Penman: Going global
By Butch Dalisay, The Philippine Star 

February 28, 2011—Speaking of going global, I had a fun chat over lunch recently with two ladies, both “Penman readers,” who happen to be running one of the most vital services connecting Filipinos to the rest of the world. I don’t mean another Internet operation, although some aspects of it can be accessed online; rather, I’m talking about standardized English examinations, specifically the Test of English for International Communication or TOEIC (pronounced the way you would say “stoic”).

I’ve always been curious about these exams, having taken a couple of them myself—the more widely known Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), which happens to be TOEIC’s chief competitor, and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), which were required for my graduate studies in the US. (Indeed, so eager was I to study in the US 25 years ago that I took both exams on my own account, and brought the exam results with me to my Fulbright interview; I guess the strategy worked.)

So when I learned from Bambina—the wife of Cesar Buenaventura, the business icon whose yet-unpublished family biography I wrote—that her company, Hopkins International Partners, was the Philippine representative of TOEIC, I asked her to take me behind the scenes and to tell me a bit more about this test and what exactly it does. Bambina obliged and brought her partner along, Hopkins president Corina Unson.

As it turns out, the TOEIC, the TOEFL, and the GRE, among other tests, are all products of the New Jersey-based Educational Testing Service or ETS…

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Back to the future: 25 years
By Averill Pizarro, Manila Bulletin

MANILA, February 23, 2011—Not too long ago, Jose Dalisay, Jr. (Butch, to many readers) wrote a book about life in the Philippines under Marcos. It won the 1993 National Book Award for fiction and the Palanca grand prize for the novel, among others.

The book, entitled Killing Time in a Warm Place, is currently in print (and let me take this time to urge you to grab a copy, it’s less than 200 bucks, and who better to appreciate the best of Philippine literature than the Filipino?). This new edition opens with a poignant introductory essay on what it was like to be imprisoned under Martial Law back in ’73.

I have always had a close affinity for stories of those years, perhaps because I grew up with parents who talk about it with such relish. And they weren’t even in the center of the movement—they were mostly spectators, young and wide-eyed, watching their nation and their people evolve. They went from a life of fear, to learning to believe that they could do something, and today…

Dr. Dalisay ends his introduction with an interesting line: “…astonished, no doubt, by the extent to which a life could be complicated further.” It’s a line that has affected me profoundly in the way I think about my country and its history—but you’d have to read the book to understand what I mean.

When I entered UP, I studied under several people who were actually there—people who were jailed or shot or imprisoned, who had lost fathers and brothers in the epic struggle that came to a head on February 25, 1986…

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Watch your language
By Daniela Piteo, Thorold News Niagara

The English language is rife with descriptive words, yet we seem to rely heavily on one word to express a vast array of emotions, situations and outcomes.

The word is so infamous, it is the only one that can be referred to with one letter alone.

When it is uttered, it is referred to as dropping an f-bomb.

It is explosive, powerful and definitely not appropriate in some situations.

On a recent televised award show, an actress was given a prestigious honour and in her flustered exuberance, she dropped an f-bomb. It was neither the time nor the place.

There are roughly, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, 170,000 words in the English language, yet one word alone that shouldn't be used in certain domains, finds its way into out dialogue.

During a recent trip to Thorold Secondary School, the f-word was being dropped almost ad nauseam. Yet, the teachers roaming the hallways didn't blink.

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It's spellbinding to watch young brainiacs at work
By Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal

February 19, 2011—Chauffeur. Significance. Maintenance.

These aren't difficult words. I type them all the time. But every time -including this time -I have to stop to think.

Embarrassing.

There's another word that always trips me up. Two Rs? One R?

Embarrassing? I'll say it is.

I'm a professional writer. Not only do I have a master's degree in journalism, I have an honours degree in English, for heaven's sake.

Spelling has never come easily to me. Grammar largely seems intuitive. (Grammer? Grammar?) But after all these years of reading and writing, the orthography of the English language often defeats me.

It's such a ridiculous Velcro language, composed out of discarded bits of ancient Greek and Latin, Anglo-Friesian, West Saxon, Celtic and medieval French, spiced with borrowings of Hindi, Yiddish, Cree, Malay, Afrikaans, Hawaiian, not to mention German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian and Japanese.

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Watch your language
By William Wright, Cleveland Banner

March 4, 2011—It might surprise you to know that English is not the most widely spoken language in the world or that more people speak Spanish worldwide than English.

