils broke. I’d even read aloud to myself in between conversations—complete with an English accent!

Maybe it was my fake accent, but something about the book eluded me. I wanted so much to absorb, to understand, to grasp the world that Conrad had created. Essentially, it’s simple enough to summarize:

Written in 1899, Joseph Conrad meant for the book to be partly fictional, but mostly autobiographical. It begins with Charles Marlow on a boat on the Thames. During a lull in the work, Marlow rambles on about a journey he took up the Congo River, collecting ivory shipments for the Belgian colony. There he meets a man named Kurtz…

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The Issue: English as a second language
By Jeremy Sutcliffe, TES Magazine

August 26, 2011—Contrary to some press reports, underperformance is by no means inevitable among pupils whose first language is not English

Earlier this month the Daily Mail put the spotlight on a Bradford primary school where only four out of 417 children spoke English as their first language. Describing it as “one of Britain’s most extreme cases”, the article said the school showed how many of our cities were becoming “racially segregated”, with many pupils leading “parallel lives”.

More than 90 per cent of pupils at the school, Bradford Moor Primary, were from Pakistan and many arrived at the school “unable to speak a word of English”, claimed the article. It went on to quote local Conservative MP Philip Davies, who criticised Asian parents for allowing their children to start school “with scant knowledge of their adopted home’s language”.

The Mail reporter does herself few favours by getting her facts wrong, claiming more than half of Bradford primary pupils speak English as an additional language (EAL). In fact, the true figure is 43.5 per cent, according to the latest school census (January 2011). The figure for EAL pupils in Bradford secondary schools is 29.7 per cent.

Nationally, the number of EAL pupils has been rising steadily for more than a decade and stands at 946,580 pupils in England - 14.5 per cent of the school population. This is almost double the figure in 1997, when there were 500,000 EAL pupils.

While this rising trend is a concern for schools that have to deal with an influx of children starting reception classes without a solid grasp of English, there are two reasons why Mr Davies and the Mail are wrong to claim the language barrier is a key reason why areas like Bradford are underperforming academically…

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How I learned to stop worrying and love “bad English”
By Eric John, ImpactNottingham.com

August 20, 2011—When it comes to the English language, I turn into a purist — and I don’t just mean cringing at the odd misplaced apostrophe, but full-on, wretched ‘grammar-OCD’. I probably wouldn’t resort to text-speak even if I had life-or-death-determining seconds to contact friends and family, and any conversation in which a participant offhandedly punctuates their sentence with “innit” ends with me shunning them as if they had committed theft in an Oxfam store. So, it’s really just an accident (namely, a movie adaptation starring Halle Berry; curse you beautiful Hollywood goddess) that I ended up reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Already, from page one onwards, you learn that you are definitely not in for one of those mushy, curling-up-on-a-sofa-while-munching-a-bar-of-Galaxy-type reading experiences, and coincidentally, that Halle Barry starring in a movie is no suitable barometer for literary enjoyment. And to be honest, there were plenty of times while reading it that the temptation to put it down and never to pick it up again was almost overwhelming. It was simply out of die-hard bibliophilia (let the stereotypes ensue; if you guessed that I wear glasses, you are correct) that I could not leave the novel unfinished.

Now, let’s get to the plot, because you’ve probably been wondering for quite a while. Essentially, Their Eyes Were Watching God introduces us to early 20th century America through the eyes of its black protagonist, Janie Crawford. The book starts where it also ends, with a childless, thrice-married Janie facing an onslaught of gossip about the circumstances of her third husband’s death…

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Which words should be thrown out of the English language?
By Ed West Politics Last updated: August 23rd, 2011

August 23, 2011—In the news this week – experts at Collins Dictionary have compiled a list of words that have fallen out of use in the past half-century.

Among them are “wittol” – a man who tolerates his wife’s unfaithfulness; “drysalter,” a dealer in certain chemical products and foods; and “alienism,” the study and treatment of mental illness.

While I think the English language can do without “succedaneum” or “woolfell”, and words always come and go, what has been tragic is the way that some other words have been zombified, changed to something altogether different to their real meaning. And while this happens naturally in language – “artificial,” “awful” and “nice,” for instance, all once had completely different meanings – what’s different is that these changes were deliberately made, by institutions and individuals, with the aim of distorting the political discourse. As the saying goes, 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a manual.

Last year I wrote about words that had evolved completely different (and often contradictory) meanings, and which should officially be on the banned list, among them:

“Clients” – to mean criminals (when described by members of the justice system).
“Diversity” – Lots of middle-class people of various ethnic backgrounds who all went to the same schools, the same universities, watch the same programmes, read the same books and vote the same way.

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Butt out America! Stop Americanisms from invading our language!
By Matthew Engel, DailyMail.co.uk

August 7, 2011—Hey, you guys! Listen up! Remember the Say No to the Get-Go campaign that started in The Mail on Sunday a year ago to try to curb the use of American vocabulary in British English? It has suddenly got a bit more serious.

Last month I was invited to give a talk on the Radio 4 series Four Thought. I said I wanted to bang on about Americanisms. The BBC managers involved had their doubts about whether the subject would engage their audience, but eventually gave way.

Well, in terms of audience reach, this 15-minute programme – in the middle of a warm midsummer evening – will not go down in radio history as a rival to Neville Chamberlain’s of war on Germany or the Terry Wogan Show.

Taking liberties: Have Brits lost their grasp on the difference between our form of English and America's?

But a version of what I said appeared on the BBC website, and got more than three million page impressions, which apparently is every bit as impressive as it sounds. And from there things went a little crazy.

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A challenge to Britain’s new “Speak English” rule
By Patrick Cox, TheWorld.org

August 1, 2011—Imagine you’re married to a Chinese citizen. You want to move to China to live with your spouse. But the Chinese government won’t let you because you don’t speak Chinese.

In reality, there is no such language requirement in China. Nor is there one for immigrants to the United States. The only language proficiency test in the United States is for citizenship.

But there is now such a test in Britain.

It has been introduced by Britain’s Conservative-led government, which has vowed to tighten immigration and reverse policies of multiculturalism.

“Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we’ve encouraged different cultures to live separate lives apart from each other, and apart from the mainstream,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron in May. “We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.”

Cameron’s government has introduced a new English language proficiency test for some would-be immigrants.

Anyone applying for a visa for long-term residency— roughly equivalent to a U.S. green card— will now be tested to make sure they have a basic grasp of English.

As a result, Rashida Chapti, a naturalized British citizen, cannot get a visa for her 58-year-old husband, who, like her, was born in India.

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When I didn’t know owt about posh speak
By Vicki Woods, Telegraph.co.uk

August 5, 2011—Tonight on Radio 4 I shall mostly be listening to Melvyn Bragg as he wanders down the routes of the English language yet again. He is doing one of his routine checks on whether or not Received Pronunciation (RP, aka BBC English, Standard English or the Queen’s ditto) has finally come to the end of its 400-year reign in the southern half of these islands.

The Blessed Melv has trod these paths before, but I never mind the repetition because I am a fellow Northerner, whose own speech has changed (softened, you might say, or even “mellowed”) over the years as much as his has. And I am as fascinated by RP as he is.

I like it. I don’t see why one shouldn’t prefer one regional variation of a national language over another. An Italian sculptress I met at a friend’s house near Lucca told me to listen hard to the prevailing accent if I wanted to improve my Italian pronunciation. “Molto, molto Toscano,” she said. “The best.”

Of course, the problem with RP is that it doesn’t strike people as regional variation but rather a social one. That’s because they don’t notice the difference between boring old straight vanilla RP (which Jeremy Paxman speaks) and URP, where U means Upper-class, as it has done since Nancy Mitford wrote her essay.

I love listening to real, proper URP when it pops out of Radio 4 occasionally – Lady Antonia Fraser reading her memoir of her husband Harold Pinter, for example, or Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, talking about hens or Mitfords.

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Debate: Should U.S. kids learn Chinese?
BusinessWeek.com

PRO: A Business Plus
By Patrick Supanc, Pearson

We live in a global and interconnected economy and we need to prepare our kids for it.

That preparation includes such skills as speaking outstanding English, since English remains a key language in global business, science, and technology. We must continue to address the alarmingly low levels of English proficiency we see in many of our students. Only 30 percent of U.S. students are proficient English-language readers, according to state test data.

We also need to prepare our kids to navigate a global workplace in which knowledge of languages and cultures other than our own will provide a key competitive advantage for higher-paying jobs.

China will inevitably be a major economic, political, and cultural force in our children’s future. We should prepare our students to engage, collaborate, and compete with their Chinese peers…

CON: A Wrongheaded Expense
By Matthew Stewart, Millburn Parents Against Charter Schools

The language of business is money, not Mandarin. Only a small percentage of Americans currently speak Mandarin, even in the business world. This has not prevented us from doing business with China. In fact, our liberal trade with China has spiraled out of control to the detriment of our own economy.

The U.S. government owes Chinese investors more than $1 trillion, a result of their heavy investment in our debt. In addition, our manufacturing base has been replaced by outsourced labor and domestic unemployment now exceeds 9 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our fiscal deficit has surpassed $1 trillion per year and our nation’s total debt has jumped to more than $14 trillion. We should not be using scarce tax dollars to teach American students to speak Mandarin.

