Thread: Do you Know Korean Education reality?

It can be SO annoying to live in an Anglicized world - even being an English-speaker myself. For instance:

>> At my school, there are two foreign exchange students from Brazil who are not very good with English. When they met each other, they quickly grew close and now walk around speaking Portuguese together. There's nothing wrong with that, of course; but now this whole body of English-speakers - my school - has a moral crisis on its hands (in that the exchange students don't feel welcome), and the two girls can't do a thing to make their own situations here better except muddle through the daily onslaught of spoken English.

>> I was looking for overseas universities I might be interested in (for the very reason of learning foreign languages), and I had such a hard time with the non-English websites. Even the ones that had English versions of the webpages were hard to navigate. (And, of course, using Google to translate is usually not a good idea considering its inacurracy.)


...Anyway.... My examples of language issues are two less serious ones. What you noted, about English becoming more and more expected worldwide, is the big dilemma underlying it all. Not only does Anglicization put a burden on non-Anglophone peoples, but it also isolates the English-speakers themselves. You see, in America, there are few primary and secondary schools that emphasize foreign languages; and the ones that do, often include only ones such as Spanish, French, German and Latin. What about the non Latin-based languages of the Orient and Arabia, or Russia? Those languages which derive from outside of Europe tend to be taught only in our universities, which, of course, can only be accessed by people who can pay for it.

I believe that all the major developed countries, and any places where many cultures cross, should have an educational standard of teaching every child at least two other languages. This should start in the early grades - no later than age seven - so that by the time a kid gets older, he or she will have a basis for further linguistic study if he or she chooses.

Unfortunately, in America right now, most people simply don't expect one another to speak anything other than English - which is unfortunate, considering that this country was once described as a "melting pot," a place where people could come from all over the world and live as one.

So, I agree with you that English ability is coveted too much. I think true internationalization will not happen until people of all cultures commit to learning the languages of their brothers and sisters around the world.

English is the closest thing we have to an international language. A person who speaks English may literally travel anywhere in the world. I myself have lived in Thailand, Ghana, El Salvador, and Lebanon and I've traveled to every continent except Antarctica without any problems.

I have encountered people who speak English in all sorts of places - a bush guide in the Okvango Delta of Botswana, a rug dealer in a tiny village along the Nile in Egypt, a Bedouin outside the ruins of Petra, Jordan, a camp supplier in San Pablo on the Amazon, and an elephant herder at the River Kwai in Thailand.

The hospitality, travel, food service, and tourism industries all promote the use of English to facilitate tourism in their respective countries. English is also the language of international business.

At one time, French was the language of the educated elite at least within the Western hemisphere. Before that, the Romans promoted the use of Latin throughout their Empire which covered Europe, north Africa, the coastline along the Middle East, and England.

Honestly I think it is a good thing. Unfortunately I believe it has made the US a very lazy country. We do not have to know another language, so we do not think about it.

Ms. Tree,

I have to disagree with you, in some respects. Yes learning another person's language shows respect but no one can know them all. You will still have the need for people to communicate with each other and an interpretor may not be available. If I knew five languages fluently I would only be able to communicate with those five cultures. That is a very timy percentage of the world's population. Having a common language is what will promote brotherhood. As it stands right now, English is that language. Several hundred years of colinization made sure of that. One cannot change what has been done.

Granted, I do not know the whole situation of the two exchange students in you school, but from the sound of it, they are going through culture shock. Maybe you should befriend them, get them involved in the school. Yes they will have to use english, but that is what they signed up for. When you are an exchange student you agree to be immersed in a culture. You can do your part by helping them. A kind gesture is recognized as welcoming in any language. maybe you can learn a bit of their language as you help them acclimate.

My point is, instead of being upset get involved. Slap a smile on your face and bring them into your group of friends.

You're right, Mark - it's idealistic to hope that international unity will come via such an enormous educational (and cultural) undertaking as it would be to make everyone trilingual, at minimum.

But is it not also idealistic to hope that a single language can actually unify our world? Even if this did happen, could it reach into the parts of the world where only non-English languages, including thousands of very obscure ones, are spoken?... Linguistic unity can only extend so far as geography allows. Linguistic diversity, while perhaps less useful in the sphere of international relations, can be more useful in its physical reach. So, we must ask ourselves what exactly linguistic unity would look like.

We've established that English the most useful language in global politics, economics and travel. So why would the average citizen of, say, rural Myanmar (or, for that matter, Arkansas) need to know English if he or she is not involved in national or international politics, is not part of a prominent corporation, and does not travel beyond the national border? ...When we talk about English as the current world language, we forget that it is only so to those who have reason to be involved in world affairs. (Thus, if in the future China ever bumped the U.S. out of all-around-Number-One status, the percent of Chinese-speakers would rise and the percent of English-speakers would fall.)

Some Americans might consider the wave of Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. a reason to learn Spanish; some might consider English to be part of "what they signed up for" when they decided to move to an Anglophone nation. Likewise, some French might consider the wave of various Muslim immigrants to be a reason to learn Arabic; and some might consider it ridiculous that the immigrants don't all become fluent in French. In either of these situations, or any similar ones, who is to say who has the linguistic right-of-way? It seems a little odd (to me) that, in a truly globalized society, governments or individuals would still hold a "cross at your own risk" policy regarding their national border. If you ask me (no one did, but what the heck), that's not "globalization." That's just people moving from one place to a less familiar one.

Another thing to consider is that language does not evolve in definitive steps; it morphs and mixes with other languages, depending on the movement of peoples and the current economic status quo at any given time. English be the number one world language even if it incorporates bits of Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Zulu, Russian, etc. It doesn't take an entire society's fluency in a foreign language for those people to become familiar with it. Take French, for example. Americans already know far more French than they probably realize (ballet, café, R.S.V.P., déjà vu, cliché, essay, "Ooh là là," etc.).

I don't know how difficult it would be to implement a strong foreign language program in the United States. But I doubt it would be any harder than implementing ESL programs around the entire globe.

It all depends on what will happen next. Language is as unpredictable as the humans who speak it.



Thanks for bringing this up, Kiwoongc! It's a really interesting issue, and this thread has given me a rare chance to hear others' opinions on it.