Currently, the five leading languages are Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic. I was even more shocked to learn there were 7,358 languages spoken worldwide in 2009, according to Ethnologue.com.

Linguists estimate 90 percent of these languages are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people, but that is still a lot of languages uttered around our planet! Of course, this was not always the case.

According to Genesis 11:1, there was a time when everyone on earth spoke only one language. It makes sense if human life started with one man and one woman that there was only one language in the beginning.

But Genesis 11:4-8 tells us God confused the language of humans who set out to build a city and tower to make a name for themselves, causing them to scatter and fulfill His purpose to fill the earth.

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Bilingualism good for the brain, researchers say
By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times

February 26, 2011—Does being bilingual give young children a mental edge, or does it delay their learning?

It depends on who you ask.

Bilingual education is regarded by some in education policy circles as little more than a half-baked technique of teaching students whose native language is not English. Though it takes many forms, bilingual education programs usually involve teaching students in both their native languages and in English. How much each language is used, and in which academic contexts, varies by program.

But neuroscience researchers are increasingly coming to a consensus that bilingualism has many positive consequences for the brain. Several such researchers traveled to this month's annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., to present their findings. Among them:

• Bilingual children are more effective at multi-tasking.

• Adults who speak more than one language do a better job prioritizing information in potentially confusing situations.

• Being bilingual helps ward off early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in the elderly.

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Reader idea: “One in Eight Million” for English language learners
By Katherine Schulten, The New York Times

February 24, 2011—Here is another in our Great Ideas From Readers series.

If you’ve used The Times for teaching and learning and would like to see your idea in our blog, write in and tell us what you’ve done.

Teacher: Heather Barikmo

School/Location: The English Language Center at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, Long Island City, N.Y.

Grade or Level of Students: College (18 and over); college preparatory and continuing education students

Idea: Using the “One in 8 Million” series, which tells the stories of a varied group of New Yorkers through audio and photography, to help English-language learners improve their listening comprehension and awareness of the multiple styles and nuances of spoken English.

Why We Chose It: We, too, love “One in 8 Million” and think it has endless possibilities for classrooms. (The series, which ran over the course of 2009 and profiles 54 “ordinary people telling extraordinary stories,” went on to win an Emmy Award.)…

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Absence of Al Jazeera English in US is troubling
By Ronnie Lovler, San Francisco Chronicle

February 20, 2011—The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and now Iran should prompt a call for change here in the United States—against the absurd blackout of Al Jazeera television.

You can watch Al Jazeera on TV almost anywhere in the world—except in the United States.

How is this possible in our nation where freedom of the press is a basic constitutional tenet? Just what do cable and satellite carriers fear?

Al Jazeera English has received nearly universal raves as one of the best sources of news about events in Egypt. Mainstream journalists wrote reviews praising its coverage. Bloggers blogged about being glued to their computers or mobile devices to watch Al Jazeera.

The Qatar-founded and funded international news network launched in November 2006 as the first and only English-language global news network not based in the West. According to its website, it now reaches more than 220 million households in 100 countries. But here in the United States, while you can catch Al Jazeera on YouTube or its website, you can only see it on television in Burlington, Vt.; Toledo, Ohio; Washington, D.C., and now, on San Francisco's Link TV. (It is also available on satellite TV.) Could a subtle or not so subtle form of censorship be at play here?

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In the language of literature, torn between English and Persian
By Jeff Baron, America.gov

Washington, February 13, 2011—Zohreh Ghahremani has two sets of tools for her work, and she says that the character of what she produces depends in part on which set she uses.

By training, Ghahremani is a pediatric dentist, a profession she pursued with probes, drills and mouth mirrors for 25 years. But her craft is writing - poetry, short stories and a newly published novel, Sky of Red Poppies - and her tools are her two primary languages, Persian and English. Like other Iranian-American writers, she says the differences between the languages are substantial, and those differences are obvious to her as she works with them.

"They are as different as different styles of painting. You see, you can have the same model and give it to an impressionist painter and give it to a classic painter, and you'll get two different images back," Ghahremani said from her home in Southern California. "That is why translation is much easier, let's say, from French to Persian and vice versa than it is English. And I have so far had the luxury of choosing which subjects would go better in which language."