China also practices mercantile trade policies, including a pegged exchange rate, artificially deflated currency, and a notoriously lax regulatory environment. Teaching Mandarin will only provide extra incentives for U.S. companies to continue supporting these irresponsible policies…

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How many English learners are there in China?
Economist.com

NEW YORK, September 1, 1011—“Seeing  Red in China,” a blog by an American teacher there, makes a provocative argument. Behind the eye-catching number that 300m people either are learning or have learned English in China is a depressing reality. Classes are extremely poor, the teachers themselves not fluent in English. Rote memorisation is the norm—a fact Tom, the blogger, buttresses with his own experience of reading Chinese texts out loud, for hours every day, at Beijing's specialist university for foreign languages.  He says he was never once asked to produce his own sentences. Shocking if true.

By the by, he makes another provocative point: that rural literacy in Chinese (not English) is in fact far worse than authorities say. Farmers simply don't use the written language enough to maintain their knowledge of thousands of characters.

I don't have anything like the experience to judge, but Victor Mair, who does and who passed it on to me, believes it rings quite true.  Any Sinophones or Sinophiles in the audience care to comment or disagree?

(A long discussion thread follows)

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Language don’t mean nothin’ no more
By Andrew Nemethy, VTDigger.org

August 26, 2011—The call caught me while reading at the breakfast table. The female voice that greeted me on the phone was insipidly chirpy and relentlessly upbeat, far more than anyone has a right to be early in the morning. Needless to say, it was a recording.

“Hello, this is Charlene. Please hold the line for an important message from Survey RC.”

I have a policy (we set policies in my house, though I get to break them whenever it suits my purposes) to never deal with recorded phone calls. So I hung up and went back to my reading and cup of java, slightly put out at the interruption.

But the call got me to thinking. No, not about the fact that I’d bet my morning coffee her name was not Charlene, or whether anybody in their right mind actually holds on after a recorded message.

I was wondering this: Do words actually mean anything anymore? And also: George Orwell sure put his finger on the situation, even back from his vantage point more than half a century ago. (More on him in a bit).

In more ways than you can count, the English language has become unhinged from its meaningful moorings, sort of like a sailboat tossed like a salad in the uncertain bowl of words, if you get my adrift.

To put it another way, we have devolved into an utterancy of gibberish. I conceive an utterancy as a sort of fiefdom or failed state – of mind – of the deviously verbally lost.

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Native-language teaching advances learning of English
By Ray Muñoz, The Californian

August 26, 2011—Seven out of 10 children who enter kindergarten in the Alisal Union School District do not know how to speak English. Having to learn in an unknown language slows cognitive development. The research studies, Hakuta et al, have conducted in school districts successful at meeting the needs of English learners ascertain, "... oral proficiency takes 3 to 5 years to develop and academic English proficiency can take 4 to 7 years."

Most English learners in the Alisal district are mainstreamed into "English-only" instruction by the end of first grade.

This denies these children the best vehicle to acquire "academic English proficiency."

At the end of third grade, English Learners in monolingual English classrooms compared to English Learners in well-structured bilingual classrooms score at about the same level in English achievement tests.

After fourth grade, students in bilingual classrooms begin to creep ahead; after fifth grade, they are about a year ahead and by sixth grade the increase is exponential — they are two years ahead of EL students in monolingual English classrooms.

At the end of sixth grade, EL students who obtain their instruction in strong and sound bilingual classrooms score at parity with dominant English speakers, and in some cases, surpass them in English achievement tests…

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English: The inescapable language
By John Steele Gordon, American.com

August 18, 2011—Native speakers of English have a great advantage. Learning English at our mothers’ knee is almost like being born able to do algebra.

One night years ago when I was visiting Buenos Aires, I had dinner with an acquaintance. We were speaking in English because he spoke my language far better than I did his. I apologized for my inadequacy in Spanish and complimented him on his bilingualism.

He replied, “That’s understandable. After all, English is so easy to learn and Spanish is very difficult.”

I was stunned. In school, Spanish had been regarded as the gut course among foreign languages, far easier than French, German, or Latin. And English, at least among English-speakers, was thought very difficult, with its irregular spelling and pronunciation given as the usual reason. I have never tested this hypothesis, but I bet every culture regards its native tongue as difficult to learn. After all, foreigners always struggle with it, so it must be difficult, right?

Not necessarily. Most people are oblivious to the oddities and weirdnesses of their native tongue—as well as its simplicities—for precisely the same reason that fish are oblivious to water. My Argentinian friend, for instance, had no idea that Spanish spelling and pronunciation are absolutely regular. To hear a Spanish word is to know how to spell it and to see one is to know how to pronounce it. There are no spelling bees in Spanish-speaking schools because there are no bad spellers among native speakers of the language.

So, is English actually hard to learn? Well, yes and no.

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English: The inescapable language
By John Steele Gordon, American.com

August 18, 2011—Native speakers of English have a great advantage. Learning English at our mothers’ knee is almost like being born able to do algebra.

One night years ago when I was visiting Buenos Aires, I had dinner with an acquaintance. We were speaking in English because he spoke my language far better than I did his. I apologized for my inadequacy in Spanish and complimented him on his bilingualism.

He replied, “That’s understandable. After all, English is so easy to learn and Spanish is very difficult.”

I was stunned. In school, Spanish had been regarded as the gut course among foreign languages, far easier than French, German, or Latin. And English, at least among English-speakers, was thought very difficult, with its irregular spelling and pronunciation given as the usual reason. I have never tested this hypothesis, but I bet every culture regards its native tongue as difficult to learn. After all, foreigners always struggle with it, so it must be difficult, right?

Not necessarily. Most people are oblivious to the oddities and weirdnesses of their native tongue—as well as its simplicities—for precisely the same reason that fish are oblivious to water. My Argentinian friend, for instance, had no idea that Spanish spelling and pronunciation are absolutely regular. To hear a Spanish word is to know how to spell it and to see one is to know how to pronounce it. There are no spelling bees in Spanish-speaking schools because there are no bad spellers among native speakers of the language.

So, is English actually hard to learn? Well, yes and no.

Full story...

English: The inescapable language
By John Steele Gordon, American.com

August 18, 2011—Native speakers of English have a great advantage. Learning English at our mothers’ knee is almost like being born able to do algebra.

One night years ago when I was visiting Buenos Aires, I had dinner with an acquaintance. We were speaking in English because he spoke my language far better than I did his. I apologized for my inadequacy in Spanish and complimented him on his bilingualism.

He replied, “That’s understandable. After all, English is so easy to learn and Spanish is very difficult.”

I was stunned. In school, Spanish had been regarded as the gut course among foreign languages, far easier than French, German, or Latin. And English, at least among English-speakers, was thought very difficult, with its irregular spelling and pronunciation given as the usual reason. I have never tested this hypothesis, but I bet every culture regards its native tongue as difficult to learn. After all, foreigners always struggle with it, so it must be difficult, right?

Not necessarily. Most people are oblivious to the oddities and weirdnesses of their native tongue—as well as its simplicities—for precisely the same reason that fish are oblivious to water. My Argentinian friend, for instance, had no idea that Spanish spelling and pronunciation are absolutely regular. To hear a Spanish word is to know how to spell it and to see one is to know how to pronounce it. There are no spelling bees in Spanish-speaking schools because there are no bad spellers among native speakers of the language.

So, is English actually hard to learn? Well, yes and no.

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Bilingual youth: Language demands of a globalized future
By Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

August 17, 2011—For some time, I have been thinking about what education might look like if we truly wanted to build on the linguistic and cultural assets of bilingual youth.

I'm referring to youth who used to be called "Limited English Proficient" students in school. Now they're labeled "English Learners," but schools still tend to view them as "limited."

We might ask: who is more limited -- those who are growing up with two languages, both in formation, or those who only have access to one code?

Many English Learners use their skills in the English they are learning, and in their home language, to speak, read, write and do things for others. They serve as "language brokers" for their families -- as well as for their teachers and many monolingual English speakers.

Arguably, these kids possess skills that are of great value in an increasingly globalized and intercultural world: the ability to talk to and mediate between speakers of different languages and people from different cultures. Moreover, these skills are not just of value for living in such a world, but for creating the kind of world that I, for one, hope to see.

One day I watched as a 14-year-old daughter of immigrants from Guanajuato, Mexico translated a letter for her mother. She didn't read the text aloud in English; she simply looked at the page and rendered it in Spanish for her mom. Then the phone rang, and she fielded a call from the doctor's office and set up an appointment for her mom.

Maria's skills as a language broker have developed over time. When she was younger, she used to read English texts aloud and then translate them, sentence by sentence; she still does this with some texts that are particularly hard…

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English is never plain
By Ovid Vickers, The Neshoba Democrat

August 10, 2011—"I spoke to him in plain English, but he didn't understand a word I said." We have all heard this remark, but the truth is the English language is never plain and is often difficult to understand, especially by someone who is not a native speaker of the language. Now, the question arises: why is that so?

The use of language is very complicated, and the origins of language remain a mystery. We do know that some languages are related and that one language may borrow from another. On the other hand, there are languages whose origins cannot be traced.

In English, one word can have five or six different meanings. These words are technically known as homonyms. These homonyms can cause a great deal of confusion for someone attempting to learn the language. Take for instance the word "fine." The word "fine" can mean powdery, cloudless (as a fine day), a penalty, delicate, or excellent.

To take this subject further, consider the word "sharp." Here are some examples of its various meanings. A "sharp" person has a good, keen mind. A person who dresses well is often called a "sharp dresser." A person who is "sharp" would never wear a dress or a necklace that is too "loud." A razor blade is "sharp" and so is a knife.

Then there is "clipping." Clipping occurs when we shorten a word or cut a word in half. Think about these words that have been clipped, "phone" for telephone, "flu" for influenza, "home ec" for home economics, "gym" for gymnasium.

Anyone who has completed the seventh grade knows that words in the English language are divided into eight categories known as the eight parts of speech…

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The English left their mark—and their language
By John Gurda, Journal Sentinel Online
 
August 6, 2011—The Fourth of July 2011 passed without incident in rural England. Londoners gathered to unveil a statue of Ronald Reagan, a 10-foot bronze with every strand of his famous hair in place, but in the countryside there was absolutely nothing to remind you that it was Independence Day. At the North Muskham pub, our lunch stop for the day, the landlord said, "Well, we lost then, didn't we? Nothing to celebrate there."

The innkeeper's ancestors may have lost the Revolutionary War, but the truth is that they scored a much larger victory. The reason I wanted to visit England this summer was, I told friends, to figure out why we speak English here in America, when the vast majority of our ancestors came from somewhere else. How did that diminutive island nation impose its linguistic will - and so many of its legal and social traditions - on our entire continent?

What a remarkable solvent the English language has been, dissolving other tongues so completely that we think of it as naturally our own. This grandson of Polish and Norwegian immigrants spent his college years as an English major without once noticing the irony. It was, on one level, the literature of an alien culture - a conqueror's culture - that I was studying with such avid interest.

Flying home over settlements like Val d'Or and Jonquière in Francophone Quebec, I was reminded that it could have turned out quite differently. Wisconsin, in fact, was part of New France decades before England planted its flag in the American interior. In South America, too, Portugal and Spain split an entire continent between them, with the result that Brazilians still speak Portuguese and nearly everyone else south of the border converses in Spanish.

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Poverty of  “love” in the English language
By Thomas Raphael-Nakos, Bettendorf.com

August 12, 2011—In the 2002 film Evelyn, Irishman Desmond Doyle is devastated when his wife and the mother of his three children abandons the family.

Doyle, a real person on whom the film is based, is further confounded when the Irish courts and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland place the children in church run orphanages.

The film follows Desmond’s courageous legal battle to have his children returned to him and his home. Evelyn, who is Desmond’s daughter, testified at trial and in standing by truth and in exhibiting her deep love for her father, influenced the Irish Supreme Court to rule in Desmond’s favor.

When Desmond initially meets with his lawyer, the subject of Desmond’s love for his children and their love for him comes up. A problem Desmond faces is that in the English language there is only one word for love.

In contrast, Greeks have numerous words to express the varieties of love human beings experience.

Among the words used in Greece are the following:

Agape (ἀγάπη), which means unconditional love. It can express a general affection or deeper sense of "true love." Agape is often used in the Christian scriptures to express a love that is sacrificial.

Éros (ἔρως). Éros is passionate love, and it includes sensual desire and longing though it is not limited to a love that is sexual in nature…

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India gained independence from the British but prosperity with English
By Sanjaya Baru, Business Standard

NEW DELHI, August 15, 2011—At Oxford in 1931 Mahatma Gandhi was asked, “How far would you cut India off from the Empire?” He replied: “From the Empire, completely; from the British nation not at all, if I want India to gain and not to grieve.”

India’s struggle for freedom, which was also a “national” movement for the creation of an Indian Republic on the Indian subcontinent, sought the end of British rule, but not the end of the use of the English language.

No language spoken by the pre-European inhabitants of this vast subcontinent could become the language of communication and governance across the length and breadth of India. So English survived and thrived. To be sure, the English language – or the many variants of it – that is spoken in India, through many and varied tongues, is not the English language that the British left behind. It is not a language that many would easily comprehend in England!
Yet, like Australian English, American English and Singaporean English, there is an Indian English. Indeed, a Bengali English, a Tamil, Telugu, Malayali, Punjabi and many other variants of English that would often require translation when two Indians converse. Every Bengali would know what exactly “pheesh” means, but no Malayali would “zimbly” understand it! I knew exactly what my English teacher meant when he said “Jed”, but would you?

In what manner did Gandhiji believe India would “gain” from a continued association with Britain? Clearly, Gandhiji had a good appreciation of what was happening in the world and what was likely to happen as the 20th century progressed. He, like Jawaharlal Nehru and many other leaders of the Indian national movement, had benefitted personally in terms of his own professional training in various institutions in Britain. Gandhiji had grasped the essence of an idea that Sir Winston Churchill was to articulate much later when the latter said, “the empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

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A common language
By Nitesh Dhawan, Russia Profile

August 11, 2011—Modern metropolitan cities like Moscow have been witnessing a steady rise in English language acquisition, especially among children and young adults. In the corporate world, English is not only a welcomed addition to one’s skill set, but is also quickly becoming a necessary prerequisite for officials in mid and high-level positions. Increasingly, state policies and directives are requiring federal officials like politicians, bureaucrats and diplomats to be able to converse in a foreign language, of which English is preferred and English will also become a requirement for newly hired civil servants starting 2012.

Examples of the steady expansion of English language into Russian life can be found all over Russia. In Sochi, for example, pensioners who volunteered to partake in servicing the upcoming Olympic Games are taking up English lessons. By 2014, thousands of such volunteers will be ready to show their city to visiting foreigners in their native, or at least a shared, language.

For many students of English in Russia, the process of language learning begins in elementary school. “I feel more comfortable understanding English. It helps me browse the Internet and understand games and foreign movies if there is no Russian translation,” said Daniil, a seventh grade student at an athletics-focused school in Moscow that nonetheless keeps English on the curriculum and prepares pupils to speak the language at a high level.

While casual interest in conversational English draws in many new students, Russians are also increasingly turning to English lessons to hone professional skills like maintaining business correspondences and giving presentations…

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Language of choice
By Annie Zaidi, DNAIndia.com

July 24, 2011—The hall darkened. The screen lit up and I read the title in both English and Devnagri, feeling the different shapes of the alphabets on my tongue. This is a tangible pleasure for me and I kept staring until I realized that there was a third script on the screen. Nastalik.

I was so surprised that I forgot to focus on the next few frames, although it wasn’t so remarkable after all. Even until the 1990s, film titles routinely appeared in three scripts to cater to those educated in any of three languages — English, Hindi, Urdu. Yet, I’d forgotten that Urdu also belongs up there on the screen.

And now I’m thinking about it, I can’t remember the last time I noticed film credits roll in Devnagri. In fact, I too have switched to the Roman script when writing in Hindustani. And perhaps it’s better this way. Perhaps it doesn’t matter because all civilisations move from one script to another, one dialect to another. That’s how Urdu got made, a language that came striding in from the battlefield into bazaars, used first by rough-tongued soldiers and then by ferociously refined writers.

But film writers no longer write in Urdu. Film posters no longer advertise themselves in Urdu. Credits certainly do not roll in either Devnagri or Nastalik.

But what of audiences who have not made a smooth transition to Romanised Hindustani? Is there an automatic assumption that these people are illiterate — and therefore cannot read the credits anyway — or that they are uninterested in films?

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Shah meets Shaw
By Manjula Kolanu, TheHindu.com

July 25, 2011—For any lover of English language, Bernard Shaw ranks right up there among humourists. He is also favourite among theatre artistes, by virtue of his wit, his unique take on relationships, command over the language and the felicity with which his plays and stories can be adapted for the stage.

Combine Shaw with English theatre in India and one of the first names that comes to mind is the Naseeruddin Shahs' Motley group.

Clearly Shaw is a favourite with the Mumbai-based theatre group. Though Motley debuted with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and staged Ionesco along with Ismat Chugtai and Manto, they have returned to Shaw time and again.

After Don Juan in Hell, Androcles and the Lion and Dear Liar – the last staged in Hyderabad too – Motley brings to Hyderabad its latest production By George, a collection of three short pieces by Shaw directed by Naseerudding Shah.

In less than two hours, the comical satire ‘By George' presents ‘Village Wooing' its longest centrepiece, a one-act play How He Lied to Her Husband and a poem, “English Pronunciation.”

The two plays are affectionate satires on the processes of wooing and wedding, and their aftermath. Both reflect Shaw's rapier-sharp wit and his unique take on these rites-of-passage.

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Science of language learning
By Surabhi Pillai, AhmedabadMirror.com

July 25, 2011—Good morning! As Indians and as second language learners of English, we should be very happy. The other day, I had the pleasure of interacting with some international students and, to my delight, I found out that Indians are very good users of English. Yes, even those, among us, who are not adept at it, are perfectly comprehensible. This, of course, is something to smile about…

A few queries now:

Shyam wants to know the meaning of “second language.” He says that I have used the term very often without explaining it.

Apologies, Shyam! Here’s the answer:

Every person has a mother tongue (like your mother tongue could be Gujarati) which he or she grows up interacting in. But in school one might have to learn another language. In India we learn English as the second language. Thus, the language other than the mother tongue that one learns is known as the “second language.”

Language learning is easy for some and difficult for the others, some are gifted learners and can pick up several languages; such a person who knows several languages is a “linguist.” “Linguistics,” on the other hand, is the scientific study of language.

The study of language includes the study of phonology—the sound system, morphology—the structure of words, syntax—the combination of words into sentences, semantics—the ways in which sounds and meanings are related, and the lexicon or mental dictionary of words.

