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「超学歴社会」韓国、なぜか英語は大の苦手
GDPの2%が英語教育に投資するも実力はアジア最下位


　昨年韓国で英語に関連して支出された費用は15兆ウォン（約1兆8750億円）で、人口が韓国の2.6倍にもなる日本（約6250億円）の3倍近い額だった。

　サムスン経済研究所は15日、「英語の経済学」という報告書で、昨年度の韓国の英語関連投資額は、家庭での支出が14兆3000億ウォン（約1兆7875億円）、評価費用7000億ウォン（約875億円）など、合計約15兆ウォンと推定されると発表した。これは韓国のGDP（国内総生産）806兆6000億ウォン（約100兆8250億円）の1.9%、教育予算30兆1000億ウォン（約3兆7625億円）の47.5%にあたる規模だ。

　このような莫大な投資にも関わらず、韓国人の英語能力は悲惨なものと報告書は指摘している。スイスの国際経営開発研究所（IMD）は、韓国人の外国語能力を61カ国中35位と評価した。また、東アジア国家の経営情報を提供する香港政治経済リスクコンサルティング会社（PERC）は、韓国をアジア12カ国のうち英語の意思疎通が最も困難な国としている。

　サムスン経済研究所は、韓国の英語教育の高費用低効率構造を改善するには、英語教授法の改善や、特区を設けた英語の公用語化が必要だと主張した。

　報告書は、経済特区のような特定地域を英語特区に指定して英語を公用語とし、社会全体が英語を「公用語」よりも弱い概念の「常用語」として定着させるのが重要と提案した。

金徳翰（キム・ドクハン）記者

朝鮮日報／朝鮮日報JNS

English in a new age of empire

Teachers should question their role in extending the reach of an 'imperial' language, argues Julian Edge

Thursday April 15, 2004

Guardian Weekly

Some events change history, some just change the way a person sees that history, and it is not always easy to tell the difference. When the United States, Britain and Australia joined forces to invade Iraq, it occurred to many EFL professionals that those nations are also the three major English language teaching providers worldwide. Did the invasion, and does the continuing occupation, change the relationship between English teaching and international politics, or simply bring it out into the open?

We know that many people want to learn English because of the advantages that it can bring them: personal or professional, cultural or economic. It is at this level of individual aspiration, moreover, that most English language teachers find their engagement and motivation. We celebrate the successes of our students and work to enable more success for more of them.

At the same time, to say that people want to learn English because of the advantages that it brings them is much the same as saying that there are power structures in place that reward the learning (and teaching) of English. To the extent that we wish to receive the rewards available, we continue to learn and teach English without challenging those structures. We do not dispute the requirement for a doctor, say, to be a good language learner in order to qualify as a doctor (not a requirement for native speakers of the major dialects of English, of course); we point to English as the language of research and publication, and the argument is won. This functional acceptance of "the way things are" supplies us with a working definition of a difficult concept, hegemony.

Post-Iraq, however, we are faced with a change from a relationship of economic, cultural and political hegemony, which involves constrained consent, to one of outright and overt military force. Is the US shifting decisively from its age of republic to its age of empire? Is English once again becoming a language of imperial administration? Clearly, if the current policy of occupation and handover has any kind of success, then the future government of Iraq will stand out from others in the Arab world in several ways, one of which will be the ubiquity of English, without which imperial policy would be infinitely more difficult to pursue.

To put that another way, English language teaching becomes an arm of imperial policy in ways that were not so obvious before. Does it therefore become possible to see EFL teachers as a second wave of imperial troopers? While there is still carnage on the streets of Iraq, English language teachers and teacher educators are in place, working to facilitate the policies that the tanks were sent to impose. Do we also become "legitimate targets" for those who resist the occupation?

Iraq, of course, is only one example of ELT involvement. Another is the intensive campaign of English teaching being promoted by the British Council to support "inter-operability" among military and security forces across eastern Europe on the grounds that this commitment to "peacekeeping English" is a positive contribution to regional autonomy.

Perhaps the most important point to make is that wherever, and whoever, we teach, if we are involved in teaching English to speakers of other languages, we are involved in a worldwide network of issues regarding how and to what purpose that language is used: sometimes towards goals we would applaud, sometimes quite the opposite.

If we do acknowledge that involvement, furthermore, how should we respond? Few of us have so much freedom of action that we can pick and choose among the teaching projects that we take on, although those of us that do have such choices might want to take the opportunity to make our voices heard. In a more proactive sense, is there any room for a policy of "attachment", in the same way that the journalist Martin Bell has argued for a "journalism of attachment", one that goes beyond objectivity at all costs and says that, in some cases, a stand must be taken?

An example of this is an emerging ELT grouping called English for Palestinian Purposes, with which I am involved. It attempts to avoid a cycle of blame and recrimination with the following statement of beliefs and intentions for teachers.

