This time, a whale shark error in P100 bill
By Antonio Calipjo Go, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, December 27, 2010―The whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the biggest shark as well as the biggest fish in the ocean, is featured on our new P100 bill. This is wrong.

Whale sharks are found worldwide in warm oceans on or near the equator, both along the coastal areas and in the open seas (except the Mediterranean). They navigate and populate all the tropical seas of the world.

We cannot impose proprietary rights to something which is merely passing through our turf or territory, only during certain times of the year, declare that to be an endemic Philippine species and then appropriate it as a national symbol.

The annual migration of whale sharks each spring to the continental shelf of the central west coast of Australia is well-documented, coinciding as it does with the spawning of the corals of the area’s Ningaloo Reef. Going by the same reasoning, Australia has just as much right as the Philippines to adopt the whale shark as its national symbol!

And what about all the other marine creatures (whales, sharks, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, etc.), birds, bats and insects that make the Philippines a pit stop in the course of their seasonal migrations? Shall we also lay claim to them and say that they are endemic to the Philippines?

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Alive and well on Tuesdays with Gani
By Isagani Yambot, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, December 12, 2010—During his trial for allegedly “corrupting” the youth of Athens, Socrates, in his Apology (the Greek word apologia means a defense), said that “[t]he unexamined life is not worth living.” (The Greek word bios used by Socrates means “a way of life” rather than just biological life.) Paraphrasing Socrates, the Inquirer family believes that the unexamined newspaper is not worth reading. That is why the Inquirer undergoes constant examination by its editors and business officers, to see how it can be improved and probably, even reinvented.

The Inquirer is examined every day (at the daily meeting of the daydesk and other senior editors), every week (at the Tuesday editorial assessment meeting), every other week (at the executive committee meeting) and almost every quarter (at the management meeting). It is probably the most thoroughly “examined” paper in the country today.

As publisher, I preside over the editorial assessment meeting which is held every Tuesday except during Holy Week and Christmas Week. Sometime in the 1990s Eugenia D. Apostol, founding chair and first publisher of the Inquirer, directed me, the executive editor then, to conduct the weekly meeting to critique the paper, and particularly to note and correct grammatical and linguistic errors as well as factual errors.

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Amateur
By Lakan Umali, Philippine Daily Inquirer

I sit in my room, staring at a blank computer screen. I wait for the screen to be filled up with words, words that convey a meaning, a theme, a message, an emotion to someone else. I sit, waiting for the words to travel through my veins and miraculously flow out of my finger tips, making me feel like sparks of electricity were shooting through them. But nothing comes. I feel the words, but they seem to be dormant, hiding, like an animal refusing to emerge from the thick of the forest. Sometimes the words are just out of reach, like fruits in a fairytale. I can see them waiting for me to pluck them, but when I reach out, they seem to escape my grasp and move slightly higher. I do eventually start to write, but the words are inadequate, unsatisfactory, a shabby, hollow imitation of what I originally set out to write.

Sometimes I feel like Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement. She seems to also struggle with the process of writing, of finding the precise words to use in telling a story. She can’t seem to create real, believable characters, because, well, she doesn’t know many real people to base her characters on. She thinks that creating characters and stories out of her own imagination, out of her own mind without any basis, would be tantamount to “lying” to the reader. She could always go to her family library to read about characters. She could learn about what makes an anxious person tick, or what makes a repressed woman reach her breaking point. But it would also just be a shoddy imitation. Real characters are a combination of imagination and reality...

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2010 a year for playing games with words
By Robert Beard, Special to CNN

December 31, 2010 (CNN)—Each year the English language takes a fresh beating, but in 2010 it was intensified more than ever by the widening reach and quickening pace of the internet.

New words and constructions like "Obamacare," "WikiLeaks," "lamestream," "shovel-ready," "sexting," and many others like them were uttered or typed and in minutes spread across the globe.

Makes one wonder: Have we been beating English into a new shape, or just beating it up? There is, after all, a difference between the games we play with new words, which can be amusing -- even though they often get out of hand -- and the more subtle changes that often lead to confusion and offensiveness.

But I think we need not worry too much about the new words entering or trying to enter the language. Most of them are what linguists call "nonce" words, words that someone dreams up for the nonce, which is to say, for a particular occasion. A nonce word usually vanishes as soon as the occasion that motivated its creation passes.

For example? Even though the East was buried under snow over the holidays, few invoked "snowmageddon," the off-the-cuff creation from last winter's blizzard that was created by smushing (smashing into a mush) the two words "snow" and "Armageddon."

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Global Dispatches: UK—The English Language
By Simon Veazey, Epoch Times

January 4, 2011—Gently flushed with the fear of being branded racist, in hushed tones the middle classes recount horror stories of impenetrable foreign accents, of asking for words to be repeated ten times, and of the un-British rudeness of having to put the phone down midsentence.

The wayward accents of foreign call centers, increasingly used for administration in banks and businesses—and often based in India, are more than a communication issue. For many the call centers bring with them a disturbing sense of intrusion, of globalization foisted upon the unsuspecting and unglobalized in the peace and tranquility of their net-curtained living rooms.

Apparently the English National Health Service could save a lot of money by shifting its administration and call centers to India. The plan has been mulled over, but they are unlikely to put it into action due to a “local U.K. sensitivity issue.”

Ironically it may not be the Delhi or Bangladeshi accent which is really so incomprehensible—but our own British accent.

Spending the weekend with European friends, I was informed by a Frenchman after a rather halting conversation at breakfast that my accent is difficult to understand.

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Subject Matters: Reading, writing—and readying for tests
By Sally Holland, CNN

January 4, 2011—It's the best of times and the worst of times for English teachers as they find themselves more accountable than ever for the academic success of their students, while balancing new technologies that change time-honored practices of reading and writing. Here are some of the modern challenges that language arts teachers face in their classrooms.

The federal No Child Left Behind law, passed in 2001, requires states to set standards and assess students' skills as they reach certain grades. Since then, the U.S. Department of Education reports that English language arts and math are tested more than any other subject area. That means English teachers feel extra pressure to have their students perform well on tests, even as they set aside other education goals.

Jeff MacCulloch, who teaches at Middle School 256 in New York City, said the pressure to achieve on tests has increased so much in the past 10 years that it influences how he shapes his lessons. Rather than spend an entire class period on in-depth study of one book, he now spends a portion of each class on skill development for test taking.

"We want the student to be able to switch on and off the right strategy for the right prompt. It can be effective for taking a test," MacCulloch said. "But as far as the learning environment goes, it's like training a musician to announce the chords he or she is playing."

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Make English the official language of Planet Earth
By John W. Lillpop, BorderFire Report

January 1, 2011—One of the most wonderful blessings about being born in America is that one is exposed to English, inarguably the greatest language in the history of human kind.

Think about: What thoughts come to mind when you ponder the word English?

William Shakespeare, modern civilization, freedom, individual liberty, intelligence, Democracy, prosperity, and success are but a few of the images conjured up in the minds of most people.

By contrast, what images come up when contemplating the word Spanish?

Instead of William Shakespeare, think Cesar Chavez!

Rather than modern civilization, it’s a third-world existence from 75 years ago.

Freedom and individual liberty are displaced by massive fraud and human rights abuses perpetrated by elitists like Felipe Calderon and Vicente Fox.

Democracy becomes socialist dictatorships. Intelligence is supplanted by mediocrity and incompetence.

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The way we speak now
By Genevieve Roberts, The Independent UK

January 3, 2011—What's in a word? The English language has almost doubled in size in the past century as we are living in a rich linguistic peak.

A recent report concluded that the vocabulary is expanding by 8,500 words a year. After researchers from Harvard University and Google scanned five million books, they came to a total of 1,022,000 words in the language – including "dark matter" that will never make it into a dictionary.