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The valley’s paper tigers
By Sameer Arshad, Times of India

July 24, 2011—Syed Rafiudin Bukhari taught English for three decades before launching a media group that published dailies in English and Urdu. But he wanted to do something else - start newspapers in Kashmiri, his mother tongue. Bukhari met naysayers at every stage who dissuaded him from launching one, saying Kashmiri language was dying and a paper in it would be commercially unviable. But he went ahead and launched a multicolored weekly Sangarmal in February 2006 that did well to become the first Kashmiri newspaper to survive for more than two years.

There was not a single newspaper in Kashmiri before 2006 despite a burgeoning market with over 400 dailies. Sangarmal went from strength to strength and was re-launched as a daily on July 9. Another Kashmiri newspaper, Kehwat, followed suit two days later.

"It's a major milestone in the language's renaissance," says Bukhari, adding Sangarmal had brought out a special 100-page edition in July 2007 that also carried letters from two non-Kashmiris studying the language at the Oriental Languages Department of Patiala's Punjabi University. "The two, from Russia and (India's) northeast, wrote that our edition had greatly improved their Kashmiri language skills."

The letters were among many inspirations that pushed Sangarmal's re-launch. Then there was the enthusiasm from Kashmiri readers abroad. "We got overwhelming response from our online readers in countries like the US and Europe."

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English ascent: American accent versus Indian accent

July 23, 2011—There is periodic angst in English speaking parts of the world about the Americanisation of the language, not in small measure helped by the increased reliance of a new generation on the ease of spellcheck over the tedium of acquiring a proficiency over a sizeable vocabulary. It is with a considerable degree of resignation that older speakers and writers of the language have acceded to the use of color over colour, taken elevators to apartments not lifts to flats, and realised that zee is not a comic Continental pronunciation of an article of speech but the last letter of the common alphabet.

Even in India, if we overlook the minor inaccuracy of calling a school year a “grade” instead of a “standard” or “class,” accept “math” instead of “maths” and disregard the offense of using “s” where “c” would have been more appropriate, some merit can be perceived in this trans-Atlantic tilt.

Ameringlish's disdain for prepositions (“Let's meet Monday”) and its proactive turning of nouns into verbs (which then “impact” instantly) and guillotining of extra letters (program, traveler, mustache), for instance, all end up saving time and space in speech, emails, newspaper columns and other modes of communication even if they irk grammarians and purists.

It must also be said that though the rise of what is also called Globish has seen a definite inclination worldwide for terms such as “speak with” instead of “speak to,” “I'm good” instead of “I'm fine” and “going forward” instead of “from now on” or “looking ahead,” it might be all to the good if it gets everyone on the same page eventually. Besides, if the numbers and soft power continue to go our way, there is no doubt that Indian ascendency over this language will be preponed too. Just check the Oxford Dictionary for proof of the inevitable. Mind it.

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The world in Bangla
By Poulomi Banerjee and Sudeshna Banerjee, The Telegraph

July 17, 2011—Over the past month and a half, the city and the districts have been plastered with hoardings announcing the launch of Discovery Channel in Bengali.

The channel launched its six-hour Bengali feed in prime time from 6pm to midnight on April 15. The feed eventually became 24 hours from June 1. West Bengal, as it is, contributes seven per cent to Discovery Channel’s total viewership and is among its top five priority markets.

Bengali was added to Discovery’s language bouquet after Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. It has led to a great adventure.

“Amay ektu joriye dhoro toh (Kindly embrace me),” says a sturdy Caucasian man, just rescued from the high seas, approaching another man on the deck with arms wide open. But no romantic overtone is intended in the show on whale hunters. One wonders what the original request was.

“Tough bugger,” says a sailor about his boat in the same programme, in its English version. His Bengali avatar says: “Etar bhalo dom achhey.”

But if the channel can ignore the nuances of language — well, broad meanings too — most viewers aren’t complaining. Going local has paid rich dividends. “The average ratings of Discovery in West Bengal witnessed a rise of 20 per cent after the launch of the six-hour Bengali feed,” says Rahul Johri, senior vice-president and general manager-South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific. Some glitches remain, but Discovery says it tries to take care of the Bengali. “The dubbed scripts and tapes go for multiple quality and technical checks with the highest-rated language consultants in India,” says Johri. The results are better than Nat Geo’s efforts with Bengali.

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“Chutney meri, ketchup teri”
By Vijay Nambisan

Even a purist recognizes that language is an organic, dynamic entity, whose growth or decline it is almost impossible to check in any way. English in India has raised the hackles of practically everyone who has had anything to do with it. Either it is risible, or it is elitist. But now, as a more self-confident (if also self-conscious) nation since 1991, what do we make of the phenomenon called Hinglish?

This book, Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish, the proceeds of a conference in Mumbai two years ago, is an excellent first step towards understanding Hinglish, what it represents and those who represent it. Broadly speaking, the writers and scholars here are somewhat dismayed by Hinglish; the linguists are excited; the filmmakers and admen say, naturally, that they are only reflecting the reality; those not from North India decry the hegemony of Hindi; and the younger participants in the conference take it as a matter of course, while resisting the easy correlation that Hinglish equals Indian youth.

There is not space to dwell on each paper as it deserves, so I shall make a quick overflight, with a fell swoop now and then. Harish Trivedi is at his acerbic best in his Foreword, quoting a Hinglish ghazal from 1887, questioning Rushdie's credentials as a Hindi speaker and artfully destabilising Ezekiel's “Very Indian Poems in Indian English” (which I've never found funny) with the question, “Are his other poems in British English then?” He also asks if Hinglish is English in Hindi or Hindi in English, and raises the pertinent point that chutney is a spice, not the main course. (“Chutnefied English” was Rushdie's coinage.) Later in the book, Rahul Kansal insists Hinglish is a result of the ‘ketchupisation' of Hindi rather than the ‘chutnefication' of English. He has a point.

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Hindi bashers to buffs—Tamil students pick central language courses
By Basant Kumar Mohanty, Telegraph.India.com

NEW DELHI, June 27—A few months ago, the then M. Karunanidhi government set the Centre a condition for opening Navodaya Vidyalayas in Tamil Nadu.

It was ready to provide land for these schools, the DMK government said, but only if they began teaching in English and Tamil and not in Hindi.

The Union human resource development ministry did not agree and dropped the proposal. Navodaya Vidyalayas continue to exist in all the states and Union territories except Tamil Nadu.

Yet the current trend of Tamil Nadu students increasingly choosing to learn Hindi, with some even opting for Hindi as the medium of instruction, appears to make nonsense of the erstwhile DMK government’s stand.

More than four decades after the DMK rode an anti-Hindi agitation to power in Tamil Nadu, it seems the state’s people are increasingly jettisoning their perceived hostility towards India’s dominant language.

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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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Pakistanis thriving in Afghan market
By Ahmad Fraz Khan, The Dawn
 
KABUL, July 5, 2011—With the Americans and their subsidiary companies – construction, supplies, telecom etc. – now running the show, Afghanistan has emerged as another labor market for the Pakistanis.

Security in Afghanistan is precarious and even Kabul wears the look of a war zone. The Afghan officials waste no opportunity to show their dislike, even hatred, for anything Pakistani. Yet underneath the political tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the market appears to define and rule the relationship between Pakistani labor and their employers in Afghanistan. There are, according to unofficial estimates, over 70,000 Pakistanis working in different sectors – hotels, telecom and banking – and some are even running printing presses.

According to the Pakistanis working in and around Kabul, two factors – dollarization of the Afghan economy and prevalence of English language – have opened the Afghan market to labor from Pakistan.

The Americans, one way or the other, are pumping over $100 billion into Afghanistan. “Even if three to four per cent of this money trickles down to a common man, it is more than enough to lift his economy,” says Haris Ali, country head of Aircom International in Afghanistan. Artificially pegged to dollar, the Afghani has improved to 45 Afghanis to a dollar; meaning that an Afghani is almost worth two Pakistani rupees. This exchange rate, though artificial as per economists’ claims, has become major attraction for the Pakistani labor, he concludes.

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Google+ upstages Facebook
By Toby Shapshak, TimesLive.co.za

July 3, 2011—Like. That little word. Right now it’s the most powerful word in the English language. Not just English, every language that Facebook is published in.

It’s the little word that nearly 700million Facebookers use to, well, like something on the world’s largest online community.

With one word, or the gesture it entails, you can register your vote. It’s just a little nudge to say you approve. It's not as committal as leaving a comment. It’s just one click of the mouse, one tap of the touchscreen.

It is Facebook’s secret weapon. You like something. The cloud-based software robots that are the Internet tell you what your friends liked. You go look. And Like!

It’s a popularity contest. It is like friggin’ high school all over again.

That like button is seemingly a better referral system than the almighty word-of-mouth. You can even organise an Arab Spring on it, apparently. Even if its executives have conceded what we already knew: Facebook’s role was a little overblown.

But you helped to overthrow a few corrupt dictators in the north of Africa just with that one mouse click. Isn’t technology great? Or so the mythology goes.

It’s usually high food prices, autocratic tyrants who have overstayed their welcome by several decades, and an unusual catalyst that spark the tinder house. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, it was a misread press statement that declared the border crossings open “with immediate effect.”

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Accidental tourist encounters language barrier
By Stephanie Katz, Timeslive.co.za

June 26, 2011—I’d been learning two Spanish phrases a day for two months in preparation for the 14 days of freedom I’d been granted by the good people who usually chained me to the desk.

It mattered little that two of those days would be devoted to kicking it cattle class on an aeroplane from the ’50s; nor was I concerned that another seven would be monopolized by the very American family vacation that I’d managed to avoid for the past four years by living in Cape Town.