Many Iranian-American writers count themselves as bilingual, but most choose one language or the other as their primary tool. Mehrnoosh Mazarei, who has published four books of short stories in Persian, has lived in the United States for a bit more than half of her life, having arrived in Southern California shortly after the Islamic Revolution in Iran at age 28. "I still don't feel like I'm fluent in English," she said. "I don't write directly to English, usually. I write in Farsi first and then translate it to English. ... And then I get some people to edit that, too."

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Hello texting and goodbye English
By Glyn Meek, Computerworld   

February 16, 2011—Lots of comments have been made about the dangers of texting, as demonstrated by the statistics from the National Safety Council that 28% of accidents are caused by texting motorists, so I won't rehash these old arguments. Instead, let The Geezer Geek take a look at the catastrophic effect that ‘texting' has had on our culture (and I use THAT word with some reservation).

"hw r u?"

"whassup?"

"roflmao"

"me 2"

"ILU" (and can you imagine the wasted bandwidth that THIS particular one is going to take up on this "Hallmark Day" of February 14th?)

"wht r u up 2 2nite?"

Now, I realize that spelling and grammar are no longer requirements of any American public school, especially here in Texas where they only ‘teach to the TAKS test' anyhow, but this is the thin end of the wedge with regards to civilization. English is arguably the most powerful language on earth. Based on the confluence of multiple European language influences and accompanied by the bizarre spelling decisions of William Caxton, we have a multitude of nouns, verbs and adjectives suitable for every occasion, but do we use them? Do we use the language of Shakespeare, the vocabulary of Churchill or the creativity of Mark Twain? No we don't, not anymore.

We appear to have lost what little ability to actually spell and speak correctly that we ever had, and now we are reduced to supposedly humorous acronyms and abbreviations that are, all of a sudden, thought of as ‘modern speak'…

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Readers’ choices of foreign language versions of popular songs
By Jon Dennis, Guardian.co.uk

March 10, 2011—I don't buy the canard that one language is any more or less suited to singing pop music than another. But artists and listeners carry assumptions and prejudices about what singing in a certain language signifies: singing in French sounds romantic, German industrial, Italian operatic, and so on.

There were often sound commercial reasons for these tracks' existence. English hasn't always been the lingua franca of popular culture, and record companies often asked artists to record in foreign languages to quash rival non-English cover versions. Even so, information is scant about the motives behind many foreign language versions. They're rarely central to an artist's career, and are usually neglected by biographers seeking the bigger picture.

So what we have here is curiosity value. You don't have to understand the lingo to appreciate them: there's a real pleasure in hearing a familiar record sounding unfamiliar. It's like hearing them for the first time. Johnny Cash singing “Ring of Fire” in Spanish? This discovery alone justifies this week's theme. Admittedly, el hombre de negro sounds a tad awkward singing in Spanish, but the mariachi trumpets of “Ring of Fire” help him get away with it.

Kraftwerk naturally recorded many tracks in their native German, but hearing “Showroom Dummies” in French is a disorientating surprise. The first of several Ralf 'n' Florian songs sung in French, it sounds stranger and more otherworldly than ever. It's a celebration of Europe, a theme of the song's parent album “Trans-Europe Express.”

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War of the words: Henry Hitchings book is “intriguind and committed”
By David Sexton, ThisisLondon.co.uk

February 3, 2011—Henry Hitchings, theatre critic of this newspaper, has written such an intriguing and committed book. Under the guise of being a genial history of the development of the English language—from the arrival of Germanic settlers in the fifth century right up to the emergence of what he calls Multicultural London English—The Language Wars is an attack on all who have ever thought there is any right or wrong way of writing and speaking English.

Hitchings tells us "All attitudes to usage can be classified as either prescriptive or descriptive... A prescriptivist dictates how people should speak and write, whereas a descriptivist avoids passing judgments and provides explanation and analysis. One says what ought to happen, one says what does happen."

Hitchings is, unsurprisingly, a descriptivist. So he gleefully explains, over 28 chapters, organised pretty much chronologically while covering areas such as spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, obscenity and slang, that all attempts to prescribe "correct" usage have always been outrun by ceaseless change in the language itself.

In 1762, Robert Lowth published A Short Introduction to English Grammar, laying down rules about punctuation, double negatives, ending a sentence with a preposition, the difference between "would" and "should", etc, while exposing what he considered to be faulty usage in even "our best authors".