Professor David Crystal, author of Evolving English, says vocabulary growth is never steady but depends on new concepts in society. "There was a peak in Shakespeare's time around the Renaissance, another during the Industrial Revolution, and another peak now with the Electronic Revolution," he says.

While there are over a million words in the English language, most readers of The Independent probably know some 75,000 words, 50,000 of which they will use actively, he estimates.

In comparison, Elizabethan English used approximately 150,000 words. Shakespeare used just under 20,000 in his plays, 12 per cent of the language. "Today, we know fewer words percentage-wise because language has increased so hugely," Professor Crystal says.

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It helps if doctors speak words we understand
By Mary Dejevsky, The Independent UK

January 4, 2011—An unexpected benefit of last year's change of government was an immediate improvement in the quality of political language. Over 13 years of New Labour, the language of politics was debased. Cliché, euphemism and spin progressively supplanted plain speaking until, when the gruff Scotsman finally wrested the keys to No 10, there was almost nothing for him to salvage. As a crime, Tony Blair's degradation of the English language should be right up there with his pursuit of an unjust war.

The consolation is that the language itself was not lost; it was merely in abeyance. I don't care that his successors had a public-school education (so did Mr Blair), the truth is that the quality of public political utterances soared overnight. Most of our politicians, wherever they went to school, are now speaking recognisably the same language that we speak. Some Labour stalwarts (Yvette Cooper, for one) can still be heard voicing the old impieties, but they are not running the country. We can switch off.

For 2011, would it be too much to ask that every other specialist group please follow the politicians' lead? Starting, say, with medical scientists, not because they are egregious offenders – I award this dubious honour to education experts and social workers – but precisely because they are not.

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The bible that even atheists worship
By Andy McSmith, The Independent.co.uk

December 22, 2010—King James I of England has not always had a good press. His disdain for parliament, his dodgy favourites, the extravagance of his court and his pro-Spanish foreign policy did not do him any credit. He was the founder of that unhappy line of English kings, the Stuarts.

But whatever his faults, he was clever and he loved a good intellectual argument and all credit to him for assembling an elite crowd of bishops and scholars to Hampton Court, in January 1604, to discuss such meaty questions as: “Do we need bishops?” and: “If so, must they dress up in such swanky garments?”

The conference itself did not achieve a great deal but out of it, seven years later, came one of the most venerated works of literature in this or any other language, the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, the 400th anniversary celebrations of which are now under way. King James convened the conference because hundreds of English Protestants who had fled abroad during the reign of Queen Mary, the last Catholic to occupy the English throne, had returned with accounts of how much simpler and more “pure” church services were in Protestant countries. These “puritans” had hoped that Queen Elizabeth would import the stripped-down service into the Anglican church, but she disappointed them.

She was hardly cold in her grave when her successor received a petition, reputedly bearing more than 1,000 signatures, pleading with him to rid the English church of “popish” practices...

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David Crystal: champion of the English language
By Michael Rosen, Guardian.co.uk

December 13, 2010—We’re all experts on language. A three-year-old says: “I singed a song.” That’s an expert, says David Crystal, using the grammar of how we tell of things in the past by adding “ed” to a verb. But as all the experts reading this know: “singed” is wrong, “sang” is right. So, some say: “No, dear. It’s ‘sang’.” Some don’t.

And in that story sits one of the great but quiet struggles of our time. Is it the job of linguists to describe or prescribe the language? Or both?

For more than 30 years, David Crystal has been producing books, articles, radio and TV programs and interviews by the gallon-load, and 2010 yielded a bumper crop.

It's been one long job of explaining, illustrating, discussing and suggesting but at the heart of it is a longing to educate. That's because my three-year-old and her would-be corrector aren't the only experts in language. There is another: the person who knows that the way we speak and write has got a whole load worse.

Every day Crystal deals with things like an actor who said that back in the 1960s no one said “gonna” and “shoulda.”