In fact, I was even excited to see my parents . and my parents’ friends . and my parents’ friends’ children . AND my parents’ friends’ children’s children. I’d even learned a Spanish phrase in my eagerness, “Otra cerveza por favor.” (Another beer please).

First stop, Valencia. Neither a tourist hot spot nor off the beaten path, Spain’s third-largest city falls somewhere in between, and consequently has all the trappings of a mediocre middle child.

Luckily for us, though, our randomly selected holiday coincided with Las Fallas, or the festival of giant demonic carnival floats and three-year-olds with cherry bombs.

The festival lasts five days; the first four are devoted to the construction of ninots (floats) by each neighbourhood…

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Language skills no piece of cake
By Matt Hodges, China Daily

June 26, 2011—What annoyed me the most about Avatar—aapart from its lame attempt to go 3-D —was hearing Sam Worthington’s character describe learning the language of the Na’vi as something easy and routine. It’s just about memorizing words, he says, whereas most adults his age would argue that getting bilingual this late in the day sounds more like the precious mineral they are trying to rid the planet Pandora of: “unobtainium.”

Granted, there are people, like former marine Jake Scully, who’s not exactly what you call an ordinary learner. The guy can ride phoenix-like aliens on his first attempt. It took me longer to figure out how to turn on my washing machine.

But for the vast majority of us, it will never be as easy to process vast landscapes of new information post-puberty as it was before we had hair sprouting in the most bewildering of places.

Apparently they call this benchmark age the Critical Period Hypothesis, and it may be related to the delayed development of the pre-frontal cortex in young children. Or maybe it’s just that, as you get older, fast cars and fast women are a lot more appealing than playing hangman.

I certainly noticed the difference. Even though I can recall tons of random and useless French vocabulary from junior-school tests, it took me three weeks to remember the words for “how much” in Mandarin at age 30…

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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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Cross-cultural boundaries of information
By Kate Elwood, The Daily Yomiuri

August 16, 2011—As an applied linguist with an interest in cross-cultural issues, I always keep an ear out for anecdotes in which someone is startled by the actions or utterances of a person from another culture. As a non-Japanese living in Japan, I find that I hear more of such accounts of bafflement and mystification from other non-Japanese, usually those who have only been here a few years or less. This is most likely because these newcomers to Japan may be frequently faced with a variety of unexpected occurrences, sometimes even on a daily basis. At the same time, they may also feel more comfortable expressing their surprise to a fellow foreigner, anticipating a common take on the situation, compared to how a Japanese person might feel when speaking to me about things that they find strange but which I may find customary.

Naturally, though, Japanese people are sometimes also taken aback by cultural differences when coming into contact with non-Japanese, and I am always eager to hear these narratives of confusion as well.

There is one cultural difference that appears to equally surprise Japanese and non-Japanese, which linguist Akio Kamio has termed "territory of information."

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Where are Tokyo’s English magazines now?
By Bruce Rutledge, CNNGo.com

July 22, 2011—You should excuse Greg Starr for waxing nostalgic. After all, as editor in chief of Tokyo Journal during the first half of the 1990s, he presided over an age of hard-hitting, irreverent and money-losing local journalism that would be forever upended by the Internet.

He was editor in 1992 when the magazine published a piece by James Bailey called “The Incredible Inflating Man,” which revealed TV talent Dave Spector’s penchant for inflating his resumé.

The magazine ran investigative pieces on the plight of Filipino laborers, the murder of a Thai hostess and revelations of HIV-contaminated blood in government-run blood banks, and a subsequent bureaucratic cover-up.

“As much as I like the blogosphere and think it has a hugely important place in communications -- as proven with the recent earthquake -- I've never found any local journalism on Japan like some of those stories I've mentioned,” Starr tells CNNGo.

Tokyo Journal was popular, but it didn’t make money. “What a lot of people forget is that none of the sales-based English-language magazines ever made money,” Starr says.

“They existed solely because there was a wealthy publisher with an ego who was talked into it by some eager young foreigner or a foreign-owned company who used it to promote other parts of their business, such as creative and editorial production, or there was some other person unconcerned about losses in that business.”

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Examining university English entrance exams
By Mike Guest, The Daily Yomiuri

It’s easy to find commentary about university English entrance exams. The Internet is full of prospective and past students, as well as teachers, going over the minutiae of just about every such test in the country. A lot of criticism of these exams can also be found—much of it justified—as many are poorly written. After all, many committee members are not familiar with good testing practices and might even be placed on the entrance exam committee unwillingly.

Surprisingly though, very little is written about how to design such exams so they are valid and reliable. Administrators tend to say little on the matter, merely exhorting test makers to avoid mistakes on the exam. Test makers, meanwhile, rarely reveal their identities, a cloak of secrecy which allows little discussion as to how to make tests better. Yet this is precisely what many test makers need since preparations start as early as June. So, perhaps it would be useful to talk today about what makes a good English entrance exam.

Let’s start with the big picture. What is the purpose for giving such an exam? Answering with, “because it’s always been done,” “because it makes students study” or “because it generates income for the institution” is unhelpful. Since a test is valid only if it succeeds in meeting its purpose, an absence of clear purpose leads to exams that lack validity—meaning the most worthy examinees won’t necessarily succeed.

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Competition and cultural mores
By Helene J. Uchida, The Daily Yomiuri

July 1, 2011—Q: I have taught English in primary schools in South Korea and have noticed students are super competitive in class. I wonder if this is the same in Japan. I also would like to know how a teacher should deal with competition in class. Should the teacher encourage it or discourage it?—N.M.

A: We all know that culture has a paramount influence on education and that competition is a very strong factor in Asia. How we as teachers guide our students and conduct our lessons can feed into culture or complement it. I personally prefer to complement it.

I do not encourage individual competition in class because I believe each child is unique and enters the classroom with his or her own learning curve. I prefer to focus on helping students move forward at their own pace. Some may move faster than others, but I have learned over the years that speed is never the determining factor of English success. Very often slow and steady does win a race.

I do welcome gentle group competition for fun when we do warm-ups or play games for two reasons: One, group members are connected by their desire to succeed. Two, when one team wins or loses, no one loses face since the activity was played for fun. In essence, I do not make a big deal over who won or lost because I believe all the participants are winners.

In his book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, Alfie Kohn, author and lecturer on education, states his belief that cooperative learning leads to higher levels of self-esteem than competitive settings...

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Graham Fraser’s language spies offensive 111
Editorial, Toronto Sun

August 8, 2011—Official Languages Commissar Graham Fraser, a former journalist for such high-brow news agencies as the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and Maclean's, has somehow bought into the fiction that his job has no boundaries.

This happens all too often when lefties are given a title.

It eventually goes to their head.

For that reason, Fraser needs to give his own ego-inflated head a shake for his plan, conceived totally without authority, to spend $40,000 of taxpayers' money to send secret shoppers throughout Ottawa this month to see if private businesses are offering equal service in both English and French.

If he tried that KGB-like tactic in Calgary or Edmonton, there'd be hell to pay and likely a bounty put out on his spies.

In the multicultural mosaic of Toronto, he'd find shops and restaurants where neither official language is spoken.

But so what?

They're private businesses, and therefore they're none of Fraser's business whether they speak English, French or the click language of the Kalahari Bushmen.

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No fast facts in English
By Nancy Christopoulos, The Montreal Gazette
 
MONTREAL, August 10, 2011—Re: "Accessible health care in English is everyone's right" (Editorial, Aug. 8).

I have lived in Montreal for more than 12 years and I am not bilingual. I do not speak or understand French out of any rebelliousness or resentment. I've taken seven French-language courses and I am just not adept at languages other than English - some people simply cannot grasp a second language and I'm one of them.

I can navigate French for simple things but when my doctor sent me to Notre Dame Hospital 4½ months ago because of an ovarian cyst, I was suddenly plunged into a French hospital system. I can confirm that the stress of a medical condition is exacerbated by not knowing the language.

At Notre Dame, the two gynecologists and two other doctors I've seen were completely bilingual and helpful. I would guess that of the nurses I've encountered so far, about 25 to 30 per cent speak some English.

I am not afraid to ask for service in English, and I am polite. One hitch, a severe one, occurred recently when I had to attend a classroom discussion for pre-op information. The entire discussion was in French as were all the pamphlets. I asked the person presenting afterward if he would translate some of this for me or find English pamphlets and he said "No, this is a French hospital. Everything is in French." He did allow me to ask a few questions, and I did, but all this stressed me out and only afterward at home could I formulate exactly what I wanted to know about the procedure.

The man told me to call a number at the hospital listed on one of the pamphlets.

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Let’s say “oui” to Macdonald’s dream of French and English in Canada
By Graham Fraser, Calgary Herald

August 1, 2011—Re: “7Up ruling proof it’s time to let Quebec go,” Brian Purdy, Opinion, July 22.

I was intrigued and not a little perturbed by Brian Purdy’s assumption that a judge’s ruling that Air Canada should treat its passengers with respect as far as their language rights are concerned is a reason for breaking up the country. He concluded that Canada’s language policy is an imposition on the rest of Canada by French-speaking Quebecers who, he claims, “are not like you and me.” Purdy presents a vision of a country that speaks only one language, suggesting that a national dream and a national ideal can only be possible under that condition.

Let me present an alternative view.

