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Latin America and PRC Language Sharing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 9 of 24 31 March 2015 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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EPI: English Proficiency Index
I find it a bit odd that Argentina are top of the Hispanophone countries. Nevertheless you can see the general trend: Europe high, Latin America low to very low: EPI Latin America - Low Proficiency LATIN AMERICA STRUGGLES TO IMPROVE Adult English proficiency remains weak in Latin America. Of the 14 Latin American countries included in our index, 12 have low English proficiency levels. However, the region’s average EF EPI score has improved, gaining 2.16 points since 2007. The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Peru stand out for their above-average gains, while English skills are not improving in El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Uruguay. If this is the case, I see no reason why not just dump English and switch it into Mandarin since, as you said before, it is not really "dropping" their English skills because, if I had to be direct, they did not have very many in the first place. It also has this statement regarding the "future", or "youth" of Latin America and their English: Following the global trend, Latin American mid-career professionals (aged 25–34 and 35–44) have the highest proficiency levels. However, unlike the global trend, young adults in Latin America are significantly behind those in the 45–54 age group and have similar English levels to those 55 and above. Regarding the global average: While Latin American women are stronger than Latin American men in English proficiency (p < 0.001), both groups are significantly behind the global averages. This is probably the complete opposite to almost all EU countries. If the young are not learning English like in Europe, you have the point that just doing a switch onto Mandarin does not cause any type of loss of English, because the level is so low that whatever is lost is negliglibe. This is probably not the case with either the Netherlands nor the Czech Republic. The Mercosur, which is, in some respects, the Latin American version of the EU, is basically Spanish/Portuguese and nothing else. It is true that most of Latin America border other Hispanophone countries, the only Lusophone one being Brazil. The only "anomalies" are the three Guianas, Guyana (British Guiana), Suriname (Nederlandse Guiana), and Guyane Française. Even then, if you watch Caricom meetings, when the Guyanese or Surinamese officials speak, all of the Hispanophone and Lusophone officials need headphones with the live translation into Spanish/Portuguese. P.S.: Since you are learning Spanish, keep up with Spanish newspapers. They usually list news about their current trade with the PRC (and Russia), including purchasings of military jets, building of new firms, etc. I think that the reason that people are missing this is that the Anglophone media usually fail to cover anything related to this unless it is really big. You basically have to know Spanish to keep up with the novelties, unless you know Mandarin and/or Russian as well. International news in Spanish that cover these things very often are RT en español and Telesur. Also if you want to see how some Hispanophones are in Anglophone countries with reard to English, here is a very recent travel programme where they interview Spanish immigrants to my hometown: Españoles en el mundo: Mánchester I have walked down this street (Market Street) literally more than 1.000 times. Anyway you can see that even though they now live in the UK, their English...does not seem to have improved, so I wonder how it was before even. "Hello gentlemans, a special to cut the hair?" is not exactly impressive. Edited by 1e4e6 on 01 April 2015 at 2:23am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 10 of 24 01 April 2015 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Latin America isn't the only region that may be embracing China for business opportunities. In recent years,
the Chinese invested a lot of money in Africa where oil and other resources are found. In return for rights to extract resources from Africa, the Chinese helped to build infrastructure in many countries (roads, schools, etc). There are Chinese technicians who worked in Africa as well as an influx of Africans searching for opportunities in China. In the southern city of Guangzhou (former name Canton) there is an area of the city with the nickname "Chocolate District" because of the large numbers of people with dark skin. It is estimated as many of 1M Africans in Guangzhou alone. Australia seemed to be embracing China as well. At one time they were looking north to Japan for business opportunities and seemed to be embracing their neighbours in Asia far more than Europe where the English settlers originated. The former Australian PM Kevin Rudd is fluent in Mandarin. A number of schools in Australia offer Mandarin as a second language. Edited by shk00design on 01 April 2015 at 7:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 24 01 April 2015 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, sometimes I think the overall level of English among the adult czechs is just as
