Travails of a Filipino getting a British passport
By Bobi Rodero, Philippine Daily Inquirer
 
LONDON—When I moved to London in December 1992, it never occurred to me to become a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I’ve always been proud to be a Filipino—rather be a first-class Filipino than a second class subject of another country.

But after eighteen years of humiliating experiences at the immigration queues at the airports of the world, I caved in. Yes, we are the big fish in our small pond, but with the way we are treated abroad, Filipinos are still second class citizens of the world. While we are most useful to many countries as highly educated, modern-day slaves, the border police at the airports are invariably hostile to our citizens. When I pointed this out to another Filipino expat, he said it might be because we are a big threat to their own jobs as most of us are better qualified and more efficient than them.

The last straw was when I decided to stay for long periods in Hong Kong where Filipino passport holders are allowed only 14 days of stay while British nationals are given up to six months. I simply got bored of exiting every fortnight. Since I started living in Hong Kong in June 2010, I have flown to London three times, Manila and Bacolod City about twelve times, and even went to sleep in a garish hotel in Macau just to exit my fourteen-day limit in Hong Kong.

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Old bad news a current problem
Editorial, The Manila Times

January 11, 2011—While there’s plenty of good news in other sectors—the potential of tourism, for instance, and the credit rating upgrades—we again have to swallow our pride as we did last year and the year before about the state of our educational system.

Once more there’s news that the Americans are worried, sympathizing with us really, and wishing we were faring better in meeting the second Millennium Development Goal: Achieve universal primary education.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the most broadly supported, comprehensive and specific development goals the world has ever agreed upon. There are eight time-bound goals. In the United Nation’s assessment (which some strongly dispute, such as the goal of passing the Reproductive Health Bill to reduce population growth), these goals—eight of them—“provide concrete, numerical benchmarks for tackling extreme poverty in its many dimensions.”

World leaders at the UN adopted these goals in 2000 and agreed that these goals be achieved by 2015.

The first goal is to “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.” We seem to be achieving some progress in meeting this goal.

But we have slid back in the education goal.

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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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Japan needs new paradigm of English education
By Kumiko Torikai, The Asahi Shimbun

January 22, 2011—Few people today would disagree that English is an international common language. But what, exactly, is English that is truly universal, and how should it be taught in Japanese schools? Kumiko Torikai, a Rikkyo University professor and former professional simultaneous translator who teaches English language courses on radio and television, is calling for a major shift in the paradigm of English education in Japan. Following are excerpts of her interview with The Asahi Shimbun.

Question: There once was a major controversy over whether English education should focus on practicality or pure learning. Today, the focus is clearly on improving students' communication skills in English. But some who stress importance of grammar and reading comprehension are calling for a review of the policy. Why do you think English education is always a subject of controversy?

Answer: The major controversy you refer to is the one that erupted in 1974, I assume. Wataru Hiraizumi, then an Upper House legislator and a former diplomat, created quite a stir that year with his argument that students ought to be taught practical English. He offered his own recommendations on how to go about it. But Shoichi Watanabe, then a Sophia University professor, challenged Hiraizumi head-on and demanded, "What's wrong with teaching English purely for the sake of turning out culturally well-rounded students?"

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Indirectly Speaking:  Student-centered classrooms questioned in court
By Mike Guest, The Daily Yomiuri

January 24, 2011—The accused teacher was brought into the Courtroom of English Language Teaching escorted by burly "Methodology Guards" armed with PhDs in Education. The judge entered the chamber and faced the defendant.

The judge spoke. "You are charged with not being fully student-centered in your classroom and teaching methods. In the world of modern English teaching this is a very serious charge. How do you plead?"

"Guilty, your honor. But I ask for lenience and understanding."

"This can only be granted if both the prosecutor and defense present their respective cases, after which I will make a judgment. Do you accept these conditions?"

"Yes."

"Then we'll begin with the prosecution. Prosecutor, you may proceed."

The prosecutor rose. "Let me begin with a summary of what witnesses have stated and what the defendant has since confessed to. First, the amount he spoke in class was more than twice the amount of the English used by his students. Second, he admittedly maintains full control of the lesson pace and content." Gasps were audible. "Plus, and I will say this slowly for emphasis, he determines the curriculum by himself--without any negotiation with students." Now there were sounds of shock. "This scoundrel is...teacher-centered!" Shouts of "Show us your credentials!" and "Fraud!" rang out.

