For Language Lovers?
I don't really have much of story, but I'll share an experience
about language attitudes (in my locale). By that I mean, attitudes about languages that are
"non-Euro-American" -- around my neighborhood...
I serve as a local public school board Director.
Several years ago, I suggested that we should encourage language training
at a much earlier grade level (for example, kindergarten or first grade when
the children's minds are supple
, uncluttered by preconceptions, and
intrigued by novelty). I was immediately besieged by angry parents
who made some of the following profundities:
"Children who grow up speaking more than one language become psychologically
damaged
."
"They (the children) will never learn either language correctly."
"They (the children) will grow up with accents."
"It (learning a foreign language in grade school) will interfere with their
nap time
."
"It will be too hard to choose which language to teach; most languages
aren't worth knowing because they aren't as good as English
."
"We don't want our child to grow up sounding like a Pennsylvania Dutchman.
I don't intend to be Amish
."
(And, my personal favourite...) "Kids under the age of six can only learn to speak
English
." (This must make parent/child communication difficult in a large
part of the world.)
When I prepared a list of major languages and their current and supposed
future possibilities (hence potential value), several parents informed me
that...
"Japanese doesn't need to be taught because they all have learnt English at
home
."
"It isn't necessary to learn Korean because they print the instructions for
their TVs in English anyway
."
"Nobody speaks Turkish." (And when I pointed out that there was some
evidence that Turks occasionally bothered to converse in Turkish)..."There
are only a million or so Turks
."
"Arabic and Australian sound like gibberish on my shortwave set -- I don't
want my kids to have to listen gibberish, and I certainly don't want them to
try to speak it. Arabs and Australians will be better off if they learn
English, then they can speak to us intelligently
."
We teach (I believe ineffectively for the most part) Latin, Spanish, and
French to a fraction of our students as elective courses. And so it goes in my part of the world...
EG (March '98)
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