The Eternal Value of the book Things Fall Apart
Essay by Niyi Osundare, Newswatch

My first ‘encounter’ with Things Fall Apart took place in the early sixties at Amoye Grammar School, then a new secondary school in Ikere-Ekti, a predominantly rural, agrarian town in Western Nigeria. I was walking past a group of senior students chatting under an acacia tree one bright afternoon when I heard a boisterous chorus of ‘Baba Itan’ (Father of stories), Igii Gee (Tree of English, i.e., Master of the English language), ‘Shinua Ashebe!’ Now, the last in the series, (Chinua Achebe) was pronounced in such a deeply Yoruba way that I instantly concluded that it must be a pair of new Yoruba words that my seniors had just come across in their reading.

The man in the centre of it all, the bearer of this new name, took it all with unmistakable pride, his face lit up by a beatific smile. He was a studious, demonstrably voracious reader who often brightened our Saturday night social gatherings with quotes from Cicero and Virgil in their pristine Latin original. Occasionally, he regaled his dazzled but cheering listeners with chunks spiced with polysyllabic words from the eruditions of Zik of Africa (Nnamdi Azikiwe) and Adelabu Adegoke of the Penkelemeesi (‘Peculiar Mess’) fame. He was a learned student, one whose English words could only be measured with a long ruler.

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Between language and culture
By Giles Morris, staff writer, Smokey Mountain News

Native American languages are unique. They came into being and evolved without the influence of writing. For scholars like Heidi Altman, a professor of linguistic sociology, that makes them fascinating.

“The thing I’m interested in is how people organize knowledge through language,” Altman said.

One of the most difficult aspects in the effort to preserve the Cherokee language and culture is how to convey the Cherokee worldview to a generation of speakers that live predominantly in an English-speaking world.

Altman said the nuances of the Cherokee language are often conveyed through the use of metaphor and context.

“When you have speakers together who are 50 and older, they’re able to talk in such a way that the language is metaphorical. It’s contextual, it’s funny, and it really encapsulates the Cherokee worldview,” Altman said. “It’s really different from how an English speaker thinks about how things work.”

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The case for the “camel case”

In regard to “An orthographic polemic” by Caleb Crain (Language, Nov. 30), in which the author discusses the growing use of midword capitals—sometimes called “camel case”—in words like iPhone and PowerPoint, I would like to offer the following advice: ReLax Mr. CrAin, camel case is not the end of the world.

I sincerely doubt that odd capitalization will result in our writing system falling into anarchy. While this small infraction of the laws of the English language is certainly unnecessary, it doesn’t makes much of a difference whether capitals are here or there. It doesn’t burn my eyes when I look at the word PowerPoint. Say what you will, but I think that iPhone looks a lot better than Iphone.—Carsten Haas, Jakarta

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No es facil hablar de dinero
By Michelle Singletary, Washington Post

In English: It's not easy to talk about money.

For many people, speaking the language of money is like trying to learn a foreign tongue. It can be frustrating.

Many books seek to help you learn the language. And every month, I search for those I find useful or unique.

For this month's Color of Money Book Club pick, I'm recommending a book that literally translates the language of money.

Lynn Jimenez, an award-winning business reporter for KGO Radio 810 in San Francisco, has written "¿Se Habla Dinero? The Everyday Guide to Financial Success" (Wiley, $19.95). What's so fabulous about this book, which was published last year, is that from the table of contents right through to the index, Jimenez provides side-by-side Spanish and English translations. The Spanish is on the left-side pages, the English on the right.

Although anyone will benefit from this basic personal finance guide, Jimenez wrote this bilingual guide specifically to appeal to multigenerational Hispanic families.

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Why English is not the "official language" of the United States
By Bernie Reeves, American Thinker
 
Language is a mystery that has baffled science and religion since the first recorded utterance of upright man. The Bible makes much mention of the cacophony of languages in the Tower of Babel story, and modern-day anthropologists and linguists still ruminate with no consensus over just what piece of the genetic or environmental puzzle contains the answer to the existence and persistence of varied and distinct languages, often spoken only a few miles apart. Despite a spate of new books on the origins of language -- including The Horse, The Wheel and Language (David Anthony, Princeton Books), which traces the Proto-Indo-European language to the steppes of Eurasia by combining anthropology and archeology with linguistics -- the quest to find a comfortable theory of language remains elusive.

It is lamented that today only 6,700 languages remain on earth. This seems an ample number, considering the march of nationalism over the past 150 years, during which formerly distinct local languages and dialects were passed by or forgotten in the process of forming political statehood. In Latin America in the 1820s and 1830s, Spanish and Portuguese replaced native dialects during independence from Spain and Portugal. Later, in Europe, the rise of democracy and dominant tongues left behind dozens of local languages that are now forgotten.

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A word about English
By Ina Hughs, Knoxnews.com

"It is better to be understood than to be correct."

It's right there on page 54 of Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language by word guru Patricia T. O'Connor.