"We recognise that Palestine is a multilingual society with its own developing purposes in terms of education and language policy, and we have no position on what the role of English in that policy should be. Nor do we have any political, ideological or religious agendas to pursue. We have a certain amount of experience and expertise in the teaching of English as an international language that we should like to offer, along with a limited amount of time and unlimited goodwill, in the support of Palestinian purposes. In making this offer, we also seek to establish contacts with Palestinian educational institutions and organisations, and to seek funding and sponsorship in order to make our offer real in Palestine."

In a more everyday sense, we need perhaps to look again at the materials we use in class and the worldviews that they represent; at the methods that we use and the interactional and learning styles that they foreground; and at the extent to which we teach a language of compliance with, to the exclusion of a language of protest about, "the way things are". In short, when we are asked, as English language educators, what contribution we make to a better world, we need to be ready to reply in ways that we at least find convincing.

· Julian Edge is a senior lecturer at Aston University, England, where he organised the (Re-)Locating Tesol In An Age Of Empire symposium last December.
For information about English for Palestinian Purposes email: j.edge@aston.ac.uk, or Scott Thornbury: sthornbury@wanadoo.es

English in the age of empire
Over the next few months, ELT practitioners from different language teaching settings will contribute their perspectives on teaching English in an age of empire. Next month, Bill Louw writes from Zimbabwe about the potential of the internet to provide language data that escapes many of the usual mechanisms of control, and to promote the learning of a "data-assisted literacy" that will enable learners to continue to avoid such controls.

韓国「大脱出」：シドニー北部は韓国人学区？


　保護者「その学校には韓国人の生徒が多すぎるのでは？」

　留学斡旋センター関係者「ご希望の学校に直接行ってみてから判断なさるほうがいいですよ」

　今月8日、オーストラリア・シドニーの中心街にある留学斡旋センター。上気した表情の女子中学生とその保護者がコンサルタントのパソコン画面に見入り、盛んに質問していた。すぐ隣の相談コーナーでも、留学希望者の保護者が学校生活や費用について事細かに確認していた。

　オーストラリアには数年前から「シドニー8群」という言葉が飛び交っている。これはシドニー北部のピンブル・ゴードン・チャッツウッド地域を指す造語だ。この地域は大学入試のための成績のいい高校が多く、オーストラリア在住韓国人や早期留学生の家族が集まっているため、優秀な学校が多いソウル市江南の学校群名、「第8学群」にならってできた別名だ。留学斡旋センター「パダ留学院」のクォン・ジンジュ副院長は「韓国では“シドニーに留学するならチャッツウッドに行け”とよく言われるらしい。しかし韓国人があまりにも多いため、現地の学校でも韓国人生徒を避ける傾向が現れつつある」と話す。

　マレーシア・チェラス地域にある某インターナショナルスクール。入学を控えた韓国人生徒8人が校舎に入ると、片隅に立っていた韓国人在校生の保護者らは顔をしかめ、ひそひそ話を始めた。

　「今学期いったい何人入ってくるのかしら。小4のうちの子のクラスは22人中9人が韓国の子供だから、英語の勉強になるもんですか」

　小・中・高のカリキュラムを組む同校の場合、4人に1人が韓国人児童・生徒だ。新学期を迎え、学校正門に張り出されたクラス分け表にも、韓国人の名前が並んでいる。

　韓国人が最も多く集まっているといわれるアンパン地域。2005年から早期留学生が集まり始め、同地域にはすでに韓国人の稽古塾や学習塾が並ぶ街が形成されている。テコンドー・ピアノ・算数教室など、ないものが（は）ない。夜10時過ぎなのに、ある英語塾には電気がこうこうと灯っている。昨年、小4の娘をインターナショナルスクールに入れたチェさん（41）＝女性＝は「韓国人が1か所に集まって住んでいると、母親同士の教育競争が激しくなる」と話す。

　塾よりももっと激しいのが英語教育熱だ。マレーシアの公用語はマレー語だが、人口の80%が英語を使っている。現地人とのマンツーマンで行われる家庭教師の授業は、1時間で1万5000ウォン（約1900円）。週5日、1日3時間の授業でも月100万ウォン（約13万円）かかるという。チェさんは「ちょっといい先生だと、母親たちは互いに月謝を弾み、手離そうとしないので、家庭教師代だけが右肩上がりになっている。午前1‐2時まで家庭教師と勉強する子供たちを見ていると、何で私はここに来たんだろうと思うことがある」と語った。

朝鮮日報／朝鮮日報JNS

韓国「大脱出」：加熱する早期留学（下）


　さまざまな国や地域で韓国の早期留学生が爆発的に増える中、現地では以前にはなかった新しい現象が続々と生まれている。

　マレーシアのチェンパカ・インターナショナルスクールは今年1月の新学期から韓国人学生のための「2カ月事前体験プログラム」を新たに設けた。マレーシアでは初めてのことだ。学校生活を2カ月間体験した後、通学を続けるかどうかを決めるものだ。このプログラムは韓国人保護者らが学校側に要請し、実現したという。