Canada does have a dream and an ideal. It is different from the American dream, but no less valid. It was articulated by Sir John A. Macdonald, before Confederation, when he wrote: “No man in his senses can suppose that this country can for a century to come be governed by a totally unfrenchified Government. If a Lower Canadian Britisher desires to conquer, he must “stoop to conquer.” He must make friends with the French; without sacrificing the status of his race or lineage, he must respect their nationality. Treat them as a nation, and they will act as a free people generally do — generously. Call them a faction and they become factious.”

This vision of accommodation, generosity, compromise and respect has characterized the policies of Canada’s successful prime ministers ever since: Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mackenzie King, Louis St-Laurent, Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper.

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Brits and Yankees square in off in latest salvoes of the language wars
By Araminta Wordsworth, National Post

July 27, 2011—A recent call by the BBC’s Matthew Engel for examples of infiltrating Americanisms that annoyed inhabitants of the sceptred isle turned up an avalanche of entries.

Trouble is, most of them weren’t American at all. In many cases, objectors betrayed their abysmal ignorance, citing words that predated the founding of the 13 colonies.

In the meantime, Americans have rallied to the cause. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable tempest in a teapot that makes for entertaining reading. It also underlines George Bernard Shaw’s bon mot: Two nations separated by a common language.

First, here’s the Engel posting that started it all:

I have had a lengthy career in journalism. I hope that’s because editors have found me reliable. I have worked with many talented colleagues. Sometimes I get invited to parties and meet influential people. Overall, I’ve had a tremendous time.

“Lengthy.” “Reliable.” “Talented.” “Influential.” “Tremendous.”

All of these words we use without a second thought were not normally part of the English language until the establishment of the United States.

The Americans imported English wholesale, forged it to meet their own needs, then exported their own words back across the Atlantic to be incorporated in the way we speak over here. Those seemingly innocuous words caused fury at the time …

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I’m bilingual, but I want to discuss my health in English
By Stephanie Kwong, Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL, July 19, 2011—I think Montreal is one of the top places to visit in the summer: fabulous, beautiful, charming, etc. But to live here is a different story.

I am originally from Toronto but have lived here more than 10 years and I am finally hitting my breaking point. I am six months’ pregnant and work at the Montreal University Health Centre. I want to make this clear: I am fully bilingual. In the centre where I work I can say that 95 per cent of the time the first question asked is, “Do you prefer English or French?” At least, I can say that for myself, I offer this option. If it is a third language that I can speak, I will offer this as well. If certain foreign doctors are unable to speak French, we promptly get someone who can clearly communicate to them the patients’ concerns and questions.

I am finally in a position where I am the patient and no longer the health-care worker. Thankfully the hospital I am delivering at is more or less fully bilingual – it is one in the English sector. And again, repeatedly I am asked if I prefer French or English, regardless of the native language of the person offering me the service. I appreciate and respect this. If the person has difficulty in English, I will put aside my preference and accommodate him or her simply because he or she was courteous enough to offer this.

But I have heard countless first-hand accounts about patients in French-sector hospitals not being able to communicate concerns and worries with anyone.

At my local Montreal CLSC, I have repeatedly spoken English to the people there and been responded to in French. As I persist, the person (more than one) has further insisted on responding in French. I am spoken to in slow, loud tones as if I am deaf and stupid, as opposed to them simply trying to say that one sentence in English…

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Lost in translation
By Dr. Andrea Hunter, Nikki Bozinoff, and Katie Dorman
Editorial, TheSpec.com

June 26, 2011—Immigrants, refugees can’t get adequate health care if they can’t be understood

Phuong Nguyen, a 36-year-old woman who spoke little English, died on April 21, 1995, after a 23-day saga at a B.C. hospital. Coroner Jack Harding found that Nguyen’s care had been complicated by significant language barriers and inadequate translation.

Nguyen had been unable to communicate her previous diagnosis of lupus to her health care provider. It was only once she was pregnant and suffered complications that her prior diagnosis became apparent. Nguyen’s health care providers explained the serious health sequelae (negative after-effect) of lupus and pregnancy to Nguyen, without the use of a translator. Less than a month later, her child died in utero and she succumbed to complications shortly after.

Similarly, on Aug. 20, 1986, 55-year-old Harbhajan Singh Chattu lost his leg and experienced kidney failure due to vascular complications that had been misdiagnosed as back pain. The misdiagnosis occurred because Chattu did not have adequate English language skills to describe his symptoms.

A B.C. Supreme Court Justice found Chattu’s physician negligent in his examination and diagnosis and awarded Chattu a $1.3 million settlement.

Sadly, decades after these incidents, medical translation services remain inadequate across the country, leaving thousands of people with health concerns literally lost in translation.

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The English language, but not as we know it
By Olivia Sanders, Odt.co.nz

July 27, 2011—“I will deny thee nothing. Whereon, I beseech thee, grant me this. To leave me but a little to myself.” - Othello

Confused?

So was I. When our year 13 English class had to read the play Othello, by Mr. William Shakespeare, there was a collection of groans - "But Miss, we don't understand it, can't we just watch Shrek instead?"

Being a senior drama student and having worked with Shakespeare before, I fared a lot better than my classmates who had to read the play aloud, cold turkey.

"Old English" - that is what we call this strange language in Shakespeare's plays. What will the English language we speak now be called in 500 years, when we are long gone and people speak in beeps and bops?

Will the English language even exist, or will it continue to be abbreviated beyond recognition?

The English language is ever-changing. It is unique from most other languages in how it has embraced words from other languages to expand its own. Little by little, Maori has been edged into New Zealanders' vocabulary. For example, Oxford's Dictionary of New Zealand English has added Maori words such as "whanau."

The German language does not add any words from other languages, in an attempt to keep German pure. What does this say about the English language?

Changes in the language are well and good, but New Zealanders are increasingly lazy with their use of language. We expect things to happen quickly. We are increasingly reliant on fast-food outlets, internet banking and self-service checkouts. Rather than reading a book to learn about the discovery of New Zealand why not Google it?

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A toast to public speaking
By Praseeda Nair, Khaleej Times Online

DUBAI, July 3, 2011—The two most frightening words in the English language for most high school students are public speaking, or so it seems from the sheer number of young people clamouring to join speech-heavy extracurricular activities, ranging from debate to Toastmasters clubs.

As a global communication and leadership training programme, Toastmasters International has over 260,000 members in over 80 countries across the world. Each region is divided into a numbered district and area, allowing for inter-club competitions and sessions to take place within a certain locale.

The latest addition to Area 40 in Dubai is the youth-based club, The Republic Toastmasters Club, headed by a former Gavel club member (an under-18 Toastmaster-affiliated programme), Anamta Farook.

“The common misconception people have of Toastmasters is that we only deal with public speaking. It’s not about memorising speeches, but more about how to think on your feet and communicate effectively, both in a group and one-to-one,” Anamta said.
Toastmasters clubs aren’t exclusively for the shy or for those battling stage fright. Some are reserved by nature, others self-assured and loud, but all of them share an interest in perfecting their formal speaking skills.

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Motivation key to English
By Dr. M.A. Nair, TheStar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR, August 28, 2011—No matter how competent and dedicated teachers are, their mood to teach will be affected when students show little interest in learning the English language.

Many committed teachers, having failed to win over the students’ attention, have even left the profession.

Studies have shown that, among many other factors, the lack of motivation, self initiative and practice are some of the foremost reasons for students not being able to grasp even the rudiments after years of studying the language.

Classroom teaching – the traditional textbook method and pedagogies – seems not to be motivation enough for our present generation of students, who now belong to the electronic age.

Television programmes in English, the Internet and computer games are captivating them more these days and this has, undeniably, helped them to pick up English.

Children who habitually watch English programmes, including cartoons and animated movies, pick up the language with ease.

They pick up the nuances of English with cadence, and good diction by listening to authentic language discourse on electronic screens.

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Time to “rampas” and restore glory of Bahasa
By Azmi Anshar, New Straits Times

August 15, 2011—This is what is suspected of the future of Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu: in a generation’s time, it is possible to be very familiar with the English language, even conversing on a market level, simply by learning and studying the Malay language in its current form.

This familiarity is not necessarily propelled by official sanction (government communiqué, directives, letters, documents or the freshly minted “English” words in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka’s (DBP) Kamus Besar Bahasa Melayu), but rather by the pervasive usage by and influence of popular culture.

Intriguingly, the Malay language strongly mirrors the Malay race of Malaysia: all encompassing, all embracing, a mix of coloured peoples of different tribes, regions and nations, all united by a clear constitutional def inition.

In a way, this absorption of words reflects the indelible strength of the Malays, as they strive for advancement and a place in the world, even as the language undergoes a linguistic “upgrade” that seemingly loses its “Malayness” to a more cosmopolitan look and feel.

Is this bad? Not at all. All languages evolve, especially if it reflects the naked ambitions, superiority and assertions of the race that beholds the language.

Full story...

Time to “rampas” and restore glory of Bahasa
By Azmi Anshar, New Straits Times

August 15, 2011—This is what is suspected of the future of Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu: in a generation’s time, it is possible to be very familiar with the English language, even conversing on a market level, simply by learning and studying the Malay language in its current form.

This familiarity is not necessarily propelled by official sanction (government communiqué, directives, letters, documents or the freshly minted “English” words in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka’s (DBP) Kamus Besar Bahasa Melayu), but rather by the pervasive usage by and influence of popular culture.

Intriguingly, the Malay language strongly mirrors the Malay race of Malaysia: all encompassing, all embracing, a mix of coloured peoples of different tribes, regions and nations, all united by a clear constitutional def inition.