Is ending a sentence with a preposition something up with which you (and Winston Churchill) cannot put?

And just how grammatically correct is "Woe is I?" which also happens to be another book title by the same author as "Origins of the Specious."

This is no stuffy Miss Perfect-Speak book of rules. In fact, it shows just how wrong smart-alecky grammarians can be.

Take the word "axe," as in "Axe me a question." Despite all the harrumphing you'll hear from some people, "axe" as in "ask" is not all that incorrect. The verb entered Old English in the 8th century. Chaucer in "The Parson's Tale" writes of a man that "cometh forth to axe him of mercy," and in the 1535 Coverdale translation of the Bible, there are lines like "Axe and it shall be given you."

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Rejoinder: New language policy to fail

Kofi Asare, Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition, replies to Ato Kwamina Dadzie:

I am compelled to respond from Johannesburg, where I am currently attending a meeting, to issues raised in your article on the National Literacy Accelerated Program (NLAP) in basic education which has enjoyed front page prominence on the most read myjoyonline.com. I am an education policy analyst, solely driven by my inability to sit and watch unconcerned, as you misinform and threaten the success of a national policy with huge prospects especially for rural children.

You assert that the absence of an official local language in Ghana spells doom for the new language policy, because Kenya and South Africa (Where you claim we imbibed the policy) have common official local languages. To begin with, there is no language called Swahili in South Africa. In fact, South Africa has 14 local languages which they call national languages with the commonest being Zulu, spoken by some 30% of its population. The official language in South Africa and Kenya is English and not Swahili as claimed in your article.

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English essential for business and trade
By Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, TheStar.com.my

Deputy Education Minister Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi’s comment that the private sector should use Bahasa Malaysia and not English is irrational, retrogressive and does not stand to reason.

The Deputy Minister’s views have not gone down well as indicated by the strong reaction and disagreement to his suggestion from various quarters.

At a time when our prime minister frequently emphasises the need for Malaysia to compete globally, to attract foreign investment and to turn Malaysia into a high-income nation, the call to the private sector to use Bahasa Malaysia and not English does not make business sense and defeats the PM’s call.

The private sector in Malaysia, I am certain, is patriotic and respects Bahasa Malaysia as our national and official language.

However, they realise that for them to do business and trade with the international community, using English is a necessity as they must be able to communicate in a language acceptable to all.

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Making the Net global
Editorial, Arabnews.com
 
Yesterday's decision by the Internet regulators to allow domain names in characters other than Latin ones is a major shot in the arm for cultural equality. Most people in the world do not speak languages written in the Latin script. Of the 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide (a quarter of the world’s population), more than half use languages written in other scripts. There are billions more as yet without access to a computer and the Internet, who largely live in Africa and Asia who likewise do not speak a language which uses Latin characters. They are potential users. The Internet, as the prime means of communication and information exchange alongside television and telephone, must be fully accessible to them. Enabling users to key in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Cyrillic or whatever scripts they use to access their chosen websites will show that all languages and cultures are regarded as equal in the Internet age. The Internet becomes truly global.

Whether increasing domain name characters from 30 to over 100,000 makes a great deal of practical difference is another matter. Small local businesses such as restaurants or shops will probably avail themselves of the facility, but most businesses and most websites will probably stick to the present system.

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Start Again
By Stephen Hugh-Jones, Telegraph-India

There must be somebody who regrets the early death of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s short-lived replacement for its reliable Windows XP operating system. Not many people, though, to judge from user reviews, and certainly not me. My knowledge of computing could be written on half a postage stamp. I’ve no notion what a spreadsheet is, and no need to know: all I use my laptop for is the Internet, word-processing and email. I still use olde-worlde dial-up (is it even available in India?), not broadband. I don’t even know the computer geeks’ vocabulary, let alone what it means.

In sum, in these computer-literate days, I’m a dinosaur—no, let’s say an ichthyosaur, their swimming cousins, which must have known there were faster ways of getting around but just didn’t bother to evolve accordingly. And I’m falling further behind every day. Still, for my limited purposes, I’d made sense of dear old XP. It did what I asked it to, and it didn’t crash. Then my laptop was stolen. By then, Vista ruled, and, like a fool, I reckoned that such basic needs as mine could be met by its most basic version, and the next thieves would make that much less profit out of me. My new laptop was duly so equipped, complete with Microsoft Works for word-processing instead of Word.

A fool indeed. The thing offers me 191 different typefaces and 28 different colours, it can probably sing, dance and play baseball on ice. What it certainly does is vary, and what it doesn’t do is what I ask it for. Some days it offers me a connection to my service provider before even being asked. Other days it waits till I’ve asked it for the Net, and even then its response is variable. My wife has to go through a small (and quite different) litany of clicks before she is allowed onto the Net.

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Englishes
By Sofia Logarta Madilena de la Cerna, Cebu Daily News
 
We have been having a diverse, interesting group of English majors in the Master of Education program at University of the Philippines Cebu. Many are teachers of the Department of Education and private schools. Several are teachers of the various English language schools.

