How crazy is it that in this year we can communicate with different peoples from all over the globe, from Brazil to Russia and every country in between with little stress. We have the ability to buy and produce items from probably any coutntry we so choose, almost as easy driving to the store to go shopping. But throughout all this communitating, buying and selling English still proves to be the central, the core langauge. You could even go so far as to say that are living in a ‘Global Village.’
What would your immediate reaaction by if you you recieved word that it would be demanded of you go return to school in order to re-learn all your previous english skills in order to start focusing and emphezing ’Global English’ as opposed to American English’. Or as a future educator, how would you feel if you were approached by the prsident of the school you were teachign at with the demand you need to be teaching our students ‘global english’ as opposed to english only from America, Australia or even the UK? Is that important? Is ‘Global English’ nessary?
In this Article entitled ‘Global English’ Kenneth Beare explores the use of english, and poposes a radical new idea about encouraging ‘Global Englsih’ …or the lack there of.
”Many English speakers do not speak English as their first language. In fact, they often use English as a lingua franca in order to communicate with other people who also speak English as a foreign language. At this point students often wonder what kind of English they are learning. Are they learning English as it spoken in Britain? Or, are they learning English as it is spoken in the United States, or Australia? One of the most important questions is left out. Do all students really need to learn English as it is spoken in any one country?”
Let’s examine an ESL student more closely. Think about a non-native english speaker learning English in England. This student would most likly learn a set of rules not entirly different from other english speaking countries, but would learn a set of grammar rules that would propose confusion in order parts of the world. Or vise-vera, an ESL student learning to speak English in America would probably run into confusion and minor difficulty when traveling to the UK, or New Zeeland. So for the sake of these students, should we be shifting our attention to globilzied english?
Personally, I think that we should embrass and take much pride the Englsih that stems from our American roots. To steer our thinking we could think about all the Spaish Speaking countries, all 24 of the, have slight different dialect, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem among those nations for which type of Spanish should be considered prime. With all due respect to Mr. Beare I believe that this idea shouldn’t make any sort of lead way with in our country, or any other country. So, insted of considering the term global village, I think that ‘Global Villges’ (as in more than one world wide) would be more appropritae.
How do you feel about this issue? Should we embrass the ‘Global Village’ idea?
6 responses so far ↓
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Ashley Stein
// Sep 24, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I love the concept of a global village rather than global english, because while yes, english is varying across the board, it’s still english. With time and effort it can be learned this way or that way, but basics are basics and I feel that perhaps people are better off embracing a second language such as english as a tool, rather than trying to master it the American way, or the British way, or what have you. Interesting topic, and very note worthy to keep in mind!
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Do Not Point At The Creature… » Blog Archive » Here’s what I think about all of you!
// Nov 13, 2007 at 6:29 pm
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// Dec 1, 2007 at 11:45 pm
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Ashley
// Dec 3, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I can definitely relate to one of your ideas presented in this paper firsthand! Last year I studied abroad in France. I lived in dorms at the university and quickly became friends with an insane number of Swedish students (imagine that)! Of course we were all there to study French, but since everyone was at varying levels, we spoke mostly in English (the Swedes had almost flawless English). Early on, I noticed that they sometimes used words that I found to be a bit awkward. There was one time when we were in a club and one of the girls said she didn’t want to go to the bathroom because there was a queue. Upon seeing this, you can probably guess what she meant, but I stared at her blankly for at least a full three minutes trying to figure out why the letter “q” was in the bathroom.
I promise I’m more intelligent than you might think right now. My friend had to explain what she meant and when I finally got it I belted out “OH…you mean a LINE,” to which she responded to me with an awkward look. I had to tell her that the term “queue” is used in Great Britain, but that we use the word “line” in the States. As I talked with the Swedes a bit more, it became apparent that they had learned a completely different form of English. Most of the time we could easily understand each other, and for both of us, the English that we used because a sense of pride. The Swedes were eager to compare words with my English, just as I was eager to here more about what they had been taught. This occasional word struggle and eagerness to teach and learn new vocabulary was a type of linguistic diversity – and it was fun.
I completely agree that it’s more important to take pride in our own dialects than to attempt to achieve a linguistic “purification” of sorts. Let’s enjoy our individuality, even as it relates to our speech (an argument that I think can be brought up in the bilingual education debate to support its preservation, but that’s a topic for another blog…).
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Ashley
// Dec 3, 2007 at 8:33 pm
*Yikes, I need to read these things over. I spelled the wrong “hear” in there…(good thing I have a good grasp on my own English skills…).
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// Dec 3, 2007 at 8:34 pm
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