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Sexism and the English language
By Betty Kirkpatrick, Caledonian Mercury

February 3, 2011—Much has been said and written recently about sexism in football. Will it ever be eradicated? That is doubtful, very doubtful. On the other hand, the English language used to be riddled with sexism and some of this has been removed, although not without controversy.
Time was, before the Women’s Movement turned its attention to language, when anyone whose gender was not stated or not obvious from the context was automatically assumed to be male.
Thus, it was taken for granted that someone designated an author, poet, sculptor or manager was a man. If a woman managed to escape the kitchen for long enough to take on such a role, it was thought necessary to add the suffix –ess, as in authoress, poetess, sculptress and manageress.
As women began to get the equality bit between their teeth and more of them came out of the kitchen, they found this little add-on rather belittling. A long struggle ensued to get rid of the -ess, but in time author, poet, sculptor, manager and such like began to achieve a unisex status. Fortunately, air hostess took on the more accurate, if less glamorous-sounding, term flight attendant.

Language, however, like most things is far from being consistent and some –ess words, such as waitress, remain. For some reason the world of theatre is undecided…

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Interview: “Time to rediscover India”
By Anasuya Basu, The Telegraph-India

March 6, 2011—The newly appointed British Council director, Robert Lynes, who was in the city recently, spoke to Metro about the council’s plans for the country, India-UK relationship in the 21st century and more

How has your stay in India been so far?

I have been in India for just over a month and I am already in the midst of exciting things. I came here at the beginning of the third edition of the India Art Summit that provided me with an insight into the vibrant art scene here.

Immediately after that was the Jaipur Literature Festival that I attended. The British Council had a tent there that served as a reading room. People would come there and relax, read a book, join the British Council Library online.

We were delighted to launch Patrick French’s new book India: A Portrait. We also had Ian Jack over. There have been many exciting events in the past weeks.

What kind of cultural exchange will India and the UK have in the coming years?

Art is an area that the British Council is keen to develop and build on working with partners in India…

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Faulty Method
By Surabhi Pillai, Ahmedabad Mirror

February 28, 2011—Good morning! Let me start this article by asking you a question —how did you learn Gujarati or Hindi or Tamil or any other language that is you mother tongue?

Didn’t you first start hearing it — when your mom, your dad, your grandparents and all those who doted on you spoke to you in the baby language (in your mother tongue)? Then as time passed and you realised that you could make sounds too, you started repeating all that you heard — it started with ‘mummy, papa… and other little words; at times you coined your own cute vocabulary.

Then you grew some more and were introduced to alphabet, you were made to slowly read the letters. And it is only after you were comfortable with the alphabet and the words that those letters formed when joined together that you started writing. Thus what was the course that you followed in learning your mother tongue? Listen, Speak, Read and Write in exactly that order.

It is a fact that language cannot be learnt purely by grammar books; that’s where the problem with the learners of English as a second language lies…

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Chinese Gurucool Of Joy
By Prithvijit Mitra and Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey, Times of India

KOLKATA, March 3, 2011—The city has always been on the roadmap of educationists and knowledge seekers from across the Himalayas. While in ancient times, the Chinese crossed Bengal to reach Nalanda University to study Buddhism and Pali, and, in the more recent times, they arrived at Visva-Bharati to study art and Sino-Indian relationships, this time it is different.

The Chinese students trickling into the city are opting for conventional streams, English, BCom, computer science, management. The Chinese education ministry's experiment in this academic session has yielded promising results. Started with just 30 students this session, the percentage is likely to see at least three times increase next year. Also, while these students can be found only at St Xavier's College, negotiations are on to open up other campuses to them.

For years, the Chinese education ministry through a quasi-government Beijing-based agency was conducting a recce of leading campuses. While others were hesitant, citing the English proficiency of these students, St Xavier's College decided to take a chance.

"Till five years ago, we used to get Thai, Nepali, Bhutanese and Bangladeshi students, but not Chinese. Earlier, cities like Pune and Hyderabad were their choice as they preferred IT courses. But this time, it was different," said St Xavier's College principal father Felix Raj.

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Expressive sentences
By Keith W. Wright, The Star.com.my

March 6, 2011—Written and verbal communication can be improved by understanding and using colloquial and idiomatic terms.

Over the last few weeks, eight techniques of the 4S-Accelerated English Program’s Art of the Alternative have been highlighted to help learners quickly and significantly improve their speaking and writing skills. In this final instalment of the series, encouragement is given to those for whom English is an additional language (EAL) to set about learning, copying and using common colloquial and idiomatic terms.

