SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 rleigh on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:30PM (3 children)
Its dominance is a result of British hegemony from the previous centuries, though American dominance in the 20th century is basically its continuation.
Anyway, its imprecision and ambiguity are what make it fun! How many puns, jokes and general humour are a result of deliberate misuse or wilful misinterpretation of the language? A goodly-sized fraction of them. Or should that be bigly? Having a dozen ways to say the same thing with very subtle differences in emphasis are what make it interesting. In comparison, other languages seem so literal they are dry and boring in comparison. Whereas in English you can imply one thing while actually saying something completely different. Being exact is fine in its own way, but it doesn't really open up the imagination, or permit abuse of the language in regular conversation just for the hell of it. English might be a bastardised language which freely steals from other languages, but it's very expressive and very flexible. There is a good reason we didn't stick with Latin (or French). How many other languages use double or even triple negatives in normal sentences, leaving people confused if you take them all out and just state things exactly?!
Language is intrinsically tied to thought. I read about some South American tribe which doesn't have any conception of mathematics because their language has no words for numbers higher than (IIRC) six. Their mental model of the world is intrinsically constrained by the lack of abstraction in the literal way they perceive the world and the language they have to express it. It does make you wonder how much this constrains our thinking as well. Do stricter and less flexible languages also constrain our thought processes, making it less likely for being able to conceive wholly new ways of thinking and doing?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 12 2020, @01:45AM (2 children)
Let me submit
as a literal translation from Esperanto.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Wednesday August 12 2020, @12:27PM (1 child)
Interesting! What was the original intent? "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" or similar?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 12 2020, @02:49PM
Yes.