A) Someone once said the best way for people to learn English is to force them. "Bilingualism" is a crutch which will hinder the learning of English and may an excuse not to learn. I heard that Nicaraguan Spanish is the best Spanish outside of Spain. If bilingual
advocates are going to advocate Spanish as a second language I would
require all Spanish language instructors, interpreters and other workers to be of Nicaraguan ancestry. All other Spanish speakers would be canned. Well, maybe I'm being a bit facetious. But if people insist
on Spanish, why not the best?
B) A common language is needed to tie the country together. Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, was also an educator. During a banquet
given in his honor in Shanghai, he told the Chinese audience that they needed a common dialect. In his book THE LANGUAGES OF CHINA, Dr. Ramsey pointed out that both the Nationalists and the Communists settled on one dialect, Beijing Mandarin. The Communists had at one time advocated having several dialects of equal standing, but eventually they had to settle for one standard dialect. I believe the late Iris Chang in her book THE RAPE OF NANKING mentioned that the
difference in dialects made military cooperation among the Chinese a problem and hindered the defense of the city. I would say it was one of the contributing factors which led to such a great tragedy. The differences in dialects are so great that they might be considered languages if China was not one country.
The Japanese linguist Kindaichi in his book THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE, mentioned an incident where two of his Chinese students could not understand each others dialects, so they communicated in English !
Mr. Kindaichi also mentioned the success of the Japanese government in imposing or implementing a common dialect throughout the country. Perhaps this common language may have given the Japanese an edge
over the Chinese in some military operations.
C) Not only should English be the official language, I think we should
aim for a common dialect. My guess is that would be Midwest. Northeasterners talk in a quick compressed accent. Southerners talk in
an elongated accent. I hope the Midwest would be just right. I think
television has helped or can help to standardize English usage.
D) Why not reintroduce Latin? Jesse Wise and Susan Wise Bauer in their
home schooling book THE WELL TRAINED MIND advocate learning Latin. I think Latin could be a bridge to the Romance languages; Spanish, Italian, French etc. If bilingual advocates are so passionate about
learning another culture, why limit ones self to Spanish?
E) As a parting thought, I think may the study of classical Greek
or the more simpler New Testament Greek (Koine) might be helpful.
After all a number of words in the English language come from Greek.
Guy
# posted by GuyTak @ 8:41 PM