　また、アメリカ・イギリス・ニュージーランドなどでは、韓国人学生の増加に伴い、韓国人コンサルタントを採用する学校も増えている。全校生徒3500人のうち、韓国からの早期留学生が約600人いるというニュージーランドのランギトト・カレッジもその1校だ。2004年から同校のコンサルタントとして働いているキム・ヘジョンさんは「滞在6カ月過ぎくらいからの生活を不安なく過ごせるようにサポートするのが私の役目」と話す。

　ところで、こうした早期留学ラッシュにより、東南アジアやアメリカの不動産業界もざわついている。フィリピン・マニラには早期留学生や語学留学生が押し寄せ、マンションの売買価格や家賃が急上昇している。マンダルヨン市にある30坪のコンドミニアムは2年で家賃が2万ペソ（約4万9000円）から3万ペソ（約7万4000円）へと50%も上がった。ソウル市江南のような高級住宅地マカティをはじめ、アラバン・オルティガスといった韓国人の集まる地域は、家賃がここ数年で約30‐50%上昇した。パラニャケで不動産業を営むイ・ジェヒョンさん（50）は「広くてきれいで現代的な家はすべて韓国人が押さえているため、物件があまりない」と言う。

特別取材チーム

朝鮮日報／朝鮮日報JNS

韓国「大脱出」：加熱する早期留学（上）


　「脱韓国」教育を目指す早期留学生たちが急増している。地球のあちこちに韓国の小・中・高校生たちがあふれている。早期留学（を）させる家庭の所得層も広がり、成功例と共にその副作用も目に付くようになった。成功が保障されているわけでもないのに、なぜ競って韓国を脱出しようとするのか。朝鮮日報は教育シリーズ第1部「創意力教育の現場」に続き、早期留学の実態と成功・失敗についてレポートする第2部「海外取材、爆発する早期留学エクソダス（大脱出）」を掲載する。

　京畿道一山新都市に住むキムさん（40）は2004年に中学2年の娘と小学1年の息子を連れ南アフリカ共和国へ渡った。早期留学にふさわしい場所だと考えたためだ。アメリカやカナダは費用が高く、中国は危険な気がしたという。キムさんは「アフリカは遠すぎると思い、初めは悩んだが、生活費と学費を合わせても月350万ウォン（約45万円）で“アフリカの中のヨーロッパ”と言われる南アフリカのイギリス式教育を受けることができ、今は満足している」と語った。

　キム・ボギョンさんは高校1年生だった2005年7月、南太平洋のフィジーへ発った。「イギリス式教育制度がありながら遊興文化はなく、勉強に専念できる」と親が勧めたためだ。現在フィジーには早期留学生約400人を含め、韓国人が約1000人住んでいる。キムさんは「両親や韓国人の友達が懐かしいが、水泳・ゴルフをして楽しく過ごしている」と話す。

　グローバル時代に英語1つきちんと教えられない教育、優秀な学生を下のレベルに合わせる平準化教育、家計を圧迫する私教育費、すぐに変わる入試制度、時代の変化についていけない公教育…。

　韓国の教育に絶望し、韓国を離れていく早期留学生たちは、今や世界も狭すぎると考えているほどだ。子供をグローバルな人材に育てるため、アメリカ・カナダ・オーストラリアなど、すでによく知られている早期留学先のほかにも、東南アジア・アフリカ・インド・南太平洋・南米など全世界に飛び出している。

　中学1年だった双子の姉妹を1年前からインド南部・チェンナイのインターナショナルスクールに通わせているイさんは「子供は英語・フランス語・ヒンディー語を学んでいる。学校は定期的に子供たちの生活について報告するなど、徹底的に管理してくれる」と話す。同様に小学生と中学生の兄妹を南米エクアドルに留学させたチャさんは「スペイン系国際学校を卒業したら、英語・スペイン語・フランス語を話せるようになる。アメリカやヨーロッパの大学に進学させるつもり」と語った。

特別取材チーム

So, what's this Globish revolution?

I say tomato ... you say red, round fruit. Increasingly, people across the world use some sort of English, but it is not the Queen's. Robert McCrum, Observer Literary Editor, reports on why Globish - English-lite - is becoming the universal language of boardroom, the net and politics

Robert McCrum
Sunday December 3, 2006

Observer

Jean-Paul Nerriere is the kind of high-flying Frenchman at which the Grandes Ecoles excel: cosmopolitan, witty, voluble and insatiably curious about the world around him. Formerly a naval commander, then a businessman, he is the proud holder of the Legion d'Honneur. In his blue blazer and cravat, twinkly Nerriere cuts a dashing figure, seems much younger than his 65 years and occupies a surprising place in contemporary European culture.
Now retired in Provence, the defining moment of his career occurred in the late 1980s. As a high-flying vice-president of IBM in America, Nerriere was put in charge of international marketing and on company trips to Tokyo and Seoul he did what Frenchmen have to do in the global marketplace: communicate with the locals as best he could in his heavily accented English. It was then, in 1989, that he had a life-changing revelation.