low as in the latin america, which is certainly not the case of the Netherlands. However, English is already competing against other languages in Europe, most importantly German and French. But I suppose neither the Latin America nor Australia ever felt before the need to learn another language and especially another language that wouldn't be English. Africa is a bit different, I'd say, as it is already a region so rich and mixed in languages with strong ties to several european languages and arabic, that I still don't think Mandarin will take a strong root there, no matter the economic ties. P.S: thanks for all the links. Now that I think of it. I believe we might be surprised by a much more important article than the one at the beginning of this thread. Languages gain and lose popularity quite often, the private language teaching sector means very little in the overall population capacities, I'd say. But the choice of languages taught in the educational mainstream, that is as well a political choice. So, if we happen to read sometime soon that a number of public schools in Argentina teach Mandarin as a second foreign language or even as an alternative to English, that will be something. And I don't think it is that improbable, considering the struggles of some regions to get rid (or at least pretend getting rid) of the American influences. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 12 of 24 01 April 2015 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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True, public education is really what should be under examination on linguistic
policy. It makes no difference what private schools do because people can pay whatever they want to study things that are not what most people study. Children can probably spend €10000 a year and send their children to a lycée in an Anglophone country, but if the Ministry of Education of one of these countries starts putting Mandarin in the curriculum, or the PRC start to offer Spanish into their primary and secondary schools, then that would be a very clear sign. I already saw on DW that Goethe Instituts are more popular in PRC and countries like Vietnam as well, so I think that Spanish and Institutos Cervantes are probably next given that the PRC have way more trade with Latin America than Germany nowdadays. I have only been to the Czech Republic once, but I doubt that there is tension against the USA and UK like there is in Latin America. And also there is no alliance with the PRC (nor Russia) that is their most important political link like in Latin America. I also had the feeling in Latin America that speaking the imperialist's language (English) is also something that has a bit of a bad connotation regarding learning English, even though probably it is not documented in writing. Rafael Correa just talked about the imperialists who take their orders from the USA about how they are trying to destabilise the governments of Latin America who want to cut their alliances with the Anglophone countries: Ese otro capítulo de la restauración conservadora que utiliza hasta las instancias jurídicas para intentar desestabilizar los gobiernos progresistas de América Latina como también están tratando de hacer con Dilma [Rousseff] en el caso Petrobras, pero no pasarán. América Latina nunca volverá a ser lo que fue antes. ¡América Latina, unida, progresista! I also should mention that the UK are probably the most hated country in Argentina... Edited by 1e4e6 on 01 April 2015 at 11:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 24 01 April 2015 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, there is no tension like that among reasonable people to get away from the euro-
atlantic region represented by English, we are hopefully firmly rooted there. The alcoholic moron that is called president these days might be a putinophil (and there are unfortunately ties with Russia in areas where there shouldn't be such ties, such as the money for the president's campaign) but that is not the point of view of the normal people. And we are coming from a different start. Argentina's national language is one of the most important languages of the world while Czech is pretty useless anywhere outside the Czech Republic or Slovakia. We need at least English, even though we could do with much more skill in English+German/French/another among the general population. Really, the private language schools are not a measure of a nation's incline towards any language. For exemple, Japanese and Mandarin are on the rise in the language schools here as well. But that doesn't mean a usual shop assistant or passerby in Prague would answer to a tourist from China or Japan in their language. Even in the companies owned or coowned by the Japanese or the Koreans, it is not the language of the management, English usually is. However, other european companies can be lead in a neither English nor Czech, usually those are the German or French enterprises. But one of the reasons might be that the Czechs are quite lazy at languages. If the Latin Americans prove to be more dilligent and get Mandarin among the population, it will be a huge success with lots of consequences, even though both good and bad, in my opinion. I've recently read a few articles concerning a turkish charity that works, among other countries, in various countries of the LA. Obviously, not only the PRC want to be LA's main partner. So, from the articles I've read, we might even expect a rise in the popularity of Arabic among the latino americans. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 14 of 24 02 April 2015 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Or Turkish, since they speak Turkish in Turkey...
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 24 02 April 2015 at 1:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah but the charity was obviously one that gives you a meal and a Quo'ran. Therefore
Arabic is even a more likely choice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 16 of 24 03 April 2015 at 5:51am | IP Logged | ||
In Turkey they would still give you the Qu'ran, but they don't speak Arabic. And a charity that hands out Qu'rans like free coupons is a charity I'm avoiding, by the way... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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