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    "Say It in English, Please!": World Language and Culture Paranoia
    "Say It in English, Please!": World Language and Culture Paranoia
    "Say It in English, Please!": World Language and Culture Paranoia
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    "Say It in English, Please!": World Language and Culture Paranoia

    By Joseph Charles

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    It is much easier to kill them if we cant understand them. We might begin to like and empathize with them if we do. That was the opinion of three quarters of an adult college class when faced with the awareness of their deficient linguistic survival skills. They are willing to forego self-preservation for the sake of warfare and annihilation of people that are different.
    Pressing reasons for looking into our world language needs and competencies have risen, but we prefer to bury our heads in the sand while ironically ofttimes entrusting the task of comprehending the outside world with our enemies. It is no wonder, on one hand, that paranoia ensues, for it becomes necessary to resort to dubious helpers in order to survive in hostile environments without the basic local linguistic skills; on the other hand, the author firmly asserts that the world would be a much better place if we became cognizant that we are one species imbued with the same universal feelings and needs. Languages and cultures only constitute a smoke screen. The reader will take a linguistic tour with the author as he shares experiences and opinions on our own language experiences and other cultures.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJul 30, 2013
    ISBN9781481763899
    "Say It in English, Please!": World Language and Culture Paranoia
    Author

    Joseph Charles

    Dr. J. Yves Charles is currently a full adjunct Romance Language professor on Long island, New York, after an eminent career in New York City and Long Island public schools where he successful ly taught French and Spanish. He is an avid reader, plays classical guitar and piano as a hobby, and has a renewed passion for linguistics and world language learning.

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      Book preview

      "Say It in English, Please!" - Joseph Charles

      "Say it in English,

      please!"

      World Language and Culture Paranoia

      JOSEPH CHARLES

      US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

      AuthorHouse™

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      https://www.authorhouse.com

      Phone: 1-800-839-8640

      © 2013 by Joseph Charles. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 06/19/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-6390-5 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-6389-9 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013910838

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Table Of Contents

      Preface

      Introduction

      The Evanescent Facilitator

      Why go through all of that?

      Are Language Instructors redundant?

      A case for Haitian as a language

      Parlez-vous français?

      Spanish: the popular LOTE and its speakers

      The American language and its speakers

      Language, Culture and Pedagogy

      When good student intentions do not suffice

      Where is language-learning going?

      Bibliography

      To my mother Angelina Zamor

      Preface

      World language teachers are a dying breed, and so are the students desirous of learning a second language. There are still individuals who are flabbergasted upon hearing that someone is majoring in a foreign language as if there were not enough relevance and substance in the subject to make it a field of study, whereas they can fathom English as a bona fide major. Why is there a difference between English majors and world language majors when grammar is universal, except for the fact that English has the status of the world’s lingua franca?

      Some octogenarians and nonagerians estimate that the United States of America solved this language problem a long time ago through the melting pot philosophy and application. They remember the time when it was anathema to express oneself publicly in a language other than English. That gesture was construed as an attack on the fabric of the nation as if the perpetrators were about to foster a Tower of Babel experiment, although other languages such as German, in particular, were still flourishing through vibrant communities serviced linguistically by a plethora of local ethnic newspapers. New reasons for looking into our world language needs and competencies have risen, but we prefer to bury our heads in the sand while ironically ofttimes entrusting the task of comprehending the outside world with our enemies. It is no wonder that paranoia ensues, for it becomes necessary to resort to dubious helpers in order to survive in hostile environments without the basic local linguistic skills.

      The new generation is under the impression that the language problem is a non-issue because they surmise that all they actually have to do is Google the unknown word or expression, and they will obtain an instantaneous translation, and that is until they have to communicate with someone in that language. Simple phrases may satisfy certain needs, but no meaningful dialogue or actual communication can take place through this medium as readily available as it may be. No language other than English seems to be simple enough for the paucity of time available for such an endeavor. An American student is shocked at the complexity of other people’s language because of the simplicity of English, especially on the verb level. An English speaker will question the new target language more than someone from the European community will because the latter is used to grammatical genders and verb inflexions, which they understand very quickly and learn without protest. American students get annoyed and paranoid about other languages’ idiosyncrasies as if English spelling and pronunciation do not leave English learners perplexed and confused.

