What is the future of English?
In David Graddol’s work, he informs of the reasons why the twenty first century highly affects the English language. Also…why global English could be the end of ‘English as a Foreign Language’.
What is so impressive about our world and technology is what Graddol states in the introduction…
“Microsoft’s “windows 98’ operating system was not yet in use. Google did not exist. Information technology experts were mesmerized by the looming ‘millennium bug’ of Y2K. The ‘dot com’ bubble did not burst until March 2000…” pg. 10
With technology on the rise…English as a second language is decreasing. (Especially on the Internet) Web material is slowly becoming available on a variety of different websites. For example, wikipedia:
Français
L’encyclopédie libre
711 000+ articles
Polski
Wolna encyklopedia
541 000+ haseł
日本語
フリー百科事典
525 000+ 記事
Русский
Свободная энциклопедия
320 000+ статей
Italiano
L’enciclopedia libera
501 000+ voci
Português
A enciclopédia livre
430 000+ artigos
中文
自由的百科全書
205 000+ 條目
English now is a global concern. Not only with the growth of languages on the Internet but also because of the “Doom of Monolingualism”. Like Graddol says, English only speakers are going to have a “bleak economic future”. It is true that children who are taught a second language are more likely to absorb it. It is beneficial though that children’s learning tools are now big on providing the education of foreign languages for young Americans. For example:
Dora the Explorer is an animated American television show. The Spanish speaker girl on this show teaches young children how to speak Spanish. This is a great educational experience for kids.
Another point in the reading I found extremely shocking was, “In 2001, text messaging helped bring down the Philippines President, Joseph Estrada”. This was a great way to bring about a campaign considering majority of cell phone users in the world know how to SMS text. Being Filipino, when my mom told me about this, I was amazed. How could SMS text messaging sway politics in today’s age?
Most importantly, I think all children need to learn a second language to advance their economic, political, and social stance.
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1 comment:
To answer your question - here's a brief New York Times article from a week ago:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/its-obama-on-the-iphone/
Please do not interpret this as a political-anything. My reasoning for providing that example is purely to demonstrate how far beyond SMS things have gotten, as far as technological evolution goes.
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