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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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How my assistant saved the day
By Brian Oliversmith, The New York Times
 
January 22, 2011—In May 2008, I started Urban Planet Mobile, which provides English language lessons over cellphones. Our customers include people whose first language is Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, Thai, Arabic or Bengali, among others. In the United States, we offer test preparation over cellphones, and other companies hire us to offer health tips and so forth by phone.

The first person I hired was an executive assistant, Chrissy, to take care of billing and travel arrangements, and to schedule interviews with Web site developers, voice actors and contract employees. I also asked her to research possible markets for our product. There’s an awful lot to do in starting a company. I thought that if I hired someone who could handle the details and the chaos, I could go faster.

People who employ assistants become spoiled. You become accustomed to being able to ask: “Can you do a spreadsheet on X? Can you book me a flight to Y?”

When I worked in a sales organization, I hired my own assistant and paid her out of my own pocket. I couldn’t keep up with the paperwork and still perform at the level I wanted to. I’m high-energy and generate a long to-do list, so I need someone detail-oriented to keep it all organized.

Six months after I started the company, the financial crisis hit and my funders pulled out. I had to pull back financially and try to cut costs. I asked employees if they wanted to go part time for a while before I was forced to lay them off… 

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What’s the loveliest sentence in the English language?
By Whitney Matheson, USA Today

January 26, 2011—"And I shall go on talking in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars."

This, according to author and literary critic Stanley Fish, is one of his favorite sentences ever written in the English language. (It comes from Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, published in 1915.)

I'm intrigued by Fish's new book, How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One (Harper, $19.99), which teaches readers how to appreciate the art of writing and reading sentences.

Slate just announced a contest asking readers for their favorite sentences in the history of the English language. You can send them in, and Fish will choose his favorite from the bunch.

Feel free to add your faves in the comments here, too. (I can't help but think of the phrase "cellar door" ...) Fish's book arrived in stores this week.

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It may take a little Zen to cope with the lunacy of the English language
By Bev Davis (deceased), The Register-Herald
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BECKLEY, January 15, 2011—Who needs Zen riddles when we have the English language?

As a former English teacher, I understand the struggles students face in mastering the mother tongue. There are some real posers in our language, and I’m amazed that anyone from another country can get the hang of the King’s English.

Consider these inconsistencies that are listed in a commentary floating around on the Internet.

 How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same thing?

 Why is it that a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

 If the teacher has taught, why hasn’t the preacher praught?

 If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth?

 If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

 If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

 A building burns up while it burns down, and you fill in a form while you are filling it out.

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Minor musings: It’s a thing-a-ma-bob
Opinion, Highlands Today

January 16, 2011—I love the English language. I think it's the most expressive and resilient language on earth. I especially love the way our English responds to those who speak it. As we grow and change, so does the language.

We've all noticed the influence on our language of societal changes like the advancement of technology. Computers, cell phones and the Internet have given us a whole new vocabulary. But recently my attention was drawn to "made-up" words adopted into our vernacular. Some have become as widely used and understood as anything else in our vocabulary.

These folksy, unsophisticated words are completely understood at every level of American society. Some are even included in the latest dictionaries. Here are just a few examples: “lollygag,” “skedaddle,” and “snazzy.”

I defy any American to honestly say they don't know what these words mean. In fact, when spoken in context, it would be difficult to misunderstand them even if you had never heard them before. That's because made-up words tend to sound exactly like what they mean. Tell me you wouldn't understand “flibitigibbet” and “lollapalooza,” when used in context, even if you'd never heard them before.

Granted, some made-up words are regional. For instance, I grew up in Michigan where things positioned at an angle to each other are said to be “cate-cornered.” However, to my husband, whose family originated in Southern Missouri, those things are “cate-wompas.”