In scenes reminiscent of Lost in Translation, Nerriere noted that his conversation with the Japanese and Koreans was 'much easier and more efficient than what could be observed between them and the British and American (IBM) employees who came with me'. A thoughtful man, with a fascination for the exploits of Nelson, he noted that this observation of non-Anglophone English communication applied to 'all non-English-speaking countries'.

Then Nerriere came to his radical, perhaps revolutionary, conclusion: 'The language non-Anglophones spoke together,' he says, 'was not English, but something vaguely like it.' In this language, he noted, 'we were better off than genuine Anglophones'. This language, he decided, 'was the worldwide dialect of the third millennium'. In a moment of pure inspiration he called it 'Globish' (pronounced 'globe-ish').

Globish is not 'pidgin' or 'broken' English but it is highly simplified and unidiomatic. Nerriere observes that in Globish you could never say, 'This erstwhile buddy of yours is a weird duck who will probably put the kibosh on all our good deeds.' That might make sense in Acacia Avenue but it will not play in Buenos Aires or Zurich. In Globish you would express this as: 'Your old friend is too strange. He would ruin all our efforts.' Globish, says Nerriere, is 'decaffeinated English, or English-lite'.

The end of Babel is one of mankind's oldest ambitions, and Globish is its most recent expression. As long ago as the 1920s, the critic IA Richards formulated Basic English, an 850-word version of English, initially for use in China. Richards's initiative was followed in 1930 by the Swedish philologist RE Zachrisson who proposed another international language, essentially English, to be called Anglic, the basic drawback of which can be demonstrated in the Anglic version of a famous sentence: 'Forskor and sevn yeerz agoe our faadherz braut forth on this kontinent a nuw naeshon, konseevd in liberti ...'

Still the dream did not die. In 1940 the British Simplified Spelling Society mounted a campaign for New Spelling, a cause enthusiastically taken up by George Bernard Shaw, who bequeathed part of his fortune to spelling reform. After Shaw such ideas lapsed but in the 1970s some cultural commentators began to write about Amer-English. That one did not stick either but now there was talk of English becoming the new Latin - a global tongue flourishing independently of its national origins.

In the aftermath of his Eureka moment, Nerriere began to codify a Globish vocabulary of 1,500 words (jpn-globish.com). He also produced a mission statement, Parlez Globish, first published in 2004, with translations in Italian, Spanish, Korean and (imminently) Japanese.

Parlez Globish, says Nerriere, 'is not a manual. It develops and demonstrates a theory and gives only a beginning of the recipes required to make Globish work.' Still, he concedes that the grammatical rules of Globish are based on English grammar. A typical conversation in Globish would be painful to a native speaker but might bridge the communication gap between, say, a Korean and a Greek trying to hammer out a business deal. 'Chat' becomes 'speak casually to each other'; and 'kitchen' is the 'room in which you cook your food'. But 'pizza' is still 'pizza' because Globish recognises the word as international currency, like 'taxi' and 'police'. Nerriere insists that, for all its simplifications, Globish is not a 'me Tarzan, you Jane' version of English.

Nerriere himself is sometimes described as a remarkable man whose ambition is to promote global understanding between nationalities. He speaks passionately about his hopes for Globish as 'an official language that would facilitate the life of everyone and put everyone on a par'. He hopes that 'some day it will be accepted as a viable alternative by the European Union or the United Nations'.

He is emphatic that Globish is not a real language like German, French or Japanese. This, acutely, he defines as 'the DNA of a culture'. Although his ambition for Globish is that it should be a tool for international communication, he distinguishes it from Esperanto. 'Globish is not artificial,' he says. 'It derives from the observation that some kind of English is spoken everywhere.'

A good European, Nerriere describes Globish as a device that will 'limit the influence of the English language dramatically'. He says: 'I am helping the rescue of French, and of all the languages that are threatened by English today but which will not be at all endangered by Globish. It is in the best interests of non-Anglophone countries to support Globish, especially if you like your culture and its language.'

So, on closer inspection, Nerriere is inspired by old-fashioned French nationalism. He adds: 'National languages like French could hardly complain: it [Globish] leaves them a great space in which to have a wonderful influence.'

This is a line of argument that might appeal to the Academie Francaise whose initiatives to check the spread of 'la langue du Coca-Cola' have meant abolishing borrowed words and inventing suitable French alternatives to hated Americanisms, for example 'gros porteur' for 'jumbo jet'.