The situation is quite multi-cultural, for aside from Filipinos, there have been American and Korean students. And the students of these graduate students are not only Filipinos, but also Koreans, Russians and others…

Once, one of the English majors brought a Korean lady lawyer who was in that country’s justice system to interact with me because she had been into human rights and gender issues. She was on vacation with her family and they were spending their vacation learning English.

I learned from our students teaching Russians that their students were university students learning English for their foreign language requirements. They were doing this in Cebu because of its flexibility. Here, the one-on-one learning arrangement was provided, while the other places did not. The setup gave rise to some relationship challenges.

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How to teach English and travel the world
By Henry DeVries, SDNN

Why has interest in teaching English abroad recently spiked?

Half the world’s population is expected to be speaking English by 2015.  English is a first language for 400 million people and a fluent second for between 300 and 500 million more, according to the “International Herald Tribune.”

Not military might but cultural and economic reasons have thrust English upon the world stage as the new lingua franca, a de facto language used for communications by people who do not share a mother tongue.

The origin of the term lingua franca (literally Italian for Frankish language) comes from a pidgin dialect that appeared in the Holy Land around the 13th Century. Piracy and naval warfare brought it in the 16th century to the Barbary Coast, where it came to be used as the official records of trade contacts.

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Are you in a puckaterry?
By Victoria King, BBC News

A major dictionary publisher is compiling a list of regional English words that have died out. But local dialects are not entirely extinct—as these words reveal.

Have you ever found yourself in a puckaterry or felt wambly after a drink or two?

If so, you're one of a dwindling breed—a user of an English regional dialect.

Where once your vocabulary would tie you definitively to a particular part of the country, the social upheavals of past few decades have stretched those verbal ties to breaking point.

Now dictionary maker Collins is launching a project—using that most modern form of communication Twitter—to try to identify whether there is any life left in a selection of weird and wonderful words.

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English tests for migrants will fail
By Adrian Blackledge, Guardian.co.uk

The British government proposes to extend legislation that requires applicants for British citizenship and continued residence in the UK to take an English language test. The new proposals introduce additional, advanced language tests for citizenship and settlement applicants, and new language tests for some who have not yet left their home country. Phil Woolas, minister for borders and immigration, argues that the extended legislation will support integration and community cohesion.

The new proposals are based on two assumptions. First, that migrants should learn English because they are more likely to gain access to employment and services, and are therefore more likely to contribute to society. Very few people, including migrants themselves, would argue against this. Most people agree that UK residents and citizens should be able to speak English. The second assumption argues that the best means of ensuring migrants learn English is to make them take a test. This assumption is false. There is little or no evidence that testing English language learners enhances their ability to learn English.

Despite the flawed nature of this assumption, the British government has recently introduced a raft of legislation to test the English language proficiency of applicants for citizenship or permanent settlement in the UK.

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A contrived language war. Again!
By Jim Wilson, The Suburban

QUEBEC—This province’s political leaders’ recent remarks on the Supreme Court decision regarding Bill 104 are not surprising. Their denunciation of the ruling is classic self serving posturing. The call to arms to defend the language and culture smacks of the worst demagoguery. A strategy to divert people’s attention from other, truly pressing concerns.

Quebec’s political parties vie for the right to be at the head of the movement that promotes itself as the savior of Quebec against an invasion of the dreaded English language, often described as the language of the oppressor.

The defense of any language is a vague concept, and has no specified time limit as to when victory can be declared. Indeed, those whose careers are dependent on such tactics know it would be a colossal error to even suggest that a victory was at hand. We have reached a state of permanent, albeit contrived, language war. These politicians do not care about the state of the French language, but they care very much about their own survival and if sanctimoniously lamenting the erosion of the language helps their image, so much the better.

Wars, even phony wars, need enemies, and the citizenry must be told to be on their guard. The English language is perceived as a danger to Quebec, and individuals who use it are targeted too. Citizens who believe that English could be a valuable tool are often betrayed as alien to Quebec.

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Boosting English language learning in Sri Lanka
By Susantha P. Hewa

We have to accept that our sacred formula for teaching English has been writing-centred. School text books for English do include speech activities, but they cannot be prevented from being glossed over because the gains students accrue by doing them go unnoticed as no tests are conducted to evaluate speech skills at the end of the school term. Moreover, parents who are left with no index other than what they can find in their child’s exercise book to get an idea of the amount of work the child has done during the English period are naturally happy with the more tangible writing output.

It is not surprising that they feel justified in being satisfied with this criterion of evaluation because it is only a written paper that the child has to face in the end. The strongest evidence for our inbuilt and institutionalized sluggishness about developing speech skills is that speech is not tested at the G.C.E (O/L) exam.

It is true that all academic work is unthinkable without writing. You cannot think of any worthwhile gain in the pursuit of knowledge if writing is to be avoided from the very beginning of the process…

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