The objective behind this recommendation is not just to make an EAL person sound “more native”, but also so that they can be better equipped to understand some of the things primary English speakers say in everyday conversations and written communications.

(ix) Using appropriate colloquial and idiomatic terminology.

Developing the ability to use colloquial and idiomatic terminology can add colour and variety to one’s communication, be it written or oral – providing the technique is not over-done or abused, and the terms applied are not crude.

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Language advantage
By Kang Soon Chen, TheStar.com.my

February 20, 2011—There is only so much that one can do without being proficient in the English language, even if your industry of choice is highly technical and not as language-oriented as, say, the media. In the field of automated material handling system, Malaysian AE Models Holdings Bhd chairman Datuk Dr Jimmy Lim says language barrier is a big hindrance in production quality control.

“It is a given that engineers need to have a good grasp of English because procedural instructions and design requirements are all written in the language,” says Dr Lim.

Working in the high-tech industry, he added that a good command of English is an asset especially when the engineers engage in global business ventures.

“Comprehension alone is not enough; the ability to write and speak English well is also vital.

“With a poor command of English, they may have little confidence in asking questions and bringing forth their ideas,” he adds.

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Indirectly speaking: A music-lover's guide to... curriculum development
By Mike Guest, The Daily Yomiuri

February 28, 2011—Have you ever been disappointed by "greatest hits" or "best of" albums? You know, those cash cows that record companies (remember them?) foist upon the public because they require no new compositions or recordings from the artist? For me somehow they always came up lacking. There was often little flow, as the tracks originally came from separate albums and often muted any thematic or dynamic buildup that the band was originally trying to achieve.

This trend has recently been exacerbated by the iPod, with its ability to shuffle tracks, turning what were once cohesive artistic statements, where each track was placed carefully for the sake of developing a holistic dynamic, the whole concept of an "album," into a series of disjointed sound bites. Tracks were never meant be randomly slotted in. If they were, what would be the point of them being placed together on an album?

A poorly developed English course curriculum can have the same effect on language learners. When a course is treated primarily as a bunch of discrete, self-contained lessons, even if they are individually "good" lessons--the teacher's greatest hits--and nothing more, little will be retained by students. The idea of an English course should contain a sense of cohesion and unity, a process and development carefully thought out so that each individual unit contributes to the sense of the whole…

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Learning Turkish: Steps to gaining fluency in the language
By Brooks Emerson, Today’s Zaman                                                                   

February 28, 2011—I’ve been living in İstanbul for almost nine years. While I have a noticeable accent, I have managed to gain fluency in the language. Here are some suggestions supported by current research that I hope will be helpful as you continue on your adventure of learning Turkish.

1. Find a phrase book for Turks who wish to travel to an English-speaking country. It will cost from TL 15-20 and has advantages and disadvantages.

A. Advantages

* There are many useful sentences you can memorize in their entirety to communicate your needs.

* You can pick and choose what you want to learn and then go immediately out into the world and use it. For example you might learn, “Pardon, saat kaç acaba?” (Excuse me, but do you have the time?), then you can walk down İstiklal Caddesi (or any crowded street) and ask that question again and again to everybody you see with a watch. Even if you don’t understand the answer, you will become more and more fluent every time you ask.

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Treat your home tongue as if it's the only one
By Eran Williams, TimesLive.co.za

February 20, 2011—Real linguistic power isn't so much in any one language as it is in the ability to use fully the language(s) that you have.

QUESTION: which of the 11 South African official languages is the most important?

Answer: Yours.

If you thought I was going to say "English," think again. Don't get me wrong; English is great.

It is widely used, is rich in vocabulary, history and variety, and is pretty much agreed to be, at this moment, the international language of power and prestige.

But English is the native language of fewer than 10% of South Africans and so it has to take a back seat (or at least the passenger seat) for the vast majority here.

So, why does a former English teacher and a man employed by the US government to encourage and enhance the teaching of English in Southern Africa promote indigenous languages? Simply because the best way to learn English is through proficiency in one's mother tongue.

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English has colonized our languages
By Khaya Dlanga, News24.com
   
February 15, 2011—Our official languages are only official on paper. The Constitution. It is time we became honest about this. One is almost inclined to say that that part of the Constitution was written to make us feel good about ourselves and congratulate one another on how tolerant we are as a nation because we were able to accommodate all 11 official languages. It is just make up. It was done to make us look good. English is South Africa’s official language whether we like to admit it or not.  This is good and bad.