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Time for plain English
By Lainie Anderson, Sunday Mail

January 02, 2011—On the first Sunday of the New Year, let's have a thought shower about the manglish that needs to be set on a removal pathway as we move forward in 2011.

Manglish occurs when one mangles the English language (and few did it better last year than US Republican Sarah Palin, with her “refute”/”repudiate” clone “refudiate”).

But I'm also talking about those other loathsome words that increasingly litter the lexicon: spin-doctoring and gibberish that says so little but is repeated so often by politicians and corporate chiefs.

The Plain English Foundation, established by a couple of academics to raise the standard of utterances in the Australian public arena, provides plenty of food for thought in its inaugural hit list of irritating words and phrases.

In 2010, we had thought “showers” (the new term for brainstorming, designed to avoid offending those with epilepsy) and “strategic staircases” (when plan is just too plain).

They also picked up on “removal pathways,” used by Senator Chris Evans when he really meant “deportation,” and “investment in human capital,” used by the Federal Opposition's Sharman Stone as she tenaciously evaded terming the Liberal's proposed six-month paid parental-leave scheme as a new tax.

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Grammar is a tool to enhance understanding
By Suzanne Harrison, Sydney Morning Herald

December 20, 2010—Grammar can be taught in a traditional way to enhance the understanding of our language.

UTS journalism student Sarah Michael has expressed the hope that when the national curriculum is implemented, grammar will once more be taught and writing standards will rise. Will grammar teaching improve literacy standards, and if so, which system of grammar should be taught?

The National English Curriculum: Framing Paper expresses the sensible view that including grammar in the curriculum is justified only if it helps students write and speak more accurately, logically, coherently and precisely in an appropriate style.

While it’s possible for students and teachers to discuss English structure without using grammatical terms, it’s quicker and easier if they share a common grammatical vocabulary. But which variety of grammar are teachers to use? As the national curriculum does not specify a particular grammatical system, the debate about the two contenders—so-called “traditional grammar” and British linguist Michael Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG)—will continue.

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Outdated English-proficiency standards
By Sophie Arkoudis, The Australian

December 08, 2010—Why is the Australian higher education sector allowing immigration policy to shape notions of the standards of English language proficiency of its graduates?

This is an acute case of the tail wagging the dog.

An International English Language Testing System score of seven has become the de facto standard for permanent residency as a skilled migrant. Monash researcher Bob Birrell has been quoted as saying universities have been outflanked by the willingness of the Immigration Department and professional bodies to embrace a serious standard of English proficiency.

Yes, spot-on. Let’s reclaim this agenda. It’s time for universities and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to restore public confidence in the English language capabilities of graduates.

To do so, a robust, outcomes-based model of English language proficiency, against which universities can monitor the attainment of graduates, must be built.

A first step towards such a framework is an agreed set of national English standards as the foundation for universities' quality assurance mechanisms.

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Happy Friday! Wait, let me refudiate that
By Gail Lethbridge, The Chronicle Herald

December 31, 2010—This being the last day of 2010, it’s time for our third annual GagMe Awards.

This ceremony looks back on the words and phrases that made us gag, grit our teeth, curl our toes under with embarrassment or just yawn.

They are the tired old cliches, overused management-speak, terms of political obfuscation and slippery euphemisms.

The GagMe Awards aren’t meant to suppress free expression, but rather to defend the English language against those who use it to distort, twist or blunt free expression.

As George Orwell said in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Say it again, George.

So without further ado, let us roll out the red carpet and announce the 2010 GagMe winners.

Worst Canadianism: Own the Podium. This little piece of chest-thumping pomposity for the Winter Games made Canada look smug, arrogant and desperate to prove itself. When we didn’t end up owning the podium, we just looked smug, arrogant and silly. This is a gross distortion of the Canadian character.

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Boosting our literacy would save us billions
By Aritha Van Herk, Calgary Herald
 
December 26, 2010—Because my popular history, Mavericks, was chosen as the inaugural book in the Calgary Public Library's One Book/One City initiative, I've spent the last month visiting different branches of the library and paying attention to what occurs in those public spaces.

