Tá sé timpeall cúig nóiméad. Ní chreidfidh sibh na pictiúir ón tSín.

http://www.wimp.com/englishlanguage/

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Ach gidh go dteagasgtar Béarla in achan tír (nó chomhair a bheith), caithfear a ráidht nach gá le achan nduine Béarla a bheith aige. Foghlaimeann siad Béarla ar sgoil go minic, ach is minic a ghníonn siad glandearmad air siocair nach mbeidh Béarla do dhíth orthu i gcomhnaidhe ina saoghal.
A' chuid is mó do na Sínigh, fanóchaidh siad ins a' t-Sín agus muna bhfuil siad in áit a dtig mórán turasóir chuici, chan úsáideann siad a gcuid Béarla ar chor ar bith. So tá obsession ann cinnte ach ní h-ionann sin is a ráidht go mbeidh Béarla ag achan nduine ná go n-úsáideóchaidh achan nduine Béarla ins an todhachaidhe... Dála an sgéil, ins a' t-Sín tá daoiní ann nach labhrann Mandairínis líomhtha go deó ach an oiread, más leór leóbhtha a gcanamhaint nó teangaidh na h-áite a dh'úsáid le mairstint

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Having spent 6 years in Asia, I would say that Lughaidh is correct -it's a money spinning racket,the whole English thing (there are English teaching books that have sold more than 100 million copies and they are pure shite) is something people profess to be mad into yet in five and a half years in Korea I only ever ONCE saw someone reading an English book (a novel, by a young girl and on the Seoul subway). It's all just window dressing. In Japan in the 16th century, people used to wear crucifixes much to the satisfaction of the visiting Portuguese. The locals did it as a fashion, like they would have colored bears today.

What a lot of people outside Asia don't get is how massively xenophobic the continent is. I've personally been to 15 countries on the continent (and up to the border of a few more (Russia, Laos, Iran, Azerbaijan) and as I did land crossings, mostly, I noticed there seemed to be usually empty areas around the edges of national territories. It wasn't like Europe where people look like each other and populations are smoothly transitional (very often); no, language and physical appearance would be different one place to the next discreetly. For East Asians especially, they view themselves as fundamentally superior to others in a way that's hard for us today to understand

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

I find this video disturbing for two reasons:

1. Not only are the clips within the video themselves quite creepy (thousands of children chanting that they want to speak PERFECT English, etc.), but...

2. The commentator's naively rose-colored view of the situation. He claims:

a. That the United States is not pushing English on the world (HA!). The US may have no official policy towards English, but it, along with the world's other Anglophone countries (esp. the UK, Canada, Australia) are not only places where enormous wealth is concentrated, but they are also notoriously monolingual and also quite refractory at the mere prospect of even learning a foreign language, let alone actually speaking one. US and British foreign policy and relations, be they in the public sphere or in the world of business, happen entirely through English. This has always been the "soft" policy of Anglo governments and companies.

b. That Anglomania is not happening at the expense of other languages. This is a particularly laughable position to take. The effect that English dominance has had on small national languages speaks for itself (::cough::... every Celtic language has either disappeared or been brought to the precipice of extinction thanks to English, so have most native languages in other conquered territories), but also larger languages. French used to be the language of diplomacy. German used to be the language of science. Italian used to be the language of music, etc. There used to be a plurality of lingua francas depending on the domain (and I know that's not the proper Latin plural), and they have now all succumbed to English. Even Spanish, with both numeric and geographic superiority to English, has somehow failed to occupy any place of importance on the international scene, save for between Spanish-speaking countries themselves.

And why? Not because English is easier than any other language (I'm sure it's a bit easier than some languages but it is far from easy). No natural language can be mastered with less than several years of hard study and concentration. English is (comparitively) light on grammar for an Indo-European language, but it makes up for it with a complex and random idiom that can only be mastered through rote memorization.

So there aren't 36 reasons why English occupies this rung: it's thanks to (or because of, depending on your point of view) American political and economic predominance and to the UK colonialism which preceded it.

Ossian, I think you're right that English idiom is much harder to grasp than it appears - and the simplicity of the grammar (that part of grammar known as "accidence") is deceptive. Interestingly, idiom and syntax seem to be problematic for native speakers nowadays too. Like Redwolf, I used to be an English-language subeditor, and it is surprising how badly some educated people write in their native tongue.

So I would favour allowing another language to come to the fore - although I query whether Chinese will be able to accomplish that role, given its complexity - simply because an "International English" has emerged that is not really the same as native English and is sort of becoming a CO-like thing.

Ireland is noted for its weak foreign language skills - probably because the effort is devoted towards an Ghaelainn, insofar as people are learning languages.