      There is a segment of America that believes in competency in world languages for the good of this nation and its citizens; on the other hand, strident voices with varying agendas dominate the fora. This minority that is favorable to world languages is represented by exclusive institutions. Some avant-garde institutions and educators do espouse the philosophy that bilingual education should be a right of every citizen, not a transitory treatment for limited English proficient students, for a real educated person should be proficient in at least one modern language other than his own, in addition to basic math and technology literacy. Our educational system should not sacrifice modern languages because we fail to teach math and science properly. If we do not address this deficiency in the next generation, we will be paranoid about every other subject for lack of investing the appropriate resources and intelligence to elaborate effective programs throughout all our educational curricula, especially in world language education. Surprised at a Norwegian visiting student’s accentless English, I asked her how long she studied the language. She responded that she had English consistently from second grade at the age of seven until she graduated from high school at the age of eighteen. With some educational foresight and the desire to make the investment we can have our own reservoir of language specialists when in need without resorting to questionable and dangerous help.

      Introduction

      This book is an attempt to delve into the aversion to foreign languages, the nemesis of most American students. It is also an insightful investigation of our attitudes toward an important subject that we neglect, despite the interconnectedness of the world in which we live nowadays. The English language has become largely an unlearned language as well, except by students fortunate enough to attend elitist private institutions. We take English for granted! That assumption coupled with the unwillingness to insist that it be taught as seriously as every other nation does its national language has made American students self conscious about English and paranoid about the study of other languages as a consequence. Incidentally, I had the privilege of teaching a Basic English grammar and usage to a class of freshmen at a university in New York and was barely surprised that I was teaching a foreign language with the only difference that the target language was consistently the medium of instruction.

      I have taught Languages Other Than English (LOTE), the new term for Foreign Languages, for almost four decades and can ascribe the difficulty experienced by our youngsters to master a second language to two main factors: the first one is their poor mastery of English (their native language), and the second is the introduction of second language study at a time when their ability to learn a second language has ossified. The Critical Period Hypothesis supports that there is a fixed span of years where language acquisition can occur naturally and effortlessly. Scientifically, the first ten years of life are the most conducive to language acquisition owing to the plasticity and flexibility of the brain, according to Ellis (1994). Various researchers seem to feel that, unless one is talented, the mastery of a second language with no trace of an accent is rather rare above the age of thirteen. Some even bring down the native competency level to single digits.

      Of course, there are exceptional cases where some individuals can reproduce successfully phonemes that are alien to their native language’s articulatory system, in particular, actors and certain government employees that are in charge of this country’s national security; however, a majority of English speakers cannot roll their r’s to save their lives. I remember my grammar school years when my classmates and I used to put together secret languages as games, and we would communicate in them successfully. One can just imagine how much we would have benefited from an early exposure to a modern language during that time when our minds were sponges. We would instead later suffer purposelessly in Latin and Classical Greek classes. Nowadays, American students are still unfortunately missing this opportunity.

      However, we have not quite gotten over the Latin obsession because many schools around the nation are reviving it with dubious objectives. It is as if some institutions nostalgically remember the time when serious works were written in Latin, the language of erudition. English was a potato-topping language spoken by the masses. French was the language of commerce and the courts, Latin was the language on the page and was considered perfect with all its infinite endings and accretions, but that was a long time ago, in the Middle Ages. Many still view Cicero’s language as a weightier language than English, which has been stripped naked but the third person singular in the present tense that still keeps a mysterious s that drives English learners crazy. If students can wrap their heads around Latin, they will find modern languages a bit easier to deal with, for they are less exacting and much more practical. They are a breath of fresh air after messing around with Latin. For an English speaker, it is an epiphany that a language other English can be so complicated, but that is the nature of languages. English is in a class by itself.

      Educational institutions that are reintroducing Latin in their program have a different rationale; they claim that it fosters mental discipline and reinforces the native language competencies, which is quite contrary to Robert Lowth’s ideas. He was the first notorious English grammarian. His idea was that a solid grammatical knowledge of English would facilitate the learning of Latin. He was a bishop of Oxford from the 18th century. We have to thank him for the banishment of double negatives in English among other things as if people actually receive these utterances as

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