|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: On the evolution of English as a written or spoken language. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MrHambre Member (Idle past 1422 days) Posts: 1495 From: Framingham, MA, USA Joined:
|
And because they can actually be educated in English since, you know, there're actually textbooks, research papers, and other educated people to talk to in English (and French, and German, and Spanish, and...).
Um, I was under the assumption that we were talking about the article in NPR and the accompanying video that Phat linked. It concerned schoolkids in Zanzibar and the problems of a postcolonial Africa struggling to build an identity free of European influence. It's disgusting that these people put their academic ideologies over the lives of real flesh and blood human beings. And that's what I was talking about. What the hell are you talking about?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
It concerned schoolkids in Zanzibar and the problems of a postcolonial Africa struggling to build an identity free of European influence. And that's a stupid goal that ignores the reality that Europe, its former colonies, and (increasingly) Asia have a heavy influence on the world. Have you read through my posts in some of the economics threads (such as: A Tree is a Tree: Growthmanship in the Developed World )? I think it is pretty ridiculous that in a society overflowing with plenty people still need to be fully employed making and serving useless doodads. But I still have a job. The students want to know why they're going to fail their exams. The answer is that they'll fail them because no one bothered teaching them the English they needed to pass them. Ideals are nice, but until reality matches those ideals, we need to be practical. And it's practically impossible to live a successful life without being fluent in one of the major European languages.Love your enemies!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MrHambre Member (Idle past 1422 days) Posts: 1495 From: Framingham, MA, USA Joined:
|
Jon writes:
Preserving their language and cultural identity is hardly a "stupid goal," and it confronts, rather than ignores, the undue influence of external powers. The question of learning English isn't just a political matter, it's an economic one: these poor communities have schools where English is taught by instructors with very little proficiency themselves.
MrHambre writes: It concerned schoolkids in Zanzibar and the problems of a postcolonial Africa struggling to build an identity free of European influence. And that's a stupid goal that ignores the reality that Europe, its former colonies, and (increasingly) Asia have a heavy influence on the world. Ideals are nice, but until reality matches those ideals, we need to be practical.
No, you don't have to. You can be as cynical and indifferent as you want. Centuries of colonial domination and looting by warlords have left these people with a choice between poverty and exploitation, and you're making it sound like the people in the community stressing the need to preserve its language and culture are the oppressors.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
... these poor communities have schools where English is taught by instructors with very little proficiency themselves. That's a problem of course, but not nearly as big of a problem as trying to teach people world history without history text books or science without access to scientific journals and recent research.
No, you don't have to. Then you (they) will fail. These movements have been gaining ground, but everywhere they've been established they've only decreased access to quality education, increased poverty, and further enlarged the gap between the haves and have-nots. In fact, they are so good at keeping the downtrodden down that one could speculate as to whether these movements are part of some conspiracy by the well-off to keep the masses manageable. It would almost be better if they were; as is, it's quite sad knowing that all of these plans are from a bunch of people thinking they are helping while doing all the wrong things. Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
MrHambre writes:
When I was in first-year university, English 101 was a required class and there were a dozen or so sections of 20-30 students each. In our section we had a running joke that we were lucky to have the only professor who could actually speak English.
... these poor communities have schools where English is taught by instructors with very little proficiency themselves.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member
|
In our section we had a running joke that we were lucky to have the only professor who could actually speak English. I imagine the rest spoke Canadian? Love your enemies!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Jon writes:
No, they were mostly from India.
I imagine the rest spoke Canadian?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
anglagard Member (Idle past 865 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined:
|
Jon writes: And it's practically impossible to live a successful life without being fluent in one of the major European languages. I find your statement a bit too broad. How is it "practically impossible to lead a successful life" in Japan, China, Indonesia, and South Korea without knowing a European language? It seems to me hundreds of millions do just that.Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. - Francis Bacon
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
|
... In our section we had a running joke that we were lucky to have the only professor who could actually speak English. The international language of science is broken english. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
RAZD writes: The international language of science is broken english. I thought that only applied to seismology and collider physics?Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
I find your statement a bit too broad. How is it "practically impossible to lead a successful life" in Japan, China, Indonesia, and South Korea without knowing a European language? It seems to me hundreds of millions do just that. I was talking specifically about Africa, where a European language (English, French) is the typical option for a 'second' language. In Message 77 I discussed the reality as it affects the world as a whole, where I included the languages of Asia. The bottom line is that people can't be educated in some of the native African languages. If you try to educate folks in the native language, that education will be very limited; that's why the highschools switch the kids to English: there's no practical way to teach upper-level material in the native language because the tools (text books, online information, journal articles, etc.) just don't exist in the native language. If the folks want access to that world (and having access to that world is pretty much the only way out of crushing poverty) they'll have to learn the European language eventually, and better do it while they're young when it's easy.Love your enemies!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
anglagard Member (Idle past 865 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined:
|
Jon writes: I was talking specifically about Africa, where a European language (English, French) is the typical option for a 'second' language. Then specifically say Africa, or apparently Sub-Saharan Africa, as Northern Africa speaks Arabic and has a long scholarly tradition since they have had a written language for well over a millennia.
Jon writes: In Message 77 I discussed the reality as it affects the world as a whole, where I included the languages of Asia. Here is message 77 in its entirety:
quote: Yes you acknowledged the increasing importance of Asia in the first sentence and managed to forget that importance in the last. More clarity please.
Jon writes: The bottom line is that people can't be educated in some of the native African languages. If you try to educate folks in the native language, that education will be very limited; that's why the highschools switch the kids to English: there's no practical way to teach upper-level material in the native language because the tools (text books, online information, journal articles, etc.) just don't exist in the native language. If the folks want access to that world (and having access to that world is pretty much the only way out of crushing poverty) they'll have to learn the European language eventually, and better do it while they're young when it's easy. I agree to a point and here is why. From WorldCat , defined by the wiki as "a union catalog that itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories . . . contains more than 330 million records, representing over 2 billion physical and digital assets in 485 languages, as of November 2014." Preliminary research unfortunately does not provide the current statistics on this database but a snapshot from Dec. 2008 shows: Records with linguistic content: English 40,180,000German 8,765,000 French 4,491,000 Spanish 3,038,000 Dutch 2,319,000 Chinese 1,693,000 Japanese 1,560,000 Russian 1,313,000 Italian 1,181,000 and Swahili 5,800Amharic 5,033 Yoruba 2,480 Hausa 2,525 Zulu 2034 Xhosa 1,415 Oromo 504 Igbo 472 Bantu (other) 1,100 The main problem is Sub-Saharan African languages, excluding those used in Ethiopia, were not written languages until after colonial contact. This does not mean such languages should be ignored, simply they do not have as deep a written record of scholarship as many others. Please understand these figures with the following caveat:
quote: OK, bearing the above in mind, wouldn't it be better to say "It's practically impossible to obtain a meaningful graduate degree in science, engineering, international law or business without being fluent in either one of the major European languages or, somewhat more limiting, a major Asian language." than "And it's practically impossible to live a successful life without being fluent in one of the major European languages." After all, what defines success? wealth? happiness? wisdom? Sheesh, Jon. I agree with most of what you say but you sure make it a pain in the ass to support you when it seems we often have to spend half a dozen posts just to pin down exactly what you mean. Edited by anglagard, : as usual, discovered a random misspellingRead not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. - Francis Bacon
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
I assumed that since Phat was talking about students in Africa and that I had written 'students' that my post was clearly linked to the discussion of Africa; but I will try to be more specific next time.
This much is certain, though: assuming that any Asian language is as foreign to the students as any European language (which isn't true, but let's just assume it for the sake of simplicity), it makes much more sense to educate the students in a European language (especially English) for the reasons I gave about available learning materials which your list supports.
OK, bearing the above in mind, wouldn't it be better to say "It's practically impossible to obtain a meaningful graduate degree in science, engineering, international law or business without being fluent in either one of the major European languages or, somewhat more limiting, a major Asian language." than "And it's practically impossible to live a successful life without being fluent in one of the major European languages." Not even advanced degrees. The students Phat's article was talking about were going into highschool. Apparently it's not even possible to get a decent highschool education in Swahili. Equally apparent is the fact that the current system of educating in Swahili at the primary level doesn't do enough to prepare students for what will be required at the next level. And an education system should be, at the very least, capable of preparing people to obtain more education. These kids need to stop whining and start studying.
Sheesh, Jon. I agree with most of what you say but you sure make it a pain in the ass to support you when it seems we often have to spend half a dozen posts just to pin down exactly what you mean. You seemed to figure it out Love your enemies!
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024