When white schools were opened to black kids in the early 90s, black parents sent their kids to white schools, not just for a superior education, but more importantly, so that they could learn to speak great English; so that they could get great jobs, not just in South Africa but anywhere else in the world. It went so far that some parents in the various townships barred their children from speaking their mother tongues but English at home.

It became the hip thing to do. Black parents would ask their young children to bring Coke with Choice Assorted to visitors so that they could speak English. In reality what they were doing was just showing off how well their little black child can speak the white man's language.

Ironically, it was a British weekly magazine that wrote an article detailing the slow decline of South African languages just a few weeks ago. Yes, even Afrikaans, in case you were wondering.

The great, conservative and informative British publication, The Economist, published an article with the headline “South African languages, Tongues under threat” with the sub heading, “English is dangerously dominant.” Yes. The Economist said that English is dangerously dominant in South Africa. So dangerous in fact that it is eating away at Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, Ndebele, Afrikaans and numerous other South African languages.

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Mind your language
By Farwa Zahra, The Express Tribune

KARACHI, February 20, 2011—Gone are the days when you spent your evenings hooked to ICQ and Mirc, overwhelmed with the power of asl (age, sex and location) that marked the start of your ychat conversation with random strangers; learning innovative terms on chat forums and then flaunting the next morning among your peers, who would avenge you later with their set of the then ‘it’ thing.

As time passed, many of you got over the obsession. With masses joining the cyber world and adopting the jargon, they realised they lost their soi-distant exclusiveness, and suddenly all the grammar courses from high school came back, striking like lightning. Then began a phase of perpetual judgement on the linguistic skills of “others”.

Ironically it is now English that is local, and cyber-English is global. While linguists consider the online deviation from standard English as a way of free expression and a matter of ease, your cyber friends might be judging your language skills through what comes “natural” to your style.

Changing ‘You’ into ‘U’ might be your cup of tea, but are you sure your chat partner is not doubting your level of maturity? Shortening the words might be saving you pressing a few more keys but is your chat partner seeing it as a face-saving expression to hide your bad spellings?

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Ekushey February: It’s time for soul-searching
Editorial, TheFinancialExpress-bd.com

As the nation observes the immoral Ekushey February today (Monday) paying rich tributes to the memory of the language martyrs, it is time to look in retrospect the progress made so far in materializing their dream.

The people of Bangladesh have earned special distinction for being the only nation in the world that has shed blood for upholding the prestige of its mother tongue. Such distinction was well recognized internationally when the UNESCO general conference in a unanimous resolution adopted on November 17, 1999 proclaimed the Ekushey February—the Shaheed Dibash—as the International Mother Language Day. The international recognition, thus, has been a tribute not only to the martyrs and active participants of the language movement but also to the people of this country.

What was the dream of the language martyrs, really? Was it just the establishment of the right to write or speak in Bangla language or something beyond that?

The way this auspicious day is observed at the state or individual organisational levels and what is said and written on the occasion, one might get the impression that Ekushey February is all about Bangla language. But, in reality, the language movement had spoken a lot more.

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Use of language in the media
By Dafe Ivwurie, Daily Independent
 
February 18, 2011—A former senior colleague of mine sent me an SMS on something that she had read in one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers. It was not the topic or the idea put forward in the article that angered her, it was the language and errors, which I deciphered from the drift of her message that was her major grouse with the writer, the proof reader and the editor.

“English must be the hardest language on earth to master even for a newspaper,” she lashed out. “Are there no proof readers or whatever?” she queried in the conclusion of her very terse text message.

I tried to put up a defence for my primary constituency; writing is hard, the pressure of the job is enormous, the pay is poor, the conditions of getting assignments done are demoralising, the good ones do not stay on the job, they go in search of where the grass is greener in banks, the PR agencies and the oil industry, etc. 

I doubt if my protestation impressed her in the least, not to talk of swaying her mind in any significant way. In the end, I conceded some ground that the level of the use of the English language in the media – the print, broadcasting and the movie industry – is shameful and appalling. I have chosen to limit it to the works that are normally in the public domain, but if you have worked in the corporate world, you would also agree that this is a malady that has eaten deep - graduates simply cannot write a memo to their colleagues.