I saw children, children, and more children with baskets of books, shining with curiosity and pleasure. I saw homeless people, nodding off at tables, or quietly resting in a warm, safe place. I saw older people checking out large-print books, happy to be able to continue reading despite deteriorating eyesight. I saw young parents perusing new magazines. I saw a range of people using the computers available in libraries. I saw teenagers checking out movies and music.

I met newcomers to Calgary, confident that they could find information, assistance, and a community centre.

The library occupies the heart of this community without bragging about that fact. It's a steady flame that keeps this city a human and humane place, its value incalculable, its effects hard to measure but absolute.

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Language police ignore textual chainsaw massacre of English
By Catherine Field, New Zealand Herald

January 1, 2011—France is famous for defending its language.

It's not just at the United Nations and European Union, where French diplomats insist on the right to use French in official discourse, or even at the International Olympic Committee, which—to the outrage of Britain's tabloids—has insisted that posters and pageantry for the 2012 London Games be in French, an official IOC language, alongside English.

The biggest defensive activity is on the home front. The government appoints an official watchdog (www.dglf.culture.gouv.fr) to monitor the purity of French against English incursion.

A committee of language experts, La Commission Generale de Terminologie et de Neologie, hands down Zeus-like judgments in the Journal Officiel, the publication of legal record, on native words that should replace intruders.

For instance, one is urged to use logiciel rather than software, and courriel (a contraction of courrier electronique, or electronic mail) for email.

Then there's the Toubon Law, which enforces use of French in official publications and requires advertisements to provide a footnote translation in French of any foreign words they use. The name comes from a culture minister of the 1990s, Jacques Toubon, which explains why the legislation is sometimes mockingly called “la loi Allgood.”

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Writing on the wall
By Arunava Sinha, LiveMint.com

December 31, 2010—The Indian writer may well remember 2011 as the year in which her royalties changed dramatically. But whether for better or for worse will depend on whether this is the year in which the biggest fear of India’s English-language publishers of fiction and non-fiction comes true or not.

For, hanging over their heads is the spectre of a seminal change in copyright laws. Put simply, the country is planning a revision in the legislature to allow books published abroad to be sold in India at any price. What’s so cataclysmic about that?

Well, the implication is that it may not be worth an Indian publisher’s while any more to bid large sums to acquire Indian rights to publish, print and sell, say, a Salman Rushdie, a Vikram Seth or even a John Grisham. And that in turn could set off a spiral that flattens their revenues, throttles their margins, and cuts off the vital flow of publisher investment in original writing from India in English. Along the way, it could make billionaires of Indian distributors, alter the priorities of booksellers, and completely change the way publishers pay writers.

Still doubtful about the impact of what sounds like nothing but a tweak in legislation? Well, making all these changes inexorable could be a significant drop in book prices, the one factor that can make these changes an industry-altering experience rather than a flavour of the month. Warns Thomas Abraham, managing director, Hachette India, “Publishers and authors will have a rough time of it if the copyright amendment (proviso 2M) is passed.”

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Language matters: Certain vernacular words simply don’t have substitutes
By Bala Shankar, TheHindu.com

January 3, 2011—When we try to review (a fairer word than critique) concerts, in English, we are often confounded by the difficulty of language to describe the happenings adequately and to readers’ familiarity. Conversational phrases are often the perfect way to describe something – “Kutcheri Kalai Kattarathu” for instance – I am not even trying to hazard an equivalent.

“Sruti Sudhdham” is loosely translated as “perfect pitch” or sometimes “pure pitch” and even “good pitch alignment.” All these words fall short of the implicit powerful meaning of “Sudhdham” (which usually also means unadulterated). Carnatic Music, over the decades, has cultivated its unique lingua franca, including several vernacular and colloquial phrases.

