In a message dated 10/22/2004 4:16:12 AM Mountain Standard Time, marcello@perathoner.de writes:
But I fail to see how this could possibly imply that >>people who live in Africa wanted to learn English.
English is becoming, if you will pardon a rather risible expression, the lingua franca of the business world. Most diplomacy is done in French and English. Of course someone who expects his/her offspring to remain in exactly their present location and circumstances has no need to learn, or to teach their offspring, any languages other than those spoken locally. But many small African countries have several different local languages--Ghana comes to mind at once, with three languages and many dialects of those languages. English is the official language there, because it's the only way that the country can get its business done when people of one cultural group can't even talk with people of another cultural group five miles away. Let's look at another small country, not in Africa. This is a quotation from the online version of World Book Encyclopedia: "New Guineans speak more than 700 languages. Because of the number of languages, many people cannot communicate with neighbors who live only a short distance away. A growing number of eastern New Guineans speak Pidgin English, or Tok Pisin, as a second language. This lingua franca, or common language, enables speakers of different tongues to communicate with one another. In the west, many people speak Malay as a second language." I have read elsewhere that those 700 languages involve 48 different language families. Tok Pisin works, but it is too awkward to use for anything more than local conversation. "Belly belonga me walk about too much" is an awkward way of saying "I have an upset stomach," and "big feller you punch him teeth him cry" doesn't immediately make me think of a piano. Malay is much better, but it still isn't a language that will allow somebody to get into the worldwide market. Afghanistan has three languages. Most middle and upper class Afghans also speak Farsi. I don't remember how many languages India has, but it's a lot. Most Americans do not understand that many Europeans routinely speak several languages, and do not realize that learning another language, or two or three other languages, should ideally start in infancy. Ideally, everybody worldwide would learn at least French and English in addition to their own local languages. In the real world, that's not going to happen. I have found that from speaking English and Spanish and having a working knowledge of Latin and linguistics, I can read fairly well in Portuguese and Italian. I miss a lot of words, but I can get the gist of what I'm reading. I'm not up to reading a French textbook, but I can usually wade through an article in Le Figaro. I'm hopeless in German, even if I recognize the root words, because I do not comprehend the way German is put together. I am not trying to be insular and I am not insulting anybody else's language. I hate to see any language die, because just about every language is able to express at least one thing that other languages can't. For reasons I do not understand, ancient Egyptian translates better into German than into French or English; therefore Egyptologists must learn German. I have to limp along on English translations, realizing that they are inadequate. I am certainly not saying that everybody in the world has to learn English. What I am saying is that, like it or not, it is one of the languages one must have to progress very far in life. Therefore, I think that books should be made available in English to as close as possible to everybody. I would be overjoyed if as many books were available in other languages, especially French, as are available in English. I hope this clarifies my position. Anne