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President Sarkozy wants to force French children to learn English from the age of 3
By Oliver Pickup, Daily Mail UK

February 1, 2011—Nicolas Sarkozy has left French traditionalists wiping Burgundy's finest rouge from their whiskers in disgust after proposing that the country's youth be forced to learn the English language from as early as nursery school.

The French President, who has recently come under fire for his own grasp of Francais, has said that he wants France's youngsters to learn 'the language of Shakespeare'.

And now he has further enraged a proud - and sensitive - nation by suggesting that French children should learn the Queen's English... from as young as the age of THREE.

Difference of opinion: While Nicolas Sarkozy wants French children to learn English from a very early age, General Charles de Gaulle—one of the most celebrated French leaders—never uttered a word of English in public

It is the complete opposite of the approach taken by one of France's most celebrated leaders, Charles de Gaulle, who simply refused to parlez Anglais in public.

The French general and statesman, who led the Free French Forces during World War II, founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969.
He would turn in his grave upon hearing Mr Sarkozy's latest suggestions about linguistics—a move that critics fear will dilute the cherished French language and halt its dissemination.

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Evolving English

February 4, 2011—Erika Brincat speaks to one of the world’s leading linguists – the acclaimed English Language expert, Professor David Crystal, who was here in Malta this week to give three public talks.

Professor David Crystal has been producing books, articles, radio and TV programmes and interviews for more than 30 years and at the heart of it all is a longing to educate. The first talk by Professor Crystal held on Wednesday at the University of Malta was on The Future of Englishes. The second talk about The Perils of Being a Linguist took place on Wednesday evening at the St James Cavalier Theatre, and the final talk held on Thursday dealt with Internet Linguistics, and took a look at the effect of the Internet on language.

Could you tell us what is meant by The Future of Englishes? Do you mean to say there are different versions of the English language?

This is not a new usage at all, you will find The Journal of World Englishes for example – the whole point is that with English being an increasingly global language it is natural for a variety of local versions to arise. This has been the case since colonial times in South Africa for example and also in the last 50 to 60 years in countries such as Nigeria and India a distinctive form of English is arising.

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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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Georgia is speaking its way out of Russian orbit
By Clifford J. Levy, The New York Times

TBILISI, January 29, 2011—The new teacher who arrived recently at School No. 161 could barely speak a word of the Georgian language, knew little about local customs and easily got lost in the crazy-quilt streets of this hilly capital. But she was at the forefront of one of the most notable educational initiatives — if not social experiments — being attempted in the former Soviet Union.

When the teacher, Deborah Cruz, walked into a classroom of squirmy teenagers, they grew rapt. Here was a stranger who would help connect them to the rest of the world, one irregular verb tense at a time.

Cruz, who is from the Seattle area, is part of a brigade of native English speakers recruited by Georgia's government to spur a linguistic revolution. The goal is to make Georgia a country where English is as common as in Sweden — and in the process to supplant Russian as the dominant second language.

"What we are doing is really something groundbreaking," Cruz, 58, said after leading her class in a form of tic-tac-toe on the blackboard, with students devising a sentence to fill in a box.

One of her students, Tekla Iordanishvili, 15, chimed in, "English is the international language, and we need it."

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My kind of English?       
By Dharma Adhikari, MyRepublica.com

February 2, 2011—One frenzied afternoon in 1982, in the dusty little town of Birtamod in Eastern Nepal, I bumped into a young man. He was remarkably tall, blonde, with a goatee, clad in baggy jeans and a Nike T-shirt. He wore a laced, hand-knit, hemp backpack on his shoulder.

I often recall that scene from my teen-age days not so much for its visual distinctiveness but more for the English the budget tourist spoke with me that day. A band of kids swarmed around the foreigner, shouting “kuire! kuire!" as he flipped through his little travel book and shot a few questions at me.

His queries were statistical. Typical of Americans perhaps, he seemed to have a strong sense of place: What is the population of this city? What is its altitude? What is its area? He also took notes. Like a vigilant reporter, he seemed to care for details.

Some kids responded with impulsive answers and I tried too, with little regard to accuracy of information. I was interested more in the way he was speaking than in what he wanted to know. I liked the way he chewed out the words, with a sing-songy intonation, too fast to follow yet composed for someone used to the rumbling, khalyang-balyang of Nepali sounds.

Drawing on my elementary English acquired from an Indian English-medium school…

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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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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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