Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

Asked why the language is so important, a sophomore responded in fluent English. "English is the common language of the world. You will know the world only when you are fluent in English," she said. Her friend added, "That is particularly true in this Internet era."

Taiwan, along with South Korea, has been swept by English-language fever. Taiwan was the first country to set forth a policy to establish English as one of its official languages. By 2008, Taiwan plans to promote English as its second official language.

English has become the unchallenged lingua franca of the world. According to linguists, 510 million people around the world speak English as their mother tongue and another 350 million are bilingual English speakers.

Novelist Bok Koh-ill argued in 1998 that Korea should adopt English as a second official language. English; precisely, American English; rules among the world's languages.

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200310/21/200310212335088939900090409041.html

Will this promote studying English? Will it promote discrimination against those that speak another kind of English (e.g., Australian English).

[On the other hand]

Gosh. And here I thought we'd all have to learn learn Esperonto some time soon.

[kangnamdragon]

[rapier]

I believe that at athe start of every new class you take, you should do a small presentation as to why its important to learn English. Goes a long way to motivating them. If you can bring in photos of exotic places and people, and show that all around the world people are speaking one common language, it helps- particularly with sullen middle schoolers.
Otherwise, they don't seem to know why they're forced to go to the classroom every day.

[Joe Thanks]

I always thought it ran on stupidity.

[kangnamdragon]

[indiercj]

[mithridates]

Europe, 30AD: the world runs on Latin!
Asia, 500AD: the world runs on Chinese!
Europe, 1200AD: the world runs on French!
US, 2003AD: the world runs on English!

These only depend on one thing: the language of the leading economic and military superpower.

Which reminds me, I always wonder how much longer our jobs are guaranteed for if Chinese becomes more sought after in a few decades. I'm learning it myself right now.

[rapier]

Indiercj/mithridates: Can you honestly see Chinese ever being as widely spoken, worldwide, as english now is? English outstrips every other language in history in this way. They weren't speaking latin in the Phillipines in Roman times.
England had historically, the world's biggest empire, and inflicted their language on a huge percentage of the earth's surface.
Personally i think Chinese will rise in importance, but ultimately they will have to learn our language- because China is an island in a sea of English.

[indiercj]

I see one giant island growing in a sea of english. Hey how can anyone turn her back on a market er.. island of 1.4 billion?

[whatthefunk]

When that market is lerning English, Id say you can.

[rapier]

Further to the Chinese- English argument: Chinese has always been a more static language than English in that it stems from a monoculture unchanged for centuries, with less rference or relevance to other cultures. By contrast, english developed from successive influences and invasions by other foreign tongues and peoples, before it spread outwards over the globe, absorbing and adapting to new cultures. As a language, english contains words originating from most of the worlds other languages...for example the Afrikaans word "Trek" is now an english word, as is "origami" or "karate" from the japanese, or 'piano, spaghetti" from Italian.
english has a much more diverse, flexible and all - embracing register of words, partly because it travelled alongside the British empire, and absorbed a multitude of foreign influences whilst in cosmopolitan America.
Chinese, on the other hand, lacks hugely in this area, and although simpler, does not have the tenses, verb forms or terms to cope with modern life in this new era.
Its a nice language though, i studied it a little- prefer it to korean for sure..

[mithridates]

Chinese has historically been the main influence on Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. and isn't the language of a culturally unilingual country called China, it also encompasses Tibetan, Turkish, and other such cultures.

IMO language use is decided almost entirely by money and convenience. It all starts out with a guy watching the news about how this or that country is making it big. 'Wow, I'd like a part in that' thinks the guy, and comes to the conclusion that studying the language is the best way to go about it. And then a couple of other people decide to do so, and then a few more, and so on. Once it reaches a certain level of momentum that's when the language companies step in and attempt to convince people that learning this language is the secret to their financial success, and this is what English is about today.

I think English is the official language of some 84 countries or so, but most of them are small island countries or poor former colonies, so the only ones that really matter in the financial world are the States, Canada, England, Australia, perhaps a few others...the reason I think countries wouldn't mind switching over to Chinese is that most of the people I've met who are studying English aren't doing it because they like it; the vast majority do it quite grudgingly. Also, most of them think it's quite difficult, and to a Korean or a Japanese person Chinese is actually a much easier language. If Korean/Japanese people studied Chinese as hard as they do English the vast majority of them would be quite fluent in it.

Do you ever watch Chinese on tv in Korea?

[Corvid]

Did you folks see this?

[Zyzyfer]

Eh, Chinese could monopolize Asia(especially Eastern Asia) quite easily, but the written language is far too hard for me to believe that it could extend very far beyond that, unless China came full-on into the limelight.