In a way, this absorption of words reflects the indelible strength of the Malays, as they strive for advancement and a place in the world, even as the language undergoes a linguistic “upgrade” that seemingly loses its “Malayness” to a more cosmopolitan look and feel.

Is this bad? Not at all. All languages evolve, especially if it reflects the naked ambitions, superiority and assertions of the race that beholds the language.

Full story...

Revive the days when we mastered English
By Baradan Kuppusamy, TheStar.com.my

August 10, 2011—The Government has to acknowledge the all-round collapse of the English language as a teaching and learning medium and find ways to seriously rebuild our country’s proficiency levels.

Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has ordered the English Language Curriculum Division to re-study the learning of English in schools to ensure students can master it as a second language.

Muhyiddin said with some exasperation: “How the national education system that teaches students for 13 years is still unable to provide them with a good grasp of the English language – I myself am incapable of answering.”

He said he doesn’t know whether the cause is a shortage of English language teachers, equipment or due to other causes.

It is true that mastering English is important because it is the language in international communication and the economy.

For some years now, the Education Ministry has been following a “Uphold Bahasa Melayu, Strengthen English Language” policy that had resulted in it hiring foreigners who are native English speakers to teach in our schools.

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Native Hungarian talks about the differences between her native tongue and English
By Esther Kiss, WestSideToday.com

June 28, 2011—“Hello, my name is Esther” or “Szia, a nevem Eszter” in my native Hungarian.

They say that the English language is the hardest language to master; between verbs, adverbs, pronouns, nouns, conjunctions, punctuations, blah, blah, blah, there is definitely a lot to learn and very little of it is consistent, as is with the case with other languages. For starters: Hungarian uses a forty-four letter alphabet and English limits its vocabulary to twenty-six tools from which to make words.

The confusion between the two languages in which I function starts even farther back than that; in Hungarian, my native tongue is called “Magyar.” Whatever you call it, my first language is defined as a Uralic language and is spoken in many of the Baltic regions in Eastern Europe of which Hungary is a part.

While English is the most popular language in the world it has some idiomatic rules that drive non-native speakers… to study harder. For example prepositions do not exist in Hungarian/Magyar…

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Mother tongue or English: it is not a zero-sum game
By Abbas Rashid, Daily Times

August 12, 2011—Among other things, the recent deliberations on education reform in Pakistan at Harvard University have again underscored the need for a dialogue on language and learning in Pakistan. Dr Faisal Bari recently observed that the very different points of view on this issue meant that it did not figure in the ‘consensus document’ issued at the end of the deliberations. This is understandable. But, while consensus is obviously difficult, it would be fair to say that a serious nation-wide dialogue on language and learning has become an urgent requirement.

As a point of departure, let us take note of the fact that there is widespread demand for proficiency in English. And, of course, there is no particularly good reason to doubt the usefulness of learning the language. Even more than most countries, in Pakistan it is the language of social mobility and of power. More generally, it is the global lingua franca, the language of choice on the internet as well as the repository of advanced knowledge in many fields. So when it comes to schooling, is it any wonder that it is in such great demand, not least by parents whose priority is a better future for their children?

The fast-growing private sector in education in Pakistan has been quick to respond to this huge demand for English by projecting and magnifying its ‘English-medium’ credentials practically over all other aspects of education delivery, even at the earliest stages of school. Not to be left behind in this race, the public sector has increasingly emphasised English as well virtually from the start of the primary cycle…

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Promoting the English language
By Syed Farhan Basit, The Dawn
 
July 12, 2011—I wonder if the Quaid-i-Azam would have presented the case for Pakistan so strongly had he not been so eloquent in English. And there were many who opposed Sir Syed Ahmad’s call to learn English but whose generations are now studying in English-medium institutions and proudly emulate native English speakers.

While a vast majority in our country consider English inevitable owing to globalisation and other pragmatic reasons, there is another extreme side that considers English as the ‘killer’ of their regional languages and cultures, thereby suggesting to give it a narrower scope of merely a subject within classrooms. Instead of blaming the language for the prevailing situation, our attitude towards it should be readdressed.

Among the factors necessitating the use of English language, globalisation, no doubt, is one such strong factor that calls for a common language across the globe. Apart from globalisation, there are other pragmatic reasons too. It is this language that empowers our students to have access to institutes of higher education.

It is not only a passport to international studies, it is also a token for upward mobility within organisations.

In the meantime, regional languages should not be abandoned or looked down upon as they are the roots of our society and hence form our identity that we should be proud of.

We should also launch English entertainment channels for our children.

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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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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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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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Let every new word bloom
By David Humphries, Sydney Morning Herald

August 13, 2011—Trying to keep Americanisms out of Australian speech ignores the way language works.

''We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language'' - Oscar Wilde, 1882.

Forgive Mr Wilde, for he wasn't to know the avalanche of Americanisms soon to swamp the English-speaking world, even though there were signs aplenty.

English has won the battle of languages. Practice has made it the least dispensable, so English-speakers are less inclined to learn second languages. It's the mother tongue of at least 400 million people worldwide, but perhaps four times as many use it with some competency.

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And American English is easily the dominant variety. The two most universal words are OK and Coke, both American in origin. The rest of the world could live without Coke, but the universality and succinctness of OK suggests communication would be impaired without it. And the linguist Roland Sussex has collected 10,000 Americanisms he says have penetrated Australian usage (The Macquarie Dictionary, for comparison, contains 112,000 entries).

Why, then, do our hackles rise each time we read or hear in the Australian context a word or phrase we recognise as American? Why do these ubiquitous exports from the world's most enthusiastic and successful exponent of modernism generate such indignation among ABC radio listeners and Herald readers, for instance, and what can be done to stem the infiltration, if indeed it should be slowed?

Some resentment, of course, is plain anti-Americanism. Not a lot can be done for this minnow view of the shark as cultural, economic, even militaristic predator.

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Incredimazeballs rules, OK?
By Anne Treasure, Sydney Morning Herald
 
July 24, 2011—“Don’t write crap," Julia Gillard advised a room full of journalists during an address to the National Press Club.

How can they help it? Lately, politics is crap. Our national discourse is crap. Our use of language (I'm looking at you, PM) is crap.

What choice does the media have when language usage has degenerated to a level that our PM uses such crude terms to communicate?

While I bristled at Gillard's Rudd moment - shitstorm, anyone? - I've simultaneously been amused at hearing otherwise buttoned-up members of the fourth estate deliver news bulletins containing the name of internet prankster LulzSec, after its hacking of a British newspaper website.

Double standard? Sure. Bemoaning the degeneration of language is nothing new. Politicians use weasel words, teenagers (and those of us clinging to youth) communicate in textspeak, marketing departments have polished words so violently that we have turned into a society that actually uses meaningless phrases like "proactive" and "repurpose" in everyday life.

Now even text-speak abbreviations are being bastardised in an attempt to - to what? To comment pithily on their ridiculousness? LOL (Laugh out Loud) has become Lulz or Lolocaust or Lulzapalooza. ROFL (Rolling on Floor Laughing) has become Roffle or Roflcopter. A personal favourite is Roflulz. While economy of language might have been the initial aim in order to communicate more rapidly, now our aim is perversion in order to amuse or belittle.

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Language pitfalls
By Fifi Box, DailyTelegraph.com.au

July 24, 2011—Visiting a foreign country is an exciting adventure, rich with cultural experiences that allow us to broaden our outlook on the world.

Travelling to a country where English isn’t the first language is all of the above, with a little frustration, intimidation and confusion thrown in. It was only upon arriving in Russia recently that I realised I may have overestimated the reach of the English language (presumptuous, really, considering Russia could easily swamp the entire Commonwealth with its enormity).

Not knowing the local dialect is how I imagine life is for a toddler who knows what they want to say, but can’t make anyone understand them. In fact, after a week in Moscow, I’m convinced even a three-year-old could have communicated more successfully than I did. The pitfalls of only knowing ‘Ya’ and ‘Na’ (and, yes, they’re just words I made up) led to a litany of mishaps.

One particular lesson I learnt quickly was not to say yes when I wasn’t sure of the question. After saying yes to a man who I assumed was kindly offering to carry my bags at the airport, I soon realised he was in fact taking them to his car to charge me 6000 roubles (that’s $200) to drive me to my hotel.

From then on, I said no when anyone spoke to me, for fear my bank account would be emptied within the week. I said no to the checkout lady who asked if I wanted a shopping bag, and was left to juggle my purchases all the way back to the hotel, dropping mandarins and bottles of water every few steps. I also said no to the concierge who offered me an umbrella, and consequently spent the afternoon standing in doorways to avoid catching pneumonia…

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Plain speech can obscure truth as much as inflated language
By Sarah Burnside, Sydney Morning Herald

July 22, 2011—Dark connotations lurk behind our politicians' bland phrases.

Although there is consensus on little else in contemporary Australian political discourse, it is generally accepted that this is an age of deep disengagement from and cynicism with the political process.

In his book Sideshow, Lindsay Tanner traces the negative impacts of the media's entertainment focus and the 24-hour news cycle, documenting the sheer crushing banality of the 2010 election campaign and expressing distress at what ''the serious craft of politics … is becoming''. Similarly, Waleed Aly noted last year that in Australia ''we report politics as though it is sport, and sport as though it is politics''.

