In "Viewpoint: English is dead, long live 'glocalisation'", Nathalie Nahai warns businesses to be aware of the changing habits of people all over the world. They tend to ignore English language toward the glocalisation which combine the word "globalisation" and "localisation" to show that people can live in their local area together with the globalisation, as well as adapt themselves to the new technology or innovation. Therefore, English is not the only one language that dominates the world anymore. There are a few languages such as Chinese and Spanish that rise in number of speakers and become more influential in the world communities, including global economy.
The article reminds me about the topic we have just finished last weekend, but I wouldn't like to comment on the same things. As generally known, there are thousands of languages existing and used around the world. It is quite a good idea to motivate everybody to speak the same language because it will help more understanding between the different social groups. However, one thing that everyone should keep in mind is that we have the right to choose our own way of life. The languages we speak depend on our own purposes. These couple of years, many Thai government authorities have pushed people to learn more than one language, especially English and other official language of ASEAN nations, together with claiming that it will benefit all Thais surely after 2015. I don't reject that it's good, but Thai government leads it obligatorily, particularly to young students, despite the fact that teaching staffs for languages are not enough.
Anyway, internet surfers write or post their messages in their languages because internet access has spread out to residents at every corner of the world. Consequently, English is not a must for internet users anymore. There have been more online services in various languages and dialects. For example, the UK's BBC News and Germany's Deutsche Welle provide interesting tidings and up-to-date information in 27 and 30 languages. Last year, I saw a news about liberalising domain names (name of websites) to other languages. That sounds wonderful and respectful to the diversity of our world.
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Personally, I agree with the title that English is getting die, especially in Thailand. Although,we have been studying English since elementary school, we cannot speak English as native speakers. This point might make Thais bored to use English and turn to another language. Excluding, Thais people have to seriously use English. Like me, I started to study Chinese when I studied at University. I think Chinese as similar as Thai, and its characters are really beautiful. When I practiced writing Chinese, it seemed I was drawing and it made me remember word easier than English.
ReplyDeleteMotivated by Cee's summary, I read the full BBC News article, which makes some good points. I particularly like the Coca-cola example, where links are given to the Coca-cola websites for South Africa, China and Germany: the websites for this international product are very different, but at least in the case of Germany and China, they brilliantly reflect the cultures for which they have been created. I'm sure the South African site is equally competently done, but I don't know much about South Africa, so can't judge, although I did notice a little bit of unusual English on the homepage - I guess a sort of fossilized remnant from its colonial past. I never drink Coke (I don't like sweet drinks generally), but they have clearly done their homework and are not making any of the cultural mistakes we read about in chapter 1 of Quest. I'm sure this research and adaptation to different markets is reflected in their profits.
ReplyDeleteIf you would like to add italics, bold or links to your comments, there is an information you can get to from the left-hand column that has some notes on how to do that.
DeleteUsually, the differences between, for example, British and American English don't matter, but when the Internet was new and exciting many years ago (1995?) and I was writing my first webpages, we had to do it all by hand. It was very tedious, but definitely exciting. One of my problems was remembering to write "center" when I wanted to centre text and to write "color" not "colour" to specify colours. On the whole, English these days is probably a lot more consistent globally than it used to be even locally a few hundred years ago. For example, these are the ways that Shakespeare could have written the word apple: ME–17 aple, ME– apple; U.S. regional 18 appil, 19– appile; Sc. pre-17 aipill, pre-17 apel, pre-17 apil, pre-17 apile, pre-17 apill, pre-17 aple, pre-17 appel, pre-17 appell, pre-17 appill, pre-17 appol, pre-17 appyl, pre-17 appyll, pre-17 apyl, pre-17 apyll, pre-17 happle, pre-17 17– apple, pre-17 18– appil ("apple, n., 2012). Your average primary school teacher, and MS Word's spell check, are not nearly so tolerant of diversity these days.
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apple, n. (2012, September) OED Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved October 9, 2012 from http://oed.com/view/Entry/9678?
I agree to the point that it quite a good idea to use the same language among people in order to have the same understanding when they communicate. However, I think that using a different language divides nations. (Regardless of a number of people speak English, Spanish or French now because those used to be regulated by one nations)I think the reason why there are many differences of nations because each person in each nation has something in common and the people who belong to each group want to distinguish themselves from others. Perhaps they want to become powerful;therefore, they separate to their own new nation.
ReplyDeleteUhm, "as easy as pie" It is still in my mind. Why is pie? There is another phrase, as easy as winking-which phrase is as similar as my langauge. However, I also found another pie, as american as apple pie, which means typically American. It is wondering that pie is English, not exactly American. It is curious me and then I try to find out why is as American as apple pie. It said in the world war II solders always said " for mom and apple pie" and after that ther were many things mentioned about apple pie. In another searching result, because of English colonies, apple pie is common in America.
ReplyDeleteHowever, apple pie in Thailand is not popular. We have another delicious pie, Lok Tarn pie.
ReplyDeleteI like mine with cream.
DeleteI also remember when I learned HTML for the first time, I had to use English to write tags. Nowadays even my 84 years old father can use the internet without knowledge of HTML nor English.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that Spanish became the most popular second language for American Students, and more and more people learn Chinese all over the world, especially in Asian countries including Japan.
I welcome that English won't be an only dominating language in the world,but one of them, because I think the diversity of language means the diversity of values and thinking way, which makes our society more informed and torelant.
But still, I think English is the most important language for a while, because the newest researches are likely to be published not only in the researcher's own language but also in English,so if you want to get the newest study,English knowledge is necessary also on the internet.
In my opinion, it is good to learn new languages as we need to work with many nationalities and it must be better if we can speak in same language.
ReplyDeleteIn the present, we use English as a language center around the world and as you said that there is Chinese is becoming very important for us, there are many people are studying it now, it is interested me very much but I may confuse if I learn many languages at the same time, so I will learn it later when I am ready to start learning new language.
Do you remember the date that we did the exam for Academic test? I met one man from Burma there, he would like to study in Academic English Program in level 4, he told me that he works in Bangkok in the international company and he can’t speak Thai at all, so I think there are many different nationalities who work in Thai without speak Thai language but they use English to communication at work and also when they go out.
Some of my friends who live in Chiang Mai, they don’t care much about this because they don’t meet foreigner often. They still do as usual as before, but almost of my friends in Bangkok can speak English well and they think it is important because there is more competition in this big city, so the place where you stay is the one main factor to push people learning new language.