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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: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @05:22PM (4 children)
If I wished to intone rather than speak, Mandarin would be fine. Except what's with all those hieroglyphs - my eyesight ain't what it used to be.
If I wished to clear my throat while speaking, German would do. Except for how the word order I possibly to learn might be able.
If I wished to clear my throat _and_ gag while speaking, Arabic would work. Except with five forms for each of your abjad, your script boasts over a hundred glyphs - and whts wrng wth vwls nywy?
Then Farsi takes Arabic script further into obfuscation with additional sounds/letters.
Spanish is great if distinguishing ser from estar is more important to you than sorting make from do. (It's not to me)
I really tried to love Hindi in college, but failed miserably.
... and the list goes on, Russian, Japanese, Thai, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Swahili, ...etc. - vast collection of scripts and phonics all seemingly designed to bar the gates "we" against the hostile assaults of "them". What a mess!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @08:28PM (1 child)
Swahili? I assume you wanted to learn Swahili so you could access that vast library of fine literature, poetry and science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:25PM
I assume you wanted to learn Swahili so you could access that vast library of fine literature, poetry and science.
No thanks, I prefer to focus on the music and dance.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:04PM (1 child)
Regarding Arabic's lack of vowels, that's a common feature of pretty much all Semitic languages all the way back to and probably before Old Testament Hebrew. THAT stuff is written MRRLSSLKTHS ("more or less like this"), meaning no vowel markers *and* no spaces, and it's the vowels in these languages that carry more information than the base concepts expressed by the consonant clusters.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:46AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmz42awTRsA [youtube.com] , it's really interesting because those that grew up with English or most of the European languages probably take it for granted that an alphabet is only reasonable option.