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The Revamped O.E.D. Online
By J. D. Biersdorfer, The New York Times

January 14, 2011—Language lovers might want to check out this week’s Bits: Tech Talk podcast, which features a conversation with John Simpson, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Bits: Tech Talk Podcast

So how did the editor of the O.E.D. end up on the technology podcast? Easy: we’re geeks, but we’re word nerds, too. And although we Tech Talkers tend to natter on about the latest software and hardware, my co-hosts (Bettina Edelstein and Pedro Rafael Rosado) and I are also fascinated by the way culture and technology intersect — and by how daily life can change direction at this very busy intersection.

When we learned that the O.E.D. Online was revamped late last year, we jumped at the chance to learn more about how this esteemed publication (which first stirred to life in 1857) was adapting itself for a modern online audience. Simpson was in New York recently and was gracious enough to come by and discuss many of the site’s new features. With its use of linked databases, dynamic search and timelines showing when new words have come into the language, this comprehensive resource is even more useful and fascinating to explore.

Yes, you do have to subscribe to get full access to all the dictionary content. But even without the $295 annual (or $29.95 monthly) subscription fee to the O.E.D. Online, the site offers articles on the language and commentary on new words that get added regularly to the massive database.

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Linguistic innovation: Being Indian in English
By Stuart Forster, Deccan Herald

Whatever you choose to identify as the cause — globalisation, the Indian diaspora or perhaps even the growing international popularity of Bollywood movies — the world is becoming increasingly aware that Indian English has its own identity.

More than 60 years have passed since the people who brought English to the subcontinent returned to Blighty (Surprisingly, that affectionate term for Britain — conjuring images of the homeland’s white cliffs — originates from a Hindi word.) Of course, the British did not go empty handed. By 1947, dictionaries were brimming with pukka English words — such as “caravan,” “bungalow,” and “‘shampoo”— whose origins can be traced back to India.

Post-Independence, the Indian and British versions of the English language have experienced some divergence in their development. Yet, that of course, is not a new phenomenon. Think about the differences between British and American English. Spellings, pronunciation and even some word meanings differ. George Bernard Shaw was prompted to make the now famous observation that “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.” I’ve always been fascinated as to why the word colour is spelt ‘color’ — without the ‘u’ — in the United States but course is not spelt ‘corse.’”.

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The foreignness of English
By John Evans, TheStar.com.my

January 19, 2011—Where does the English language come from? It would only be a mild exaggeration to say that it comes from languages other than English. Germanic words (Old English, Norse and Dutch) account for only 26% of the English lexis, and are outnumbered by French words (29%) and Latin words (another 29%, including words used only in scientific medical and legal contexts). Greek words account for 6% of the language, which leaves 4% derived from proper names and a final 6% of words that come from other languages or from obscure origins.

English borrows—rather than coins—new words, and the number of loan words in the language is large and growing exponentially. In most unabridged dictionaries, only one-fifth, or at the most, one-fourth, of the words can claim to be “homegrown” English words. Be that as it may, the mode in which loan words are employed is purely English. Foreign words soon cease to be treated as aliens and are quickly naturalised, even though they might subsequently adopt an Anglicised pronunciation or spelling.

From French and other European languages, English has borrowed words connected with commerce, seafaring, science, art, literature and social life. War, exploration, trading, colonising and travelling have brought words from America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the islands of the seven seas, while the Celtic tongues in the British Isles have added to the store. Over the past three centuries, sources from which English has borrowed most freely have been French, Latin, Greek, and, to a lesser extent, Italian.

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A Quebec language study enrages linguistic cannibals

January 14, 2011—According to a study commissioned by the Centrale des syndicates du Québec (CSQ), Quebec’s largest and reliably nationalist union body, since 1997 more than half of the students enrolled in anglo cegeps (Quebec’s post-secondary, two-year college programs preceding university) come from the francophone and ethnic communities.

The study found that these students chose the anglo institutions expressly because they served as immersion centres for gaining proficiency in English. And why did they wish to learn English? Because — prepare for a shock — they felt they would get better jobs if they spoke both French and English, you see. And if that weren’t insult enough to sovereigntists, the study also found that many students of ethnic background were actually more comfortable speaking English than French.

Gaaaa!

These findings make perfect sense to any rational and objective person cognizant of the overwhelming career advantage knowledge of English confers everywhere in the world, but they are salt in open wounds to ethnic nationalists.

