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Lack of languages stifles Brits and USers | ||
Tags: Monolingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 1 of 95 08 July 2014 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Guardian article:
"Lack of languages stifles Brits and Americans" article Probably not much new to seasoned HTLAL veterans, but perhaps interesting all the same. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 2 of 95 08 July 2014 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A really interesting read, although they didn't seem to offer much in the way of solutions.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 3 of 95 08 July 2014 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The people in China is not a lot better. A lot of them are not fluent in English thinking that you have
over 1B Mandarin speakers already. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| holly heels Groupie United States Joined 3885 days ago 47 posts - 107 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 95 09 July 2014 at 12:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for the article.
I don't think that the USA and China are really that comparable, even with so many monoglots in China. China is in transition from agrarian to industrial, and you can't necessarily expect rural Chinese to be bilingual, even though learning standard Mandarin might be like a separate language to them if it differs too much from their local dialect. The USA has less of an excuse because the best foreign language material is English-based. Even today it is probably more difficult for the Chinese to learn Arabic, for example, if they don't know English. The USA is in many ways comparable to Canada, where monoglots are barred from being prime minister. I am reading right now an article by Asian Anthropology Professor Haimendorf at the University of London, who wrote about is work among the tribal populations in central India, where it was quite common for peasant farmers to be fluent in no less than 4 languages, in this case Telugu, Marathi, and Urdu, plus their local language. How did they do this without the benefit of the internet? One possible solution to the US foreign language problem is to give fully-paid 4-year college scholarships to ALL native English speaking students who have learned to fluency any language of strategic/security importance. (Arabic, Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Persian, Japanese) Edited by holly heels on 09 July 2014 at 12:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 5 of 95 09 July 2014 at 12:45am | IP Logged | |||||
You're right in your main points, but I have to challenge this point. Assimil is arguably the best language publisher out there. But when I see Langenscheidt's quality German-based courses to learn other languages, I just drool. By comparison, most English-based language publishers seem to be putting out more and more dumbed-down courses promising easy learning. Edited by Jeffers on 09 July 2014 at 12:45am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 95 09 July 2014 at 1:01am | IP Logged | |||||
This seems to be strange argumentation for me since on one hand, rural Chinese are being excused for their monolingualism unlike Americans, yet Indian peasants are acknowledged as being multilingual despite being socioeconomically comparable to their Chinese counterparts. It all comes down to need. The truth is that a lot of Chinese (like many Americans) don't need to know much more than their local dialect plus enough of the standard language to provide for themselves. One problem with likening the USA to Canada linguistically is that Canada is officially bilingual whereas the USA technically has no official language. In general to work for the Canadian federal government (including being prime minister), one is to be functional in English and French although in practice this is a little less idealized than it seems with exceptions turning up in the form of people on the government's payroll who professionally know only one of the official languages (some of whom may be fluent in languages other than the official ones though). Judging by the number of Canadian and American couchsurfers whom I've met over the years whose grasp of French and/or Spanish lags badly behind their English, plenty of Canadians are as linguistically clueless as Americans primarily because of the lack of incentive/interest to learn other languages. On the subject of the thread, there's not much that will change unless English lacks so much stature that the derided monoglots of the Anglosphere start to learn other languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| holly heels Groupie United States Joined 3885 days ago 47 posts - 107 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 95 09 July 2014 at 1:26am | IP Logged | |||||
I take your word for it on the Assimil programs you mentioned, and I am not personally familiar with those. Maybe what I wanted to say was that there is probably a wider variety of programs available with English as the gateway language. And in response to Chung's point, I was comparing the USA to Canada socio-economically really, not linguistically, and the fact that bilingualism is somewhat stronger, at least at governmental levels, in Canada and it's even more isolated geographically than the USA. Sorry for any confusion. Edited by holly heels on 09 July 2014 at 3:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 8 of 95 09 July 2014 at 6:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Don't forget the Brits and the Americans dominated the world in recent history. they behaved like they
are bringing civilization to salvages. People in other places are supposed to learn their language & customs but not the other way around. When the last British Governor Chris Patten left Hong Kong, he made a fuss about the Chinese renaming their cities to odd sounding names like Beijing instead of Peking and Guangzhou instead of Canton. The so call "new" city names were Chinese originals translated into English phonetically. When the Brits went to China, they had trouble with the Chinese pronunciations so places like Xiamen became "Amoy". I don't think Chris Patten made any effort to learn Chinese while serving as Governor. The Australians like former PM Kevin Rudd made an effort to learn Chinese despite coming from an "English-speaking" country. The Chinese, unlike the Brits & Americans went through the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Travel to other countries were limited and people were afraid to expose themselves as the educated class such as speaking a second language openly. Today although English is being taught as a subject, the qualified teachers tend to come from abroad since local teachers don't have enough exposure to the language. Also their education system tend to focus on math & science. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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