Worries about Coca-colonialism are not confined to France. In 2004 German conservatives proposed a language purification law to eliminate the bastard tongue known as 'Denglish', which had co-opted vocabulary like 'pickup', 'flirt' and 'underwear', words often borrowed from Voice of America broadcasts. When he came to write Parlez Globish, Nerriere used Voice of America as a source for his non-Anglophone hybrid.

His book has hardly been reviewed, or much noticed, but the appearance of Globish marks a tipping point, another small step towards a supranational version of American English the reference points of which are anchored neither in the US nor the UK, the fulfilment of what some have called the 'Latinisation' of English.

This moment has been a generation in the making. From the early 1980s, English and American culture has hovered on the brink of a universal non-Anglo-American expression, in language, culture, law, literature and even sport.

Today, possibly as a consequence of 9/11, the planet has arrived at what we might call the Globish revolution, a globalisation of Anglo-American culture as much as language in which 'some kind of English' has become a universal global currency. By some calculations, indeed, as many as a billion people, nearly a sixth of mankind, now use English as either a first or, more prevalently, second language. This used to be known as 'offshore English'. Globish, 'the international dialect of the third millennium', is a more apt description.

In the Globish revolution, South Koreans protest against North Korean nuclear testing with placards (in English) such as 'Stop the nukes'. In London, Islamic militants denounce anti-Muslim cartoons with English slogans ('Down with free speech'; 'Vikings beware') outside the Danish embassy. In the world of Globish, the film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is sold to international markets and the House of Lords rules on the use of torture in the 'war on terror' using arguments the roots of which lie in the debates surrounding Magna Carta.

Globish means that today 80 per cent of the world's home pages on the worldwide web are 'in some kind of English', compared to German (4.5 per cent) and Japanese (3.1 per cent). Nerriere also notes that, in the Globish revolution, the Goethe Institute now advocates promoting German culture through the medium of a Europeanised English.

His belief in Globish is practical. He says, 'Globish does not want to be French or German. If you want to read Shakespeare or Harry Potter, learn English. If you want to do business, learn Globish. There is no competition. Each is a distinct concept.'

Globish has spread into the export processing zones of the Far East, the sweatshops of Bangkok and Shanghai and the hypermarkets of Japan and Korea. All this goes hand-in-hand with the Globish package deal: mass consumerism and tourism are opposite sides of the same coin. In hundreds of thousands of daily transactions, the language of Thomas Cook employees, of MasterCard call centres and the Sheraton check-out desk will be Globish, the global dialect of No Logo capitalism, and a kind of universal No Lingo.

Twenty years ago, when I was working on the BBC documentary series The Story of English, we struggled to find modern terminology for English as a lingua franca. Globish is not only the mot juste, it also provides a stunning metaphor for that sometimes puzzling state of international culture and society for which terms like 'Amer-English' or 'Anglo-American hegemony' are inadequate. Globishness can be found in many guises, from the net to contemporary fiction. The 2006 Booker Prize, for example, was an archetypally Globish event. First, the result was broadcast, via the News at Ten O'Clock, to a BBC World audience from Mumbai to Vancouver. Next, two of the six shortlisted titles (In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai) turned out to be fictional interpretations of, respectively, Libyan and Indian society. So far removed from the English literary tradition was Desai's winning entry that the British critic John Sutherland was moved to describe her work as 'a globalised novel for a globalised world'.

Desai is emblematic of a new Globish culture: educated in Britain and America, and at home in airport lounges or shopping malls, she wrote The Inheritance of Loss in the foothills of the Himalayas. She boasts on her website of feeling 'no alienation or dislocation' in her transmigration between three continents. She has admitted she 'tries to capture what it means to live between East and West'. Desai asks: 'How does the imbalance between these two worlds change a person's thinking and feeling? How do these changes manifest themselves in a personal sphere over time?' Or in a linguistic and cultural sphere ?

Globish may be a metaphor, but it is not yet a reality. Booker prizewinners will continue to express themselves in varieties of British or Indian or Australian English. Dictionaries will continue to define British and American, and even Indian, versions of the language.

Outside the cloister, in the marketplace, such refinements will continue to break down. Even at the official level there is a new recognition of the role of English as a tool, not a vehicle for literature. The British Council, for example, has a World English Project that boasts of two billion new English speakers 'within a decade'. The project is the first to concede that these 'English speakers' will probably use a version of the language far removed from BBC English, RP or Standard American English.

The author of a report for the project, David Graddol, notes that this will not be, 'English as we have known it and have taught it in the past as a foreign language. If it represents any kind of triumph [for English], it is probably not a cause of celebration by native speakers.' Graddol adds, in words quoted approvingly by Nerriere: 'We are now nearing the end of the period where native speakers can bask in their privileged knowledge of the global lingua franca.' In other words, the future belongs to Globish.

The internet also offers remarkable opportunities for Globish, and Nerriere says that it is ideally suited to global blogging. Working with two associates, Philippe Dufresne and Jacques Bourgon, he has now developed a handbook, Decouvrez le Globish (Discover Globish), designed to teach would-be Globish users to master the new language in six months, backed up by a piece of software (Glolexis).