“MDR pidi” or “Madurai Mani Iyer pidi” is another oft-heard expression among young learners. The literal substitute is “MDR catch” which is obviously far off the mark. Even “MDR phrase” does not encompass the ramifications of the four letter word “pidi” as pidi includes swaram, bhavam and the full course.

What about “bhavam?” such a quintessential term in our music. Sanskrit translations of bhavam include ecstasy, dedication to service and intimate love and affection – none of these fit our usage. “Azhutham” is a trademark term used to depict music with correct vocal emphasis. We could never use “pressure” or “compression” or even “emphasis” to signify the word. How else can you describe the music of legends such as DKP or DKJ?

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A need for better Thai teachers of English
By David Brown, Bangkok Post
  
RAYONG, January 6, 2011—In his Reflections (BP, Jan 4), Pichai Chuensuksawadi touches on many salient points about the need for educational reform in Thailand, but none more salient than those towards the end of his column, in which he discusses the need for an emphasis on English language training and good teachers.

In the first instance Thailand must start producing its own teachers of the English language who are professional and competent to teach English to their fellow Thai students as a foreign language.

At the moment, in my experience, too many Thai English-language teachers can barely speak English themselves, let alone being let loose to teach it to their acquiescent students.

There should be an intensive programme to improve the skills of Thai English teachers with the aim of reducing the reliance on so-called native English-speaking teachers.

There are many highly qualified and professional native English-speaking teachers dedicatedly working at all levels of the educational system in Thailand, and I do not mean to demean their professionalism or their integrity. But at the same time there are many backpacking Khao San Road degree-holder charlatans who are working in Thailand under false premises and undermining the system. They may speak English, but they cannot effectively teach it.

The aim must be to replace them with trained and professional Thai English teachers.

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The challenges of teaching English
By Kimberly Henry, The Gleaner

A letter to the Editor:

December 31, 2010—As a future high-school English teacher currently in my first year at a very prominent teachers' college, I feel it is my duty to show an interest in the direction being taken by the education system with regard to the teaching of English to our youth.

Many times we expect English to be easily grasped as it is our designated national language. However, as a student majoring in double English, I can attest to the fact that it is not as easy as it seems. I believe that many times we fail to understand that our young people are grown up and immersed in a culture that gravitates toward individualism and our native tongue—Jamaican Creole.

Students within our high schools are taught a language that does not come as easily to them because, as it is with a foreign language, their minds are not familiar with it and so there is a block. Therefore, I strongly believe that the English language should be presented to our students in the same manner and care in which a foreign language, such as Spanish or French, is taught. Becoming proficient in a language requires many hours of dedicated practice and a healthy interest.

The Jamaican Creole is a language which is expressive, colourful and vibrant. These are the same words which can be used to describe our people, especially our youth…

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World becoming increasingly Anglophone and Saudi Arabia is no exception
Editorial, ArabNews.com

As we reported yesterday, the number of expatriates who have lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for years but cannot speak Arabic, let alone read or write it, is massive. Even more amazingly, it is not just a case of Westerners. There are plenty of Muslim expatriates from Asia whose Arabic is at best limited to a few Qur’anic verses and little more.

As was also pointed out yesterday, this is not entirely their fault. The world is becoming increasingly Anglophone and Saudi Arabia is no exception. It is not just that English has become the medium of business. Go into any shopping mall or many a restaurant in one of the Kingdom’s cities and Saudis can be heard talking to shop assistants and waiters not in Arabic but English. It is not an affectation or fashion. It is the way it is.

In such an easy environment, it is hardly surprising expatriates do not learn Arabic. It is not like being in Moscow or Madrid where the local language is a necessity for anyone working or living there. But it should not be like that. Arabic is one of the world’s major languages. It is estimated that well over 220 million people speak it as their native language — a quarter of a billion people if one includes those who have it as a second language. It is the official language of 25 countries and is spoken by communities in others...

