3rdblade:Marketing is important too, as sudanglo mentioned. This character was the mascot of Japan's largest English school chain, nicknamed 'the McDonald's of English schools', before it went bust under shady circumstances a few years ago.

Ha! I worked for Bi-Lingual Language Institute in the '90s. If NOVA* was the McDonald's of English schools, Bi-Lingual was the Roy Rogers or Hardee's.

*I'm assuming that's the school you referred to.

T0dd:
They teach English all over the world because the economic and political influence of English-speaking countries has made it advantageous for people to learn it. The name for this phenomenon is cultural imperialism. The British Empire brought English to many parts of the world, such as India and Singapore, where it might not otherwise have been a major language. Then the US became a major economic force, adding more momentum to the spread of English. A by-product of all this is the global spread of pop culture, in the form of music, movies, etc, in English.

I agree with you if it concerns music. Music spreads a language very well. In my opinion most music styles find their audience via the melody and not the lyrics language by itselves. In detail getting interest what the folks are singing about has not the main focus on it. (It's about songs in foreign languages). That was the way I found interest into learning English. I tried to find out how other E-o'ers see that. But I failed with my current E-o language proficiency. Maybe someones like to reanimate that thread.

I disagree that big spreading of English language for movies inside countries which have a strong movie dubbing tradition where someones doesn't hear the original voice at the popular national TV broadcasting stations. I.e. Germany and others. Yes, I know that someones can switch to English language tracks of the regarding movie. But I doubt that lot of do that just for entertainment reasons.

(Btw. some filmoj.net news. Aleksander also prepares a E-o film festival.)

EoMy:The national language of Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia is Malay but English is more important than the national language.

I think you should fight for your mother tongue, because the language of your mother, father, familly is the real you, a part of your soul. If you lose it, something will die. No other language should be more important to your own mother's language. But don't worry - English is too difficult to be a world's language. Its days are counted, just as once it was with French and Latin.

targanook:

EoMy:The national language of Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia is Malay but English is more important than the national language.

I think you should fight for your mother tongue, because the language of your mother, father, familly is the real you, a part of your soul. If you lose it, something will die. No other language should be more important to your own mother's language. But don't worry - English is too difficult to be a world's language. Its days are counted, just as once it was with French and Latin.

Thank you very much. Not only in my country, in others too.

Because the most powerful nations nowadays have English as their language, and so they can force the rest of the world to do 100 % of the effort while they do 0 %, instead of everyone doing about a 10 % of the effort. (BTW, this makes native English speakers' esperantism much more worth of praise).

If tomorrow the world leading country is Madagascar, be prepared to hear arguments about the evident advantages of the Malagasian language as internacional means of communication.

I would answer your teacher with a Spanish phrase which has been attibuted to different authors: "Los muertos que vos matáis, gozan de buena salud" (The dead you kill are in good health).

Regards,

Daniel

targanook:
If so, then why do they teach English all over the world as the only and best international language? I asked my English teacher about esperanto and she answered that this was not a language at all, but some old project that did not come out well enough...

Hey! Let's not underrate our convincing skills.

In less than 8 hours, Targanook went from "we have English and it works good enough" to "English is too difficult to be a world's language".

And since he cannot logically affirm two contradictory sentences at the same time, it follows that he has changed his mind. Which I celebrate, BTW.

Regards,

Daniel

targanook:

EoMy:The national language of Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia is Malay but English is more important than the national language.

I think you should fight for your mother tongue, because the language of your mother, father, familly is the real you, a part of your soul. If you lose it, something will die. No other language should be more important to your own mother's language. But don't worry - English is too difficult to be a world's language. Its days are counted, just as once it was with French and Latin.

targanook:

EoMy:The national language of Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia is Malay but English is more important than the national language.

I think you should fight for your mother tongue, because the language of your mother, father, familly is the real you, a part of your soul. If you lose it, something will die. No other language should be more important to your own mother's language. But don't worry - English is too difficult to be a world's language. Its days are counted, just as once it was with French and Latin.

Actually, there's no set rule that its days are counted, and no real standard by which to say it's too hard. I would have originally agreed with you, but let's face it, for the forseeable future, English is the world language. Latin did technically "die out", but think about how much of English is really retooled Latin. Because of that, and because of curent and forseeable future circumstances, I think English will contribute to a variety of international dialects, that aren't completely one language, but not really languages in their own right, sort of like "I don't speak no language! I jus' speak!" .

This is largely because the main reason for languages falling out of favour was that competitors still had ground to retreat to. Nowadays, the international community is stronger and more widespread than ever with almost every nation on earth taking place whether they like it or not (spare some isolationists). The next chance for language break up thus I think would be the space theatre, and god knows what will happen there. Perhaps English, Russian and Chinese will thrive, perhaps only English will be accepted like with aviation, or perhaps we'll see massive amounts of "fragmentation" (like with software), where EO might find much more currency...

--
As for English in Asia, now that's a funny subject! I was watching a short Indonesian film, and couldn't get over the amount of times the Chinese-Indonesian cast members switched into English, just because they could. Like, "indo indo indo indo indo So how are you? Indo indo indo Ok I now need to go! Sampai jumpa!"

ceigered:.. let's face it, for the forseeable future, English is the world language.

Maybe for some speakers of English. I doubt whether Claude Piron would have agreed.

ceigered:Nowadays, the international community is stronger and more widespread than ever ..

You're not trying for a job as a political speechwriter, by any chance?

ceigered:.. perhaps only English will be accepted like with aviation...

I understand that English is the language of international aviation, and failure to master it can have fatal consequences. Maybe Esperanto's chance will come here. Let's see..

(Plane about to crash)
Control Tower: "Pull back! Pull back!"
Pilot: "Pull what? There are many sticks here!"
CT: "Decelerate! Decelerate!"
P: "OK, accelerating!"
CT Haltu! Haltu!
P: (Brings the plane to a halt) Ve, kial vi ne uzis la internacian lingvon unue?

Miland:

ceigered:.. let's face it, for the forseeable future, English is the world language.

Maybe for some speakers of English. I doubt whether Claude Piron would have agreed.

Well, world language is interpretable to various degrees. As the most popular language internationally, it faces no major challenges for what I predict to be most of our lifetimes. How pervasive in normal day life is a bigger problem for those of us who like playing the fortune teller!

Perhaps though it varies on region. While studying Japanese and Indonesian, I find it almost scary how much English they're picking up on. Japanese has many English loans, speakers in South East asia seem to like code switching to English like shakespearean poets. However, they might be part of a middle class group of intellectual youths. English seems to be firmly in place, but its role is ambiguous no doubt to most.

ceigered:Nowadays, the international community is stronger and more widespread than ever ..

You're not trying for a job as a political speechwriter, by any chance?

Por la verda revolucio, samideanoj!

CT: "Decelerate! Decelerate!"
P: "OK, accelerating!"
CT Haltu! Haltu!
P: (Brings the plane to a halt) Ve, kial vi ne uzis la internacian lingvon unue?

And all the problems are miraculously solved

Interestingly, I found a dude today who knew of Esperanto, but doesn't speak it. So clearly more Australians than I realise know of it, just finding the right ones

I started with esperanto yesterday and look:

Mi lernas rapide. Mi povas skribi per vortaro.

The days of English are counted.