'Globishness' also has sociocultural applications. Consider, for instance, the landmark House of Lords ruling on the use of torture in Iraq. Thirty terrorist suspects, fighting deportation to countries such as Algeria and Libya, had taken their case to the Lords in an effort to overturn a ruling by the Court of Appeal that 'coerced evidence' (ie evidence obtained by torture), could be admissible in court. On 9 December 2005 all seven lords unanimously denounced the use of 'coerced evidence'. From the commentary surrounding this landmark ruling, two things stand out, both of them indicative of a new 'Globish' consciousness. First, the language and precedents of the judgment were inspired by English common law of the 15th and 16th centuries. Lord Bingham, for example, declared that 'English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for 500 years'. Second, the law lords' choice of language and precedents was deliberate - to send an unambiguous signal to the American Supreme Court that the torture inspired by the so-called war on terror (Abu Ghraib; Guantanamo) was inadmissible in a civilised society. A rebuff to the British government, this was also an extraordinary rebuke to the Bush administration.

As one of the lawyers representing the defendants, Philippe Sands QC, put it: 'We were aware that the judges recognised that the audience for this case was not purely an audience sitting in the UK, and that there was a global audience for the [House of Lords] judgment because the issue concerned Guantanamo and the prosecution of the war on terror.' Sands says everyone involved 'recognised that the judgment would resonate best internationally if it was based on English common law not a European treaty'. It was considerations of 'Globishness' that influenced their lordships to rule as they did.

The Globish revolution is neither wholly English nor American, but its DNA is inherited from both cultures. It takes inspiration from Alfred and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from the Domesday Book, Magna Carta and the Pilgrim Fathers. Its roots can be traced to Caxton's printing press, to the Book of Common Prayer, the plays of Shakespeare, the Putney Debates and the Declaration of Independence. Globishness also resides in the FA Cup, the US Open, Friends, Doctor Who and Neighbours -and also in Jane Austen (Bollywood's Bride and Prejudice is the quintessential Globish movie). 9/11 has tipped global culture into a new dimension. In a world in which America is the enemy, war has given a pacific, neutral voice like Globish a new impetus in the 21st century. This, you might say, is the Globish village

Innovation or aberration... what do you think?

mailto:review@observer.co.uk

Fluent Globish: How to speak it

English

Brought to Britain by German settlers in the 5th century BC.

The OED lists 615,000 words.

Globish fans say English takes 24 years to learn - if you study for 20 hours a year.

354m people speak English as their first language.

Globish

MN Gogate coined the word Globish in 1998. Jean-Paul Nerriere, a retired IBM marketing executive, published Parlez Globish in 2004.

Globish has a vocabulary of 1,500 words and takes 9 years to learn.

1.5bn speak it as a second language.

Say it in English

I went to my niece and nephew's party the other weekend. I played the piano and we were all singing along when a mouse ran out from behind the sofa with a piece of peach in its mouth.

Say it in Globish

At the party of my children's brother the other day, I played an instrument with black and white keys and we all sang along. Then an animal chased by cats ran out from behind the seat with a piece of fruit in its mouth.

Language crisis facing UK schools

Ahead of a major report on how government policy wrecked foreign language teaching, academics demand new start for millions of children

Anushka Asthana, education correspondent
Sunday December 3, 2006

Observer

Teenagers at a school in Manchester were overjoyed when they were told they could drop French this year. Out of 100 pupils just 15 signed up for the GCSE. So few showed an interest in German that the school decided not to offer it at all.

Grace Hallows and her friend Sam Mottershed were among the handful who carried on. 'My Dad said he really regretted not listening in French lessons when he was at school,' said Grace, 14. 'He said it would look good on my CV and be useful for skiing.'

Many of their classmates were put off foreign languages because they were 'less fun' than other lessons like PE or art, added Sam, 15: 'Languages are hard. If we were given a choice as to whether or not we took maths I am sure a lot of people would drop that too.'

Language teaching in England and Wales is in crisis. Fifty leading academics have written to The Observer this weekend to express alarm about the slump in the number of teenagers taking GCSEs in foreign languages. A letter signed by professors and heads of language departments from dozens of top universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics (LSE), calls for the government to reverse its controversial policy allowing pupils to drop languages at 14. The move, that came into force two years ago, embedded the notion that 'languages do not matter, that English is enough', the letter says.

University College London is so concerned by the lack of language ability among pupils that it is considering making a language qualification at 16 compulsory for all applicants.

The government 'decision was absolutely crazy', said Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly, professor of German literature at the University of Oxford and one of the signatories. 'At the time that other European countries are introducing two languages in schools we are told our children don't need them.' It also bred elitism, she added, because state schools cut back on languages while independent schools added new options, such as Japanese and Chinese.

