Thursday, June 02, 2005, 15:46 GMT
I take on board all your comments friends...all really valid. I think like JOAN that JAVIER just typed the wrong word by mistake and meant to put "white". I guess it's right that a knowledge of English is increasingly necessary....maybe even essential as opposed to advantageous...when applying for jobs of all kinds, especially "white collar "as JAVIER said.
I don't know about other countries but here in the UK it's becoming more and more essential to have at the very least minimum qualifications for even the most basic and mundane of jobs. The latest being the "dinner ladies" in British school whose job is primarily is to dish out the food to the kids/students in the school/college canteens/cafeterias. They now have to pass exams to qualify them to put the food on the kid's plates. Cheers Jamie! :-)
Maybe I over-reacted a wee bit but I just sensed some resentment at the ascendancy of the English Language internationally. My natural reaction was to think: "Well, nobody's twisting their arms to learn English surely!" Now from what JAVIER says in a way they are, if not overtly...as ever it's all economics, politics, commercial market forces and all the rest of it. The fact that the world's prime economic and military power...the USA...is English speaking (although not officially, which seems bizarre) adds huge impetus to the rise of English as the global "lingua franca".
However, this thread is centred on Europe...and the EU. It just so happens that English has apparently become an easy fallback Language among groups of nations unfamiliar with each other's Languages. I know that when groups of tourists from various nationalities get into friendly conversation with each other at whatever tourist attraction here in Edinburgh...say eg Spaniards chatting with Danes..then invariably they use English! It's a fact of life now. It's just happened that way, and it's a shame if people are using English with a feeling of resentment.
In Europe the English speaking nations...the UK and Ireland....are on the very periphery of Europe......go offshore to the west and you fall right off the edge of Europe into the watery Kingdom of Atlantis. Yet that peripheral English Language seems to be the very means of convenient expediency. The country right at the heart of Europe is Germany...geographically central....so to be logical you would think German could be considered as the Language to be used in the way English seems to be right now.
I don't know about other countries but here in the UK it's becoming more and more essential to have at the very least minimum qualifications for even the most basic and mundane of jobs. The latest being the "dinner ladies" in British school whose job is primarily is to dish out the food to the kids/students in the school/college canteens/cafeterias. They now have to pass exams to qualify them to put the food on the kid's plates. Cheers Jamie! :-)
Maybe I over-reacted a wee bit but I just sensed some resentment at the ascendancy of the English Language internationally. My natural reaction was to think: "Well, nobody's twisting their arms to learn English surely!" Now from what JAVIER says in a way they are, if not overtly...as ever it's all economics, politics, commercial market forces and all the rest of it. The fact that the world's prime economic and military power...the USA...is English speaking (although not officially, which seems bizarre) adds huge impetus to the rise of English as the global "lingua franca".
However, this thread is centred on Europe...and the EU. It just so happens that English has apparently become an easy fallback Language among groups of nations unfamiliar with each other's Languages. I know that when groups of tourists from various nationalities get into friendly conversation with each other at whatever tourist attraction here in Edinburgh...say eg Spaniards chatting with Danes..then invariably they use English! It's a fact of life now. It's just happened that way, and it's a shame if people are using English with a feeling of resentment.
In Europe the English speaking nations...the UK and Ireland....are on the very periphery of Europe......go offshore to the west and you fall right off the edge of Europe into the watery Kingdom of Atlantis. Yet that peripheral English Language seems to be the very means of convenient expediency. The country right at the heart of Europe is Germany...geographically central....so to be logical you would think German could be considered as the Language to be used in the way English seems to be right now.