Re: What's MEXT in English?

From: Paul Blay (ranma_at_saotome.demon.co.uk)
Date: 08/16/04 

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 19:18:18 +0100

"Jed Rothwell" wrote ...
> Paul Blay and many others have suggested that
> Japan needs more native speaker instructors.

Actually I didn't post with that in mind at all. I simply thought that
_if_ more native speakers were to be employed in Japan that would be
something a lot of people lurking in this group would be interested in.

> This MEXT white paper suggests a bold initiative: send 10,000 Japanese high
> school students overseas. That would probably be cheaper than importing
> 10,000 native speaker instructors, and it would be much more effective. You
> would end up with a smaller number of people learning English, but they
> would learn it thoroughly. The trouble is, 9,000 of those students would not
> come home.

Good God! Are you sending them to New York or something?
 
> I doubt the Japanese public or government would go along with this
> modest proposal

'modest proposal' that rings a bell ;-)

> Perhaps countries like India
> prove I am wrong, but my prediction is that within a hundred years nearly
> everyone on earth will speak English as a second language,

Maybe, I'm not sure a hundred years will be enough to get the majority in
China.

> and within a thousand years all other languages will be extinct.
> That is a terrible thing, but it seems unavoidable.

I think it's almost impossible _not_ to avoid. Your hidden assumption
is that the developed 'Western' world will remain in economic and political
dominance, and probably the US in particular. That _may_ be true for the
next hundred years but I wouldn't give much for the odds at 2, 3 hundred
years never mind one thousand.

English may well remain as an educated persons technical language (much as
Latin has been used even after the Roman Empire's long gone) but my bet
is there will be a new top dog and their _native_ language will be the new
lingua franca.

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