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In Saudi Arabia, “no Arabic, mafi mushkila”
By Renad Ghanem, Arab News

JEDDAH, December 26, 2010—A simmering issue that has been in the backburner is slowly seeing the light with many locals wondering why most non-Arab expatriates either do not know Arabic, or speak only a smattering of Arabic words picked up at random, which — although sound gibberish to the purist — does enable them to at least communicate.

There are reasons for the apathy to learning Arabic, despite many having spent years working in the Kingdom. Reasons cited by the non-Arab expatriate community include claims of finding the language difficult and an absence of Arabic schools or institutions. Many, on the other hand, are simply not keen to learn the language.

As a result, many non-Arabic speaking expatriates rely on English as their chosen language of communication, something that Saudis find strange, especially when these expatriates have been living in the Kingdom for over 10 years.

The major obstacle, according to the non-Arabic speaking expatriate community, is a lack of institutions that provide short courses in Arabic that would suit working people. Although some Saudi universities do teach Arabic to non-Arabic students, most of this teaching is done at specialist universities that cater to full-time religious students.

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Japan’s best English language blogs of 2010
Looking for the latest goings on in Tokyo? Try out these 10 blogs.

While estimates suggest that more blogs are written in Japanese than any other language (despite English speakers outnumbering Japanese five to one worldwide), expats in Japan who write in English provide a very different perspective on the country.

From tales of salarymen to the life of foreign hostesses, here are Japan’s 10 best English-language blogs of 2010.

1. Green-Eyed Geisha
Her daily life may not include dressing like this.

Why we like it: Written by a 20-something professional woman working for a Japanese company, provides details of the hurdles she faces in daily life.

Humorous, engaging and insightful, her writing is akin to storytelling. She tends to publish a couple of diamonds a month rather than blog daily.

Sample entry: “Bitch, please”

“She clucked her tongue and snarled 'jama da yo' to me, which basically means 'you're in the way' and not something you say to people in the street…”

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To students of English, the Spanish Armada has a lot to answer for
By Roger Pulvers, The Japan Times
     
December 19, 2010—The main problem with Japan’s English-language education lies in its sterile approach to words, as if a grasp of their exact meaning is sufficient preparation for understanding and speaking the language. It isn’t. You can’t look at a box of paint tubes and visualize a Rembrandt. Words have no meaning outside the context of culture, history and the personalities of native speakers.

Every language presents its own special difficulties for the nonnative. For those of us who came to Japanese from the outside, the multi-readings of kanji and the length of vowels are killers. Chinese has its tones. And, if you take on Polish, you must conquer clusters of jaw-breaking consonants. But, of the major languages studied around the world, when it comes to complexity, English tops the lot.

Take spelling. The spelling of English words is often erratic and inconsistent. Yet attempts to codify and regularize it in the past 200-odd years have been rebuffed. So now, if you can’t seem to figure out how words are spelled — or spelt — you'll just have to forgedaboudit.

Then there’s stress. This word is, indeed, spot on for describing one of the most frustrating impediments to learning English. If only English had penultimate stress like Latin! Not only is the stress in words irregular, it moves...

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Role of Korean teachers of English
By David Leaper, The Korea Times

December 9, 2010—While the recent moves by Gyeonggi Province’s education authorities to cut the number of native speakers teaching at public schools was motivated by budget considerations (“Gyeonggi to hire fewer foreign teachers,” The Korea Times, Dec. 2), in principle it is not necessarily negative for English language education in Korea.

To explain this statement it is necessary to examine the wider context of English in the world. There are now more native speakers of Mandarin and Spanish than English, and soon there may be as many Arabic speakers. While in terms of native speakers English is being overtaken, it is in the number of non-native speakers and their spread that English stands out.

It has been estimated that there are more than three nonnative to every native speaker of English. It is an official language in more countries than any other. The importance of English as a second or foreign language can be seen when only four countries that are normally classified as “native English speaking countries” are listed among the top 10 English-speaking countries in the world. Moreover, despite the rise of Mandarin, English will probably remain dominant in the spheres of science and business for some time to come.

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