Clarissa Farr, head of St Paul's Girls' school, a leading private school, said the decision was 'benighted'. Along with academics, teachers and campaigners, Farr is hoping that Lord Dearing, who will publish the interim findings of his inquiry into languages in schools next week, may signal a government U-turn.

Nick Byrne, director of the LSE Language Centre and lead signatory of today's letter, said reversing the decision would show that learning a language was a core skill like English and maths: 'Compulsion may not generate hundreds of linguists but it is symbolic. It is about what we want a rounded person to be.'

One thing is clear: the UK has a shameful record on foreign languages and there has been a dramatic fall in the numbers studying them. This month, a report concluded that the subjects were fast becoming the preserve of the middle classes. Nearly a third of schools had less than 25 per cent of pupils studying a foreign language after 14, the study by the National Centre for Languages (CiLT) found. The poorest teenagers were least likely to be learning a language, it added. The figures raised fears that a generation of monolingual youngsters would struggle to compete in a global job market. Out of the 25 European Union countries the UK only beats Hungary in the proportion of its citizens able to have a conversation in a second language. A study by the European Commission showed that 30 per cent of people in the UK were able to do this, compared to 91 per cent in the Netherlands, 88 per cent in Denmark, 62 per cent in Germany and 45 per cent in France.

The architect of the government reforms said it was the poor record in languages that led to the decision to let 14-year-olds to drop the subject, leaving money to spend on far younger children. Baroness Estelle Morris, former education secretary, said it would be a 'tragedy if the government was frightened' into reversing a decision that handed power from Whitehall to headteachers.

'We are lousy at foreign languages and shouldn't be,' said Morris. 'So you have to do something different. You need to decide where you invest the effort, energy and enthusiasm. Not on 15-year-olds who do not want to do it but five to 11-year-olds.' There was not the money to cover both, so primary school children should face compulsion, she said.

'Foreign languages give economic and cultural value,' said Mike Harris, head of education and skills at the Institute of Directors. 'But from our members perspective the argument relating to economic value is overblown. They do not see languages as the main skills gap.'

However, the most powerful academic board at University College London will next week vote on proposals that would require every applicant to have a qualification in a foreign language at 16. Michael Worton, chair of the board and professor of French language and literature, said he hoped to 'aspire' rather than force pupils to keep up languages.

Worton, an advisor to Dearing, said he had once been convinced by forcing pupils to do a GCSE but now thought other methods could remedy the problem. Schools wanting to place children in top universities would have to offer languages, he added.

When Dearing sets out his early conclusions late next week he is likely to call for new ways to enthuse young people. Experts claim that GCSEs and A-levels are boring, requiring teenagers to talk about their day at school or directions to the train station. Dearing said he will aim to 'identify the fundamental reasons why languages dropped so sharply in Key Stage 4' and find ways to ensure that courses are 'engaging for teenagers and recognises their different aspirations and interests'. He is also likely to look at provision in primary school where Morris's plans are starting to take effect.

Hilary Beynon, a language teacher from Newport, South Wales, usually has A-level students but now runs an after-school class four days a week where children sing and do role plays in Spanish. 'The way in which they absorb language is amazing,' she said.

While most people welcome efforts with younger children they say there is a 'lost generation' who did not learn languages early on and will drop them at 14. 'You did not need to be able to predict the future to know this would happen,' said Linda Parker, director of the Association of Language Learning.

How others do it

Germany English has been compulsory for all secondary pupils since the end of the Sixties. Most federal states offer a foreign language at primary level, usually at the age of eight, although some schools offer it earlier. Chinese, Japanese and Czech is also taught in some schools.

Sweden English is the first foreign language and is compulsory for all children. In the late Sixties, English was introduced at the age of nine or 10. A new national curriculum in 1995 resulted in many learning it from seven or eight. A second compulsory language is introduced at the age of 11 or 12, from a choice of German, French Spanish. A third language is optional two years later.

USA The United States has no official policy. Responsibility for schooling rests with states and not the national government. The majority of states have secondary school foreign language programmes. Spanish instruction has increased, as well as Japanese and Russian.
Isabelle Chevallot

Linguistic battle at the European commission

Gallic and Teuton feathers have been ruffled by moves to promote English as the official EC language, writes Andrew Osborn

Andrew Osborn
Friday August 10, 2001

Guardian Unlimited

Any attempt to demolish Europe's tottering linguistic Tower of Babel was always going to be controversial and so it is that a new plan to have just one working language at the European commission instead of the current three has sparked outrage in certain quarters.
The one language - it is feared and probably with good reason - will be English, meaning that the two other working languages currently in use (French and German) would be all but redundant and this, perhaps unsurprisingly, has not gone down well in Paris or Berlin.

In fact, the two countries are so concerned by the proposals, drawn up by the commission itself, that their respective foreign ministers Hubert Vedrine and Joschka Fischer have written a joint letter to commission president Romano Prodi protesting the move.

