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Lack of languages stifles Brits and USers | ||
Tags: Monolingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3875 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 17 of 95 09 July 2014 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Yes, but the article was about the US/UK.
The article read like a total piece of crap. A quote from the article:
If you read the report, it is basically academics agreeing in a meeting that "...". No data provided. I fully agree with EMK's analysis. I'll also add one thing to EMK's post. Learning languages has advantages, thats a given. However, we must also look at the *cost* of learning a new language. IMHO it makes no sense to foist extra languages upon the masses when only a very tiny % of jobs will require a second language, and when US/UK can import bilingual workers from other countries. If UK really wants to improve its global dominance, it must cultivate a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship; having more bilingual people will do jack. A lot of swedes speak two languages, but Sweden does not dominate the world. Edited by Gemuse on 09 July 2014 at 9:54pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4237 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 18 of 95 09 July 2014 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
According to Michael, an expat 老外 from the West: The short answer — or the one given on Wikipedia, in any case – is that in Chinese, the city’s name has always been pronounced “Beijing,” but early Western visitors to China (specifically, 17th century French missionaries) rendered it into the Roman alphabet as “Peking.” When the PRC introduced the Pinyin system in 1958, the new spelling “Beijing” was adopted to more accurately reflect the name’s pronunciation. The original article: From Peking to Beijing: A Long and Bumpy Trip After referring to the article, I don't think the origin of the word Peking had to do with different Chinese dialects, but more to do with the phonetics used when the Europeans tried to Romanize the name 北京 with the Latin alphabet. Edited by shk00design on 09 July 2014 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5325 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 95 09 July 2014 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I definitely agree that knowing the the local language where you live is enormously useful. You'll have more jobs open to you, you'll be able to interact with the society around you, and you won't be stuck in an English bubble. This isn't just a matter of employability, but also basic self-respect in the long run. Of course, there are even a few places where it helps to know several languages; Montreal is a fun city to be bilingual in. And I imagine it doesn't hurt to speak whatever language your employer uses at their headquarters. My real point is that one of two things are true: 1. US and UK businesses aren't actually suffering from a lack of language skills, or 2. They are suffering, but they're not willing to cough up more than a 2% salary bonus. When there's a true shortage of critical skills, it's hard to miss. Salaries go up. Recruiters steal company telephone directories and spam everybody with employment offers. College students smell easy money, and change their majors. "Bootcamps" spring up everywhere to teach everybody the necessary skills. This sort of thing can happen with languages, as in this discussion of working in Montreal:
If employers really want language skills badly enough, even monolingual English speakers will learn, and teach their kids. You can see the same process in the opposite direction in Montreal, too:
This is what an actual shortage of language skills looks like on the ground: job searches get a lot easier for people who speak multiple languages, and potential employees get motivated to learn. I'm quite sure that nothing like this exists in the northeastern US. OK, every once in a blue moon somebody will send an email to Alliance Française mailing list in Burlington, Vermont looking for retail employees who speak French, because Burlington is less than 2 hours south of Montreal. Now, personally I'm a huge fan of language learning, and I think a lot more people should learn languages. It's fun, it's rewarding, it's easier than most people think (especially if you only want B1 or B2), and it opens up whole new worlds. But at the same time, I don't buy the argument that US and UK companies have an especially desperate need for bilingual employees right now. If somebody wanted to claim that US and UK companies should invest more money in multi-lingual employees, but they're too clueless to realize the advantages, I'd be happy to listen to that argument. But surveying a bunch of employers and asking them "Would foreign language skills be nice?" won't answer that question. Instead, ask them: 1. How many jobs at your company normally require knowledge of more than one language? 2. How much extra would you pay to hire multi-lingual employees? 3. How much money did you lose last year because you couldn't get multi-lingual employees? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3875 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 20 of 95 09 July 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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EMK, you should write a blog where you direct your acute reasoning skills on to the various half-baked claims that politicians/newpapers/economists/health-experts make; and show people what critical analysis really looks like. Edited by Gemuse on 09 July 2014 at 10:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4326 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 21 of 95 09 July 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I think we are completely on the same page here.
I guess the question may well be whether people running businesses in general would have a good understanding of this anyway. I am sure there must be studies that show that X-dollars invested in non-linguistic education today pays off Y-dollars in improvements to the economy at a later date. I suspect that the economies of certain countries might well benefit from additional languages as well - although company people might not immediately see this, especially if they come from monolingual cultures themselves. Of course if this were true, I suspect the languages (perhaps with the exception of English) are going to be pretty regionally specific - it might be worth something for the economies of countries if more people learnt Spanish in Brazil, or Chinese in Japan, for instance. Edited by patrickwilken on 10 July 2014 at 8:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5223 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 22 of 95 09 July 2014 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I don't think anybody disputes the fact that the large majority of people in the US, UK, and even certain parts of
Canada, have no need for foreign languages in their jobs. Actually, I think it is the same in most countries of the world. We know that many small countries such as Holland and the Scandinavian countries speak good English, but how many actually use English in their work or their daily lives? I think it's probably a minority. At what about countries with large populations? In a country like Japan with very little immigration and a homogenous population, why are there thousands of foreigners teaching English to people who probably will never use it? And China is a fine example where there is a huge emphasis on learning English and little actual necessity. Why this massive interest in learning English everywhere in the world? To answer this question in a roundabout way, I wish to point out that in many major cities of the world there are "international" schools that cater to the local elite. All these schools emphasize languages. For example, in Toronto there is the Toronto French School that is modelled on the French lycée with teaching nearly all in French. Unsurprisingly, it costs an arm and a leg to send one's children there. But these kids are guaranteed to come out bilingual. I'm sure there are similar schools throughout the US and around the world of course. And then there are all the international schools in English in probably every major city in the world. What we observe is that for the elite, bilingualism or multilingualism is important. Why? I'm pretty sure that the perception is that in today's world multilingualism is a major advantage for one's career. And they are probably totally right for the kinds of jobs that these children will aspire to. So, if we want to assess how important foreign language skills are important for businesses in the US and UK, what we have to look at is the international reach of the business. Many or most business in the US have no foreign reach and therefore have no need for foreign languages. But what of those businesses, large or small that have foreign markets? At some point there is some king of language interface. Sure, English is the international language of business but there is no doubt that having employees proficient in foreign languages is a major advantage. I'm thinking, for example, of a company I know that deals in security-related products. Latin America is a major market for some unfortunate reasons. This company has a network of dealers in Latin America and participates in various trade shows. How does this company interact with Latin America? Is it English only because "they all can understand English."? Or do they have Spanish-speaking staff who can interact easily with the customers? Do you stand a better chance of getting a job with this company if you speak great Spanish? Where I live, many Canadian universities and private schools are falling over themselves to enter the Asian markets. There are all sorts of trade missions and trade shows in China, Korea, Singapore, etc. Wouldn't these schools love to have employees proficient in various Asian languages? Sure, they ultimately get them, but who are they? More often than not they are local employees or Canadian heritage speakers of these Asian languages. This is what the elite of all countries have discovered a long time ago. Good education from a reputable school plus solid foreign language skills is a guaranteed winning combination. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6702 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 95 10 July 2014 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Have you seen this?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Beijing) How do you say 北京 in Cantonese? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6949 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 24 of 95 10 July 2014 at 3:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
...and if you want to hear the realization of 北京 in other Chinese languages as well as Japanese and Korean, listen to the samples on Forvo. The Min and one of the Hakka samples also demonstrate the retention of [kʲ]. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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