The current reporting on the carbon tax has seen an almost relentless focus on style, stunts and presentation: in addition to the tiresome criticism of Julia Gillard's appearance, witness the emphasis on her supposed woodenness, accent, choice of words and speaking pace. Against this superficial backdrop, the question of Gillard's credibility extends beyond the charge that she lied to the voters prior to last year's election - Laura Tingle notes that ''so much of the apparent anger about the carbon tax isn't about the carbon tax at all but about the Prime Minister herself''. This focus is perpetuated and reinforced as columnists delve into Gillard's public persona: exploring ambiguities, attacking perceived contrivances, and wondering endlessly who ''the real Julia'' might be, as if this mattered more than her policies.

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Bad words distort our view
By Steve Fritzinger,  ABC.net.au

July 9, 2011—Transcript of interview:

ELIZABETH JACKSON: It's funny how the English language can be mangled. I don't mean spelling mistakes or punctuation slip ups. Sometimes words are used to mean one thing when they in fact mean something completely different.

And according to the BBC's economics commentator, Steve Fritzinger, the use of what he calls bad words is on the rise.

STEVE FRITZINGER: If you're like most motorists you will occasionally attempt to change lanes only to realise that there is another car right next to you. Panicking, you will swerve back into your lane and exclaim “I didn't see him, he was in my blind spot.”

The blind spot is a very difficult problem for automobile designer to fix because it's not an engineering problem, it's a linguistics problem. Because we call all three mirrors on our cars 'rear view mirrors', people dutifully adjust them so they point directly behind the car. The result is one well covered spot in the rear and blind spots on either side.

“Rear view mirror,” it seems, is a bad word. Not bad in the sense of being rude or vulgar, but bad because it describes the object it refers to so poorly that it creates confusion and misuse. If we simply called it two mirrors on the outside of the car “side view mirrors,” which is what they actually are, drivers would adjust them so they cover the sides of the car and blind spots would disappear.

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I am an English speaker, too (2)
By Ahn Hye-jeong, The Korea Times

July 12, 2011—In this article, I will further elaborate on the article published in The Korea Times on June 9. Particular attention will be paid to the development of English as an international language coupled with the skills required to become a proficient English speaker in today’s world.

English is a foreign language in South Korea. It does not perform any official function as a language. However, the cultural and social importance of English is notably more significant than that of any other foreign language. A high level of English proficiency is often associated with a more prestigious social status and professional and academic success.

The Lee Myung-bak administration also re-emphasized the importance of learning the English language by setting up a dichotomy of ``English- fluent” and ``English-poor” nations. The government simultaneously claimed that the English proficiency of any nation or individual is a central factor in promoting both the individual’s and nation’s status and success.

South Korea is well known for its dedication to learning English. The term, ``English fever” indicates how much emphasis Koreans put on English learning. South Korea is one of the largest consumers in the English education market spending over $10 billion a year on this alone. In 2007, more than half of the total number of applicants enrolling for TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) were Koreans and approximately 124,000 Korean applicants enrolled in TOEFL (Test of English for Foreign Language) making this group the clear majority of applicants.

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English worship
By Deauwand Myers, The Korea Times

July 13, 2011—The English language owes its ubiquity to British power. Advancements in war technology and naval exploration created, for several hundred years, the largest empire ever known. Britain’s ex-colony, the United States, became a new kind of empire, and even in its current economic hardship, is the richest and most powerful nation in all of human history.

With this power came all the attendant privileges and problems. One of its privileges, that of English being the lingua franca of our time, makes it easier for American and British citizens (and her commonwealth nations) to globally interact.

But English is not the only language a student must know to be successful in the world. Asia’s fetishizing and romanticizing English, even ascribing magical powers to those who can master it, is wrong. There are racial, ethno-centric implications in this English worship. The more you can speak English, the more Western (white), sophisticated, and erudite you are.

Chinese and Spanish are widely used languages as well, and I wish Korean education would broaden its scope and enrich students’ academic lives with a menu of options in language learning.

Pedagogical studies have shown that students who learn several languages do better in understanding these languages (especially at an early age).

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Revisit myth of English as official language
By Charles Dhewa, Newsday.co.zw

HARARE, August 3, 2011—Zimbabwe’s Medium-Term Plan (MTP), launched on July 7 2011 by the Ministry of Economic Planning and Investment Promotion, highlighted Human–Centred Development as a key pillar.

One of the most important ingredients of human –centred development is language. To achieve human development, we have to revisit the myth of English as an official language.

The MTP should be repackaged into languages spoken by ordinary people such as Shona, Ndebele, Tonga and many others.

This will empower people to conduct business in their own languages through which they dream, aspire and make sense of the world. English should only be used to engage with the outside world.

To the extent that economic planning in Zimbabwe is currently the preserve of economists, some of the educated people who attended the MTP launch could not understand the arcane language in which the document was couched.

Most Zimbabwean indigenous languages have rich metaphors which can inspire business and economic development.

If English was the only language of success as is assumed in Zimbabwe, the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans whom we are trying to emulate, would not have become economic giants.

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Talayero Tales: The simple truth of the English-speaking Chamorro
By Ed S.N. San Gil, Pacific Sunday News

August 7, 2011—I am often asked "Why don't the younger generation of Chamorros speak their language?" I thought about this question for weeks trying to come up with an honest answer.

It is easy to blame someone or an event in our history for the cause of this problem. For years, Chamorros have pointed the finger at the Americans. After all, they were the ones who punished the young Chamorro generation for speaking our language in school back in the 1950s.

For every issue there are two opposing sides. The popular side is where blame can be directed. In this case, the Americans or statesiders are the ones we are pointing to. As I said earlier, the Americans required the young Chamorro generation to speak English in school. Most would argue this was "the" main reason for the decline of the Chamorro language.

If you are content with this reasoning, you need not read further.

For the sake of keeping the course of history straight, let us go back to the 1940s and the Japanese occupation of Guahan. During the war, my mother was but 8 years old. She told me how the Japanese soldiers would reprimand those who spoke any language other than Japanese. You have to take into account the occupation lasted about three years. Even with the threat of death, the Chamorro language thrived.

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Rules of English grammar
By Alhaji A. M. Marzuq, MyJoyOnline.com

August 18, 2011—To those of no language inclination, the phrase “Rules of Grammar” is a monster. Indeed, the term sends them to a state of fear and confusion, as it sounds to them endless memorization of dry rules with no apparent use.

In reality, however, grammar is an interesting subject when presented comprehensibly. In any case, English grammatical rules must be embraced by all users of the language because they are vital for oral and written communications. For instance, the rules of grammar teach users how to form words, phrases, and sentences in universally acceptable ways.

The scope of English Grammar varies from linguist to linguist. Some linguists include orthography (spelling, capitalization, and punctuation), semantics (word meaning) and pragmatics (language use in context) under a wider definition of grammar, while others treat the areas mentioned as separate linguistic disciplines.

Communication, in most situations, usually follows action, and grammatical rules help us to accomplish many communicative tasks. For example, to talk about our past job experience at a job interview, we apply the rules for the present perfect tense. Besides, the rules for forming conditional sentences help us to express contrary to fact wishes, assumptions or regrets about missed opportunities, while the present simple tense is used to talk about hard facts and regular habits.

In English writing, adjectival and adverbial phrases and clauses help us add more information and enrich our sentences, while the rules governing conjunctions and transitional adverbs are vital when we want our text to appear coherent with logically related parts.

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How about German as the new lingua franca?
By Todd Buell, Wall Street Journal (blog)

September 1, 2011—Is learning German the key to success for European youth? The language of Goethe and Schiller arguably lacks the global reach of English, Spanish and French, but, these days educated people are expected to speak English proficiently.

Where students distinguish themselves is by what other languages they learn, and here is where German mightn’t be a bad idea due to the relative strength of the German labor market.

Combine that with Germany’s shortage of skilled labor and a young person with both English and German is in the driver’s seat when it comes to future employment (an Asian language wouldn’t hurt either, but first things first).

Data from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, show that 94.6% of students roughly between 15 and 20 years old were studying English in 2009, the last year for which complete data are available.

On average, a student at that educational level has learned 1.4 foreign languages. Since for most European students, the native language isn’t English, it suggests that a student knows his or her native language as well as English and then maybe one other language.

Among the other languages, 25.7% of EU students at this level are learning French and 26.5% German. For comparison’s sake, the figure for Spanish is 19.3%.

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Who’s the smart aleck that invented the English language?
By Valerie Close, Vinton Today

IOWA, August 31, 2011—I’ve had fun catching up with a neighbor “kid” I used to play baseball with, and well, I practically lived at their house during my childhood.

We talked briefly about spelling.

I notice all the time, I can write an article, proofread Dean’s articles, scan the e-mail that is sent in and THINK I caught all the typos.

I click the button to send it out for all of you to read and THEN I see a ton of spelling mistakes.

When I was in school, I prided myself on my spelling skills, and even entered a state contest, so sure of myself. I can't remember now where I placed, but I was good.

When we got married, Dean was a great speller too.

Even my friend agreed, that for some reason the ability to spell sometimes flees her grasp.

I think I’ve used Google more in the last year and a half to figure out how to spell a word.

For the longest time, in my teen years, for some reason the word, “Of” stumped me. It should be spelled “Ov.”

It used to be fun to teach the kids how to read, until I found now I just get frustrated trying to explain that even though a word SOUNDS like it should be spelled a different way, well, it’s not. NO, I don’t know why. NO, I don’t know WHO said it should be spelled that way, and NO you can’t spell it the way it sounds. Why? Because it’s wrong!

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