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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."
French is an asian language now?
(And why no capital for the poor old frogs?)
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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. But I am confused why Hindi is a 'priority language'. Every corporate senior person I've met from India - Director type level - not only speaks several Indian languages, but also has flawless English in terms of grammar and vocabulary mixed with a somewhat local accent depending on where they're from in India, unless, as an in-joke among Indian colleagues goes, they're walked past the US Embassy and are suddenly embroiled with a thick US accent.
Chinese, for dealing with anyone outside the BPO / ITO / major trade companies: government, state owned and specialists yes.
Japanese, things in Japan tend to happen in Japanese despite the speaker's English ability, whatever the industry, so yes.
Indonesian, honestly have no experience.
But Hindi. Seems odd to be a priority.
I currently live in South East Asia (born European), and the economic dynamism is remarkable. It is a good idea to prepare young people to "the century of Asia". I wish that I had started learning Mandarin and Japanese earlier in life.
Well it is a step in the right direction. If you look at a globe Australia south of Far East Asia.
Sure they can do business with the Yanks and the Brits, but they are missing their closest neighbors.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Interestingly, throughout Asia English is taught in schools. In Taiwan it's become a mandatory part of the curriculum, and that may also be the case elsewhere. When it's not, many parents go out of their ways to get their kids to learn the language.
In the US, however, a second language seems to be selected based on whatever the prevailing language spoken by the dominant ethnic group in the area. And that's assuming they offer a second language at all. More often than not the language ends up being Spanish, which all too frequently becomes more of a service to ESL students than value to anyone else.
I find that to be a persistent problem with the American educational system, there's no goal and thinking is often too insular. The difference between systems is that overseas they're trying to make people competitive internationally but still expecting their citizens speak the official language. Meanwhile, Americans, instead of stressing the importance of English for success keep making accommodations for non-speakers.
I suppose someday the US might become a Spanish speaking nation, and that's totally fine. But we're far from that reality and currently Asian nations are economically dominant and on the rise. Of course, it's not feasible to keep switching languages every time some new nation rises in influence, which is why we've got English as the standard and why everyone continues to learn that.
Agreed. The language du jour is just that -- a fad.
When I was going through school in Australia (and experiencing it's utterly stupid and incoherent foreign-language system), the fad went from French and German, to Japanese, to Indonesian to Chinese. Education types have just as many dumb, pointless industry fads as IT.
Pick one useful language and stick with it. And try and have the system reformed to support that.
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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.
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English is the first language. The whole article was about secondary languages. Your comment smacks of someone who doesn't get outside of English speaking countries very often. While you can find English in other countries, Australia, being closer to Asia geographically, it makes sense for them to learn Asian languages. In European countries, students normally learn a second language most likely another European language. Like the Dutch who learn up to four languages as they live in the middle of four countries.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
English is used worldwide when conducting business between two people with otherwise dissimilar language, but Chinese is still mostly limited to conducting business with China.
This. Before, people were mostly concerned with learning the language of the bordering countries because that's what was most useful. Today people have the Internet and want/need a global language of communication. While this graphic is also in many ways biased, English in the World shows most of the world has English as their first foreign language. That trend is only going to grow stronger because there are huge network effects at play here. While the US may be seeing a big influx of Spanish, here in Europe the trend is opposite - few people learn Spanish and the Spaniards learn more and more English. And I don't think it has any traction in Africa, Asia or Oceania.
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As a parent who desperately wants his children to become fluent in at least two languages I am stuck with horrible choices because I live in America. I have cobbled together language training for my two older sons while they were young enough to learn but it was extremely difficult. Now, to get an immersion Chinese program for him, I am using school of choice to send my youngest to an inner city school where they are so poor that they just fired all of the elementary school art, music, and PE teachers to close a budget gap. When will we make education a priority in this country?
Have you ever been in a business meeting with people who speak another language? Have you seen them confer amongst themselves, in your presence in said language? I haven't, but my ex has - and they didn't know that one of the english speakers actually knew French. The conversation that they thought was private was quite revealing, to say the least.
Knowledge is power. That very much includes knowing how to communicate.
Remaining wilfully ignorant of the language spoken by those you trade or otherwise conduct business with is pretty fucking foolish, irrespective of whatever "standard" language there may be.
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In today's world economy, you could be doing business with a French speaker today, a Spanish speaker tomorrow, a Hindii speaker next week and a Russian speaker the week after. If nothing else, it's pretty impractical to learn every language in the world when English is already fairly standard. Sure, it helps if you're moving into a new market but then you'll probably at least have locals on your team to help smooth things along.
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.
The stuff that China buys from Australia are mostly natural resources.
And by useful, that means whichever language group has girls you think are the hottest, learn that one.
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Well it is a step in the right direction.
I agree, but I wish they'd learn proper English first.
WHOOSH. You completely missed the point. It's certainly not impractical for the average computer geek to learn about fifteen different programming languages, why should it be impractical for the average business person to learn one or two spoken languages other than the native one? We all know that language shapes the way we understand the world, therefore it follows that understanding a second language leads to a greater understanding of the world. It doesn't matter that English is predominant, you'll still come off as elitist by saying that English is all you need. Eventually, there may be another language that takes predominance, and those elitists who failed to learn a second language will be at a severe disadvantage.
Crimey
For work I travel a lot and I can assure you in business some other language than English can often be the difference between success and failure.
And as someone else here already stated overhearing the off-line chatter between business partners can be quite revealing, even when your command of the language is not so very good.
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Well it is a step in the right direction. If you look at a globe Australia south of Far East Asia. Sure they can do business with the Yanks and the Brits, but they are missing their closest neighbors.
No it's ok - we talk English in New Zealand too.
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Indonesian, German and French have been mandatory parts of the Australian languages other than English syllabus since I was in high school 16 years ago.
Shifting the focus to more useful languages (IE those spoken in China) can only be a good thing for our future as a nation.
Have you actually tried that? Even if there are no language problems, cultural differences are going to be a wellspring of headaches for a long time to come. The world isn't nearly as small as some people believe.
Can't speak for the GP, but yes - I have tried it, and it's fairly common to do in international companies within Europe.
I work for the European HQ (based in Germany) of a large multinational with a Japanese parent company. On a daily basis, I deal with at least 3 or 4 different EU cultures plus Japanese culture. At least once every couple of weeks, I deal with India. Generally a few times a month, there'll be something I need to deal with in North Africa, Middle East, or Russia.
Yep, there's a lot of cultural differences, but the other side of the coin to remember is that most people in these situations are forgiving of cultural mistakes. They are aware that they and you are probably not 100% familiar with each others' cultures and there's a mutual understanding to politely ignore cultural faux pas.
Linguistically by the way, I speak around 5 languages with varying degrees of proficiency, or up to 15 if you count languages where I know some, but couldn't really talk to someone about any particular topic. Nevertheless, the people commenting that English tends to be the language used are quite right - it's our official language for business in my company (despite being, as said, based in Germany) and if I see a Frenchman and a Russian talking to each other, I'd put pretty high odds they'll be speaking English to each other. I personally even speak German at home with my wife, but English to my German colleagues at work...
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