Slashdot Mirror
Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government came a step closer to formalising its plans to make Asian language study compulsory for schools this week. It has released a draft curriculum for public consultation which reveals plans to include Indonesian, Korean and french language in the curriculum. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard publicly stated in September 2012 that in response to the "staggering growth" in the region, the government would be instigating 25 key measures to strengthen and exploit links with Asia. The plan includes the requirement that one third of civil servants and company directors have a "deep knowledge," thousands of scholarships for Asian students, and the opportunity for every schoolchild to learn one of four "priority" languages- Chinese, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian."
Of course English is the primary language in Australia. But your comment is in fact what is backwards. The modern world conducts more and more business in Chinese. It is a good idea to have knowledge of Chinese.
Learning is surely great in all forms.
. . . plus by learning the language . . . you also learn the culture. And be able to understand it better. That makes real business sense.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I was very surprised when I ran into French speakers while working in a supermarket in Surfers Paradise. There are quite a few French speakers around the Pacific Rim, and French isn't as useless as one would be lead to think.
Abram de Swaan identified a list of twelve "supercentral languages" that he believed serve as extremely common bridges among speakers of different languages in their native dialects. If one considers the region that people in English-speaking countries typically think of as "Asia," four of the supercentral languages are native to that region: Chinese (specifically Mandarin), Hindi, Malay (of which Indonesian is a dialect), and Japanese. This list was probably a strong factor when they were deciding which languages to use.
Geographically speaking, there are actually two other languages on the list that are native to the Asian continent: Arabic and Russian. I doubt, however, that the people drawing up these lists considered the regions these languages are from to be "real Asia." Make of that what you will.
(Incidentally, the other six languages are English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swahili).
Australia's balance of trade with China is extremely positive at the moment. China buys almost twice as much Australian stuff as Australia buys Chinese stuff, as opposed to trade with the US which is 3-1 in the red. So, hao hao xuexi ba.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem