The love of all things English begins at a young age in non-English-speaking countries, promoted by pop culture, Hollywood movies, fast-food brands, sports events and TV shows.
Later, with English skills and international education qualifications from high school, the path is laid to prestigious international universities in the English-speaking world and employment opportunities at home and abroad.
But those opportunities aren't distributed equally across socioeconomic groups. Global education in English is largely reserved for middle-class students.
This is creating a divide between those inside the global English proficiency ecosystem and those relegated to parts of the education system where such opportunities don't exist.
[...] It's unfortunate so many schools view an English-speaking model as the gold standard and overlook their own local or regional wisdoms. We need to remember that encouraging young people to join a privileged English-speaking élite educated in foreign universities is only one of many possible educational options.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday August 11 2020, @01:58PM (2 children)
You might as well just say Ni Hao. You are more likely to find a person that understands that greeting, albeit somewhat depending on where in the world you are. Esperanto is just one gigantic failure of a language.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 12 2020, @01:42AM (1 child)
One thing it got wrong was genders. Yes, it has masculine and feminine. You get the feminine from the masculine bu adding a suffix. To get the common-gender word, you add a prefix. This establishes masculine as the unmarked gender. As a result, speakers tend to use the masculine word in common-gender situations. So if you're talking about ducks, you tend not to bother putting the common-gender prefix on, and you end up using the masculine form even when the ducks are female.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 12 2020, @01:43AM
Should have said I was talking about Espreanto.