One of the worst in the world
By Alejandro R. Roces, columnist, The Philippine Star

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Education for All 2010 Report, the Philippine education system is one of the worst in the world in terms of primary school enrolment. The sad part is that our primary school enrolment numbers rank alongside countries such as the United Republic of Tanzania or Zambia that have much lower per capita incomes than the Philippines. As it is, a constant refrain concerning our education system is that we are a poor nation and cannot afford to fix all of the issues. And yet, countries much less wealthy than us are able to educate more of their students. The number of children out of school since 1999 has actually increased: between the ages of 6 to 11 there are over 1 million children out of school, an increase of 100,000.

Part of the issue in the Philippines is because of marginalization: the needs of the poor in terms of education are not being met by our government. The inequities faced by the disadvantaged are further reinforced by our inability to provide them with an education. Education is and always will be the ultimate driver behind national development. Education is the means by which social gaps can be closed. Failing to educate people is the surest way to continue to transmit poverty from generation to generation. The Philippines spends 2.3 percent of our gross national product on education: well behind the average of East Asian nations (3.6 percent). This is even behind Turkey (4 percent), Morocco (6 percent) and Tunisia (7 percent). The issues that our education system faces are of our own making.

In the late 19th century there was a prominent Spanish journalist who was based here. He once wrote that the best way to control the Philippines is not to educate the Filipinos, but to teach them skills…

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India’s aspiring English speakers
By Sadanand Dhume, Wall Street Journal.com

BANGALORE—At 8 p.m. on a Saturday, Rajeev Chamoli could be glued to a television screen watching cricket, or out with friends at one of this city’s many pubs. Instead, Mr. Chamoli, a 27-year-old software programmer, sits under a ceiling fan in a boxy classroom practicing his English along with five other students. “I would say I’m a very positive attitude guy,” says Mr. Chamoli in response to a teacher’'s question. “I have an aggressive personality.”

Mr. Chamoli is emblematic of the ambition coursing through an increasingly prosperous India, and of the importance of English for those chasing the middle-class Indian dream. The grandson of a village milkman in the Himalayan foothills, and the son of a non-commissioned officer in the Indian army, the young programmer is the first person in his family to speak the language. As a native Hindi speaker who grew up in a small town in the tiny northern state of Uttarakhand, Mr. Chamoli is keenly aware of the edge that English fluency offers in a globalized and competitive workplace.

“In Bangalore, knowing English is equal to having food,” he says. “If you don’t have English you can’t survive in your job.”

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My Southern perspective: Who says we talk funny? Everybody
By Mark Hopkins, IndependentMail.com

In some circles the English language is referred to as “The King’s English.” No British citizen has ever accused an American of speaking it correctly. At best, we speak “American” and every section of the country has its own unique approach to speaking our personal brand of English. Our written language is fairly standard from coast to coast. Unfortunately, when we begin to speak, we often sound like we come from different countries.

In New England, they roll their “R’s.” It makes Florida come out “Florider” and Cuba sound like “Cuber.” In California. you get what is sometimes referred to as “valley girl talk” with an overuse of the words “like” and “you know,” as in “Like, you know, he was cute.” You cannot avoid the two-word phrase “you know” stuck in the most unusual places. Athletes seem to be the worst offenders as in, “You know, I was open down the sideline.”

If we know he was open down the sideline, why is he telling us again what we already know? If we don’t know, why is he telling us we do?

Try a little word play with me.

“There is no time like the present to present the present.”

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Language Problems at The New York Times
By Robert E. Murphy, columnist, The HuffingtonPost.com

Since the death last September of William Safire, the presidential speechwriter and political columnist who wrote the regular “On Language” feature in The New York Times Magazine, no one whom I know of has taken on the mantle of America’s leading linguistic watchdog. I am not at this time a candidate for that post, but to partially restore the loss, I am today beginning what I expect to be a series of occasional blogs commenting on the use of the English language—mainly the written language, and mainly as it is being put down at present in these United States. I am qualified to do this because some decades ago I was designated the “Official Class Grammarian” by my ninth-grade English teacher.

It was ironic to me that Safire issued his observations, inquiries and admonitions from a seat at the Times because the Times itself, though generally very well written, is a rather carelessly edited newspaper that regularly allows some of the most common faults in contemporary usage to appear in its pages. In recent months I have jotted down a few of these, and I want to point them out as illustrations of the slippage in grammar and usage that I suspect is more symptomatic of our time than of any other period in memory.

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Good diction is now fiction
By Barbara Worrall, The Sydney Morning Herald

If there is one thing that raises my hackles it is sloppy diction. “Ee-NUN-see-ate,”' my speech teacher would bellow when I was at school.

If speech and diction are not part of the Australian school curriculum today, they should be. They are as important as reading, writing and arithmetic.

You can have a brain like Bill Gates but if you cannot communicate your ideas verbally, how do you get your point across? I’m beginning to think verbal communication is becoming a dying art. Speaking clearly has been replaced by texting, sms-ing, emailing or grunting into one’s iPhone.

The other day I must have spent more than an hour trying to decipher some unintelligible phone messages. Some people simply do not speak clearly. It sounds as though they are not even moving their lips. They seem to mumble into their chests or jam all their words together.

One of these messages was a long-awaited call from a woman at my bank. Or at least I think she was. Do you think she bothered to ee-NUN-see-ate her name so I could call her back? Did she clearly leave her telephone number? I played the message over and over and finally gave up.

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A Moroccan touch in the English-language literary universe
By Aziz Rami, Morocco Post

With a vast linguistic knowledge, a diversified education and broad imagination, Laila Lalami has managed over the years to cleave a safe path through the demanding world of English-language literature. After only a few years, Lalami was able to ensure an honorable place in this fascinating, seductive yet non-complacent world of literature.

Having made her first steps into the world of writing through her experience as a journalist in a French daily in Morocco, Lalami decided to change course  to venture into the English-speaking world, fascinated, then absorbed, by the  language that she perfectly commands.

Back from London, where she had earned a Master’s degree in linguistics, she has worked for Al Bayan. “But shortly afterwards it became increasingly difficult to go back home and write in French (…) and so I turned to English, because I had anyway to prepare my PhD dissertation in English, and there began my story with the language of Shakespeare,” she says in an interview with MAP.

The only Moroccan English-language fiction writer, Lalami has attracted the attention of major U.S. and U.K. newspapers. Latest example, The Independent wrote last week about the two novels of the young writer, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son, from which she made readings in the Lecture Theatre One in London in presence of a large number of students, journalists and writers.

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In a nutshell: The language is living, but literacy is another story

It sometimes seems that, almost for as long as I (ahem) have been literate, I have been reading stories about other poor souls who, although not really different from me in intelligence or social circumstance, are only, at best, semi-literate.

The authors of their misfortunes are varied but share one common denominator -- they are all connected with the skill of communication which, one would think, would require some semblance of literacy.

It is one of the unfortunate virtues of the English language, however, that one can spout almost any sort of gibberish and someone else will understand it, so brilliantly flexible is the language. In a more rigid vernacular, one would have a hard time getting a taxi to travel from South St. Vital to Inkster Park, should you be so unfortunate as to have to make such a trip.

Spoken English isn't really literate, but then it doesn't really have to be. It just needs to be a means of communication. Some people can puff it up into a powerful tool that can move millions when they speak publicly, although you can search through Canadian politics until your eyeballs are empty and blind without finding one today, but most of us get along just by mumbling and stumbling our way through life.

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