English Mania Now - What Next?
In 2009 the American entrepreneur Jay Walker argued that the world’s mania for learning English is good because English “represents hope for the future” as the language of global problem-solving. In his talk “The World’s English Mania” he gave the example of Chinese students manically learning English in order to better their prospects - and here is a link to a transcript of the talk in case the video is inaccessible: http://dotsub.com/view/2b38ad8e-fd71-4f90-9534-40b3000f6a24/viewTranscript/eng. Knowing that English is currently the language of business, science, and diplomacy, many listeners would probably agree.
What Walker forgot to mention, ironically, is that the Chinese language Mandarin is one of the fastest growing languages in the world. Perhaps he was thinking only of the near future. In contrast, the British linguist David Graddol had taken a more far-sighted view of the issue as far back as 2006. In his book English Next he pointed out that global English may be a passing phase with the rise of other languages such as Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. In fact, according to his research, Arabic seems to be the fastest growing language currently, demographically speaking, though even by 2050 the majority of Arabic speakers will be very young (p. 61). Two sections of his book, “English Challenged” and “Beyond English” explain the need for native speakers of English to learn other languages.
A mania is usually a passing phase, so what next is definitely a good question to ponder.
Posted by May Mikati on 21 September 2011, 11:48 PM
In 2009 the American entrepreneur Jay Walker argued that the world’s mania for learning English is good because English “represents hope for the future” as the language of global problem-solving. In his talk “The World’s English Mania” he gave the example of Chinese students manically learning English in order to better their prospects - and here is a link to a transcript of the talk in case the video is inaccessible: http://dotsub.com/view/2b38ad8e-fd71-4f90-9534-40b3000f6a24/viewTranscript/eng. Knowing that English is currently the language of business, science, and diplomacy, many listeners would probably agree.
What Walker forgot to mention, ironically, is that the Chinese language Mandarin is one of the fastest growing languages in the world. Perhaps he was thinking only of the near future. In contrast, the British linguist David Graddol had taken a more far-sighted view of the issue as far back as 2006. In his book English Next he pointed out that global English may be a passing phase with the rise of other languages such as Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. In fact, according to his research, Arabic seems to be the fastest growing language currently, demographically speaking, though even by 2050 the majority of Arabic speakers will be very young (p. 61). Two sections of his book, “English Challenged” and “Beyond English” explain the need for native speakers of English to learn other languages.
A mania is usually a passing phase, so what next is definitely a good question to ponder.
Posted by May Mikati on 21 September 2011, 11:48 PM
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