The plan would, they say, be "unacceptable", would "promote unilingualism" and not be in the [rarely honoured] spirit "communataire" of the European union.

The French press has taken up the issue with its customary ardour talking of an attempted "linguistic coup d'etat" and muttering darkly about an Anglo-Saxon plot to impose English on Europe's 370m citizens.

The stakes are high, for with as many as 13 applicant countries queuing up to join at the EU at the earliest opportunity, the linguistic battle is on for the hearts and minds of the newcomers.

Since it will clearly be impractical to expand the EU's official 11 languages (into which EU legislation is translated as opposed to the three working languages used by the commission) then a crucial question will sooner or later have to be answered.

Which linguistic fence will the mostly east European newcomers opt to sit upon?

This latest dispute is probably only the initial skirmish in what is likely to be a protracted linguistic scrap.

The commission for its part argues that having just one working language instead of three will save time and money, and is a good idea against the backdrop of its drive to reform and modernise itself.

"About 10 years ago 70% of the paperwork in the commission was in French, but the balance has now tipped towards English. There has been a generational change and English is the language that young people are learning. Nobody is going to change that drift," says one commission official.

Spokesmen stress that the proposals are in an embryonic stage and will not sweep away the multilingualism so coveted by the French and the Germans.

But the French, sensitive at the best of times about the inexorable march of the English language at the expense of the language of Moliere, are not convinced. "What is the dream of all Eurocrats?" French daily newspaper Liberation asked its readers.

"That all the citizens of the EU speak English and that national languages are downgraded to the status of quaint dialects which will eventually be taught in just a few specialised classes," was its answer.

"This attempt to make the EU a linguistic branch of Nato and the OECD where English has long ago supplanted French, the other official language, is not the first and will not be the last," it continued.

The fact is, of course, that the battle for linguistic supremacy in the EU was lost long ago and English has emerged as the undisputed second language of choice across the prosperous 15-nation bloc.

The Germans have learned to live with this fact - only an estimated 1% of commission documents are printed in German as compared to 55% in English (up from 40% 10 years ago) and 44% in French.

But nobody seems to have told the French that they are fighting a battle which has already been conceded.

French journalists can frequently be heard expressing outrage at the commission's ritualistic midday press briefing that a certain document has not been issued in French or that a spokesman's command of French is far from perfect.

Their frustration is perhaps understandable and should be familiar to Brits for it is all about the pain of coming to terms with the loss of empire. The commission has, in effect, been France's private fiefdom ever since it was set up (along French government lines) in the 60s and the ascendancy of English at the expense of French together with "Anglo-Saxon" style administrative reforms comes as a rude shock to the system.

As one commission insider puts it: "They say that this plan would be the end of the community dream but strangely it didn't seem to be the end of the dream when everyone spoke French for the past 30 years."

English could become Japan's official second language


Kathryn Tolbert in Tokyo
Wednesday February 23, 2000
Guardian Unlimited


In response to the heightened sense of crisis, almost panic, over Japan's lack of facility with English in the internet age, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi released a report last month on Japan's goals for the 21st century that proposed making English the country's official second language.
"Achieving world-class excellence demands that all Japanese acquire a working knowledge of English," the report said. It called for reorganising English classes according to level of achievement, not grade, improving teacher training, and contracting language schools to teach English.

Mr Obuchi's announcement was quickly followed by the formation of a panel of experts to devise measures to improve methods of teaching English by the Ministry of Education. The ministry already plans to increase the number of native English-speaking teaching assistants from 5,800 to at least 10,000, and to triple the number of language teachers it sends on three-week seminars overseas.

Opponents of the proposal say it will be impossible for all Japanese to have a working level of English.

"English as a second language? It's absurd," said Masaharu Okamoto, an English teacher at Hibiya Senior High School, one of Tokyo's top public schools. "During the nuclear accident [last September], I read that villagers were told they must go to the tasuku forsu [task force] and I thought, 'Who can understand that?' We have Japanese phrases with the same meaning. Our society is based on the Japanese language, and everyone should understand Japanese." He says what is needed is diversity in the education system, so that Japanese who need to speak English are able to learn it.

However, Yoshio Terasawa, former head of Nomura Securities International in New York and author of a book called Lack Of English Ability Is Destroying The Nation, believes that the vague nature of the Japanese language allows obfuscation. By learning English, Japan's leaders will be forced to say what they think, he says.

English should be official language

Dear Editor: I like the new Lowe’s in Northport. However, signs throughout the store are written in both English and Spanish. Although the Latin-American immigrant population is increasing in the U.S., Spanish is not the official language here. In fact, the United States has not declared an official language.
Nevertheless, the English language is the common bond that holds together this great nation of people with diverse ancestries from around the world. I don’t think that we want to follow South Africa, which has 11 official languages; Switzerland, which has four; or Canada, which has two. Therefore, we should pass laws making English the official language in Alabama and in the United States.