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Let the music play: Song sparks language debate
By Carol McDade, Global News

HALIFAX, N.S., January 14, 2011—The English language is an amazing living organism.

And it isn't proud—it will beg, borrow and steal from every other language—even dead ones.

There are an estimated 300 thousand words in the English language—by comparison only 42 thousand in the French language.

And each time we use a word—we allow it to grow—often altering its meaning because of the context in which we use it.

We are only two weeks into the new year—and never in such a short time has one word in the English language caused so much controversy.

The word is "faggot".

Earlier this week the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council—the independent body that regulates private broadcasters' standards and ethics—ruled the 1985 original recording of Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" violates broadcast standards because "the word 'faggot'... even if entirely or marginally acceptable in earlier days, is no longer so."

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Russians told to mind their language—especially when it comes to English

January 14, 2011—It was a moment of acute humiliation for the Russian Academy of Sciences.

When the learned body produced an English language version of its website last year, the results caused a stir. The Institut Belka (Institute of Protein Research) was translated as the Squirrel Institute (Institut Belki), while Yury Osipov, the mathematician who heads the academy, was introduced to foreign colleagues as the President of Wounds.

Now the Russian government is moving to address such linguistic shortcomings by multiplying the number of polyglot officials. A strategy document unveiled this week says that by 2020, at least 20% of workers in state service must be fluent in a foreign tongue. More importantly, from next year all newly recruited bureaucrats should already be competent in English.

It's the latest sign of a subtle trend: although Russia has a difficult relationship with the English-speaking world, when it comes to speaking English it is a different matter. English vocabulary has already made deep forays into Russian. In Moscow, for example, tineydzhery (teenagers) might go to a mall to shopitsya, depending on the dress-kod of the klub they're heading for. Many of the words in use spring from recently acquired financial and business terms that were unknown in Soviet times, such as steyk-kholdery (stakeholders), autsorsing (outsourcing), riteyl (retail) and franchayz (franchise).

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Mass failure in senior school certificate exams
Editorial, Sun News

January 09, 2011—It is appalling that only 20.04 percent of 310,007 candidates that sat for the 2010 November/December West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) obtained five credits in English Language, Mathematics and three other subjects.

This year’s results are in no way different from those of 2008 and 2009 respectively. In 2008, out of the 372,600 candidates that sat for the examination, only 23.54 percent got five credits in English Language, Mathematics and three other subjects.

Similarly, in 2009, only 31 percent out of 342,443 candidates that sat for the same examination made five credits in English Language, Mathematics and three other subjects. Details of this year’s results indicate that 62,295 candidates got five credits in English, Mathematics and three other subjects. Also, the results revealed that 309,431 candidates representing 95.21 percent had their full results released while 15,567 others (4.79 percent) had few of their subjects still being processed due to candidates’ errors.

A total of 141,167 candidates (45.52 percent) obtained five credits and above while 99,750 others (32.16 percent) got six credits and above. It is regrettable that for the past three consecutive years, Nigerian students have performed poorly in both May/June and November/December WASSCE. The development is not good for our educational development as well as the overall development of the country.

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Sudan needs English to build bridges between North and South
By Martin Davidson, Chief Executive of the British Council

January 11, 2011—Last week, the population of South Sudan went to the polls to decide whether to separate from the North, potentially becoming Africa's newest country. The people and politicians of the South have been building up to this moment since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2005, ending decades of civil war.

The question that Sudan has been asking itself is, when faced with massive political upheaval, poverty and a shortage of basic of services, can English really make a difference?

The answer, in short, is “yes.” English language training is not a “quick fix” for Sudan's problems but it can encourage development, is relatively cheap, and most importantly, sustainable, underpinning other capacity building projects.

This is recognised at all levels of Sudanese society but is especially important in the South where the government views English as an important tool for development and future nation-building.

In the North, Arabic is and will remain the primary language, coexisting with English as the international language of the internet, trade and international engagement. In 2007 the government of South Sudan took English as their official language. English, however, provides a way for the North and South to communicate when Arabic is still viewed with suspicion by the South. If the country is to hold on to the fragile peace that has held for the last five years, it is supremely important that these communication channels stay open.

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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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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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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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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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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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