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To be an ideal global citizen... | ||
Tags: Ideal | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5757 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 1 of 23 20 February 2011 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've heard it said before that to be an ideal European citizen you should know English,
German, and French. I propose that to be an ideal global citizen, you should know English and Mandarin. To speak in very broad terms, there are two dominate regions/cultures in the world today: the West and East Asia. They account for the lion's share of economic, scientific, and cultural output. Within these regions there are of course countless variations, but if you compare two Western countries with any East Asian one, you quickly realize that the two Western countries have a lot more in common than you might have otherwise thought. The number of languages most people can learn is constrained by time and interest, so it's not very meaningful to choose more than a couple must-have languages for our ideal global citizen. Given these constraints I think it makes sense to choose one language from each of the above mentioned regions. English as the representative language of the West needs no further explanation since it is also currently the dominate global language. I choose Mandarin to represent East Asia because it is the main language of the central country of East Asia, China. If you only have time to learn one language, make it English. But our ideal global citizen has time for two, so he'll be learning English and Mandarin. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| stephen_g Groupie Canada Joined 6126 days ago 44 posts - 84 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Italian | Message 2 of 23 20 February 2011 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Mandarin is a great choice for someone who aspires to be a global citizen, but I think
I'd disagree with your statement that East Asian culture is, in some way, the world's most vibrant alongside Western culture. While East Asian musical groups and Japanese cartoons have soft power worldwide, I don't see how East Asian cultural output is any more powerful in reach than that which is coming out of South Asia. In terms of soft power, Indian spirituality, yoga and Bollywood claim just as many adherents as K/J/Canto-pop and manga, if not more. If we're going to talk about vibrancy, I've personally always been struck by how thoroughly East Asians have embraced Western genres of music, for example, as opposed to the continued popularity of traditional genres in South Asia amongst the general population. If you can back your statement up, though, I'd like to see what you have to say. I'm not trying to begin a debate in which people stick up for their favorite cultural region, just pointing out that it's a bit problematic to say East Asia is somehow culturally dominant. I think it's really only Western culture which has achieved deep penetration into a huge amount of other cultures worldwide. As for quality, that's a debate which would never end! --- Staying on topic, I wouldn't advocate for the 'global citizen' to learn a South Asian language if only one slot were open alongside English (though it seems odd to talk about being global and to have such a tight restriction in place!) Culture is only one part of the puzzle. I'd agree that presently, Mandarin probably gives the average learner the best bang for their buck in terms of balancing cultural and economic factors. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mom Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4823 days ago 5 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Swahili | Message 4 of 23 20 February 2011 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Whenever someone starts talking about being a "global citizen" I become very uncomfortable.
4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 5837 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 23 20 February 2011 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sounds more like a philosophical topic to be argued over like the ideal state 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5490 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 7 of 23 20 February 2011 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know many of us have our issues with concepts such as the "ideal global citizen" (cf. innumerable hot-headed arguments that sprang out of questions such as "What are the most useful 5/10/etc. languages to know?"), but I think that darkwhispersdal makes a very good observation: if we treat this question as a problem of philosophy – in this case, linguistic philosophy – maybe we can avoid turning this thread into another hothouse of personal opinion and angry rebuttal. Of course personal opinions are important, but maybe let's try to consider the concept of the "ideal global citizen" as something purely hypothetical, worth thinking about just from a theoretical point of view. Practicality can be left to the individual's discretion. After all, most of us know exactly which languages we want to learn and why, so we shouldn't let ourselves be bothered by something like this. To return to the original question, I would have to agree that English and Mandarin do seem like two of the major "power languages" today, especially in the area of international business interactions. (Arabic might count too, although its multiplicity of dialects makes this an iffy question.) If we define the "ideal global citizen" (I'll call it the IGC from now on, 'cause I'm lazy) as a successful businesswoman or -man, then I would agree that these two languages are very important. If the IGC is redefined from a "cultural history" point of view, one might choose quite different languages, e.g. German and Italian. Similarly, if we define the IGC purely anthropologically, we could postulate that this person would benefit the most from learning languages which are extremely different from each other, to the point where the process of learning might teach the learner something about toleration and appreciation of difference, etc. With that in mind, one might select more "exotic" languages such as remote native tongues of Asia, Africa, North America, etc. In conclusion: putting my limited education in philosophy to work here, I would say that the concept of the IGC could be quite an interesting one, but we can't really discuss which languages this hypothetical person should know until we've decided exactly WHO the IGC is. As I illustrated above, we could approach it from multiple angles, which could make the whole thing quite fun. So, perhaps we can extend the OP's post to this: How many types of IGC can we come up, and which languages should each of them know? (edited to clean up formatting) Edited by Jinx on 20 February 2011 at 11:44pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6757 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese | Message 8 of 23 21 February 2011 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The ideal global citizen is fluent in English mandarin russian arabic Spanish french portuguese and swahili
The real global citizen, if necessary, hire translators 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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