I would like to see all children learn Latin - but that is probably a lost cause!

An interesting side note, from the U.S. perspective: When I was in school, we were strongly encouraged to study a foreign language or two. It was considered essential if you wanted to do much traveling, or if you hoped to have a diplomatic or international business career. French was strongly suggested at my high school as a language that, with English, would stand you in good stead in most of Europe. As the 70s progressed, Japanese also came to be emphasized as a good language for people who wanted to go into business.

The only problem was that, in most cases (including my own), Americans had no chance to use the language they began to acquire in high school (the major exception being people who had studied Spanish and who lived in states bordering Mexico). Foreign travel was just too expensive for most of us, and the jobs we ended up doing didn't put us in contact, for the most part, with people who didn't speak English (and, of course, there was no internet). Language is definitely one of those things that you lose if you don't use it. My French was once at about the same level as my Irish and, thanks to having taken years of both French and Latin, I could follow a great deal of spoken Spanish. But after around 30 years, with virtually no chance to use it, my French is pretty much gone (I actually use Latin more than I ever used French, because we often sing in Latin in church, but I'm far from being a Latin scholar).

I think Americans often get unfairly portrayed as "not being willing to learn languages," when the truth is more usually much more complicated than that.

Redwolf

Wouldn't agree there, they don't learn Irish either, generally. its more to do with poor methods and (previously) very little emphasis on spoken ability.

There are country's which produce far more multilingual people from their education systems than Ireland does. And then there are country's which have a equally poor record of multilingual education which dont have a minority language on which the children waste time, England and America spring to mind.

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

I agree that Americans get a bad rap. Obviously, not all of us are blind to the world outside. But you gotta admit, a whole hell of a lot of us are, and frighteningly so.

I grew up in the US and went through all 12 years of public education in 3 different states (NY, FL, TX). I graduated in 2003. I can say that in our day, there was little to no importance placed on learning a foreign language. First off, it wasn't even an option until high school (why????), and even then, foreign language courses were electives, so you didn't even have to take one then.

Some states require a year or two for college-track individuals, but then for most students it just becomes another "useless" hurdle you have to jump over to get your diploma and get the hell out of high school.

My cousins and friends all went through 2-3 years of Spanish in high school, they live in Texas (so no excuse for not practising) and none of them can actually speak it.

I'm a bit of a language geek, so I relayed my two years of high school French into a life abroad and near-native fluency, but that is obviously the exception. The reality is that the vast majority of American anglophones are monolingual, and that's not going to change any time soon as far as I can tell.

Similar situation in Ireland with other languages, generally not standard till you enter the high school equivalent, around 13-14.
When it really should be done earlier when you're ability at languages is much better.

Of course there are places that attempt this.

http://www.gaelport.com/?treeID=37&News ... 999-268110 <http://www.gaelport.com/?treeID=37&amp;NewsItemID=10436&amp;f=AC-15938-33057999-268110>

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

But what I'm saying, Ossian, is even when it WAS emphasized, and even among those who embraced and enjoyed the opportunity to learn new languages, there weren't many opportunities to use (and therefore retain) what one had learned.

I grew up in Eastern Washington State in the 1960s and '70s. My public elementary school offered basic French starting in 5th grade (that would be around 10 years of age, for those unfamiliar with U.S. educational terminology), and it wasn't an elective...we all took the same classes. I was in the Catholic school system after sixth grade, and the situation was the same...we had French twice a week. When I got to high school, a minimum of two years of foreign language was required for graduation (not just for the college bound): I took four. In college, I continued my language studies because, as an English major, I needed basic proficiency in one modern and one classical language to pass the Graduate Record Exam. I graduated from college with a spoken proficiency in French roughly equivalent to my current spoken proficiency in Irish...and into a world in which I had absolutely no opportunity to use a word of it. Most of the people who graduated at the same time I did found themselves in a similar situation, unless they happened to be wealthy enough for foreign travel (Which was a HUGE luxury when I was growing up. The only people I knew growing up who had visited another country were in the military, and they had little choice over where they served). So even those of us who loved languages, and had the motivation and the opportunities to study them, tended to lose them. Ironically, it was around the same time I started hearing people claim that "Americans aren't willing to learn to speak other languages," which may have been true for some of us, but certainly not all (or even necessarily most) of us.

I suspect some of this may be why emphasis on foreign languages in American schools has decreased so dramatically. And now, of course, there's the added "excuse" that English has become the language of trade (that was not the case when I was young, though in hindsight, the handwriting was on the wall, even then).

Here endeth the old fart's lesson of the day!

Redwolf