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."

Comments

Indonesian, Korean and french

[Eunuchswear]

French is an asian language now?

(And why no capital for the poor old frogs?)

Re:Indonesian, Korean and french

[benjfowler]

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.

Re:Indonesian, Korean and french

[GerryHattrick]

My work colleague had rudimentary Mandarin. Whenever we had an official Chinese delegation in London, she would help me in the Boardroom. They were hugely delighted with her greetings, and the meetings became much more sociable. I was amazed that Chinese/Brit subtle humour had much in common, too. Of course we had a professional interpreter also on the team, but do NOT underrate the value of effort to learn some sounds in Mandarin, and (never mind the business) to laugh along with your ancient-world counterparts.

Re:Indonesian, Korean and french

[ShanghaiBill]

you would still not be accepted by native Chinese, because you're not one of them.

I can speak and read Chinese, and it is indeed a very difficult language. But you are wrong about cultural acceptance. Chinese people are very welcoming, and will be delighted and helpful if you make an effort to speak even a little of their language. China is a multicultural and multilingual country, and even some Chinese people speak Mandarin poorly, so they have flexible expectations about fluency. This is in contrast to Japan, which is like France, where they expect you to speak their language perfectly or not at all, and even then, will never accept you as one of their own.

Learning is great

[Uber Banker]

the opportunity for every schoolchild to learn one of four "priority" languages- Chinese, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian.

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.

Re:Learning is great

[Chrisq]

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

If you were dealing with workers on a factory floor, even skilled ones, your experience would be different

Re:Learning is great

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.

Re:Learning is great

[Millennium]

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).

Re:Won't do much good

[jellomizer]

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.

English...

[MaWeiTao]

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.

Re:English...

[pla]

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.

First - I appreciate the value of knowing a second language. I don't mean this as a "speak English or die" rant...

But learning a second language while living in the US counts as a complete and utter waste of time. If you don't use a language, you lose it, simple as that - Personally, I took seven years of French in school, starting from a young age (2nd grade), and I can just barely read it, painfully slow. Despite having wasted somewhere on the order of thousands of hours of instructional time cramming that language into my head, I have very nearly no ability whatsoever to carry on a conversation with someone who only speaks French.

Now, if you live in an area (even in the US) that has a large Spanish-speaking population - Perhaps you can use it enough that it will "stick". If you live in Europe, where they have multiple languages spoken regularly, a second or even third language makes functional sense. If you live somewhere that doesn't speak English (and again, I don't mean this as a pro-English screed), it makes sense to learn English as a second language, as the lingua Franca of international business (and yes, I appreciate the irony of that phrase).

Australia will have the exact same problem we have in the US. They can mandate kids pass a proficiency test, but three years after highschool, it will have made no difference in the number of languages known.

Re:English...

[0xdeadbeef]

They can mandate kids pass a proficiency test, but three years after highschool, it will have made no difference

So, it is just like biology and physics and math beyond first year algebra.

The point is it does make a difference, for they are better for having learned it, because basic concepts aren't forgotten and they will be that much less ignorant (and provincial), and some of the kids will make use of what they learn, thus advancing their country's interests in international trade.

Re:English...

[thoth]

The Japanese language does have tone accents which do distinguish meanings. Although context will sort things out in all but extreme cases, improper tone is one of the primary markers of a non-native speaker. Perhaps Japanese grammar is complicated compared with Chinese or Korean (I wouldn't know) it is certainly far more regular (ie easier) than European languages (like English.) Now the writing system on the other hand...

All in all, it probably takes the same amount of effort to learn either eg English or Japanese as a second-language.

No. You need to study/speak a language like Mandarin to really appreciate that tones are fundamentally different that merely pronouncing vowels differently or having an accent or conveying mood (occasionally). English speakers might pronounce 'tomato' differently between the US and UK, might raise their voices at the end when angry or yelling, Japanese might "swallow" a trailing -u, everyone might have a regional accent that pronounces words "funny" compared to elsewhere, but none of that is tonal in the sense that Mandarin is a tonal language.

In Mandarin, tones are part of the correct pronunciation of a word. Different tone = different word. As in "shi" with a rising tone can mean "10" and "shi" with a falling tone can mean "vision" and "shi" with a neutral tone can mean "poem". Japanese and English are not like this.

Yes, somebody with a US southern drawl may pronounce ten, the number, close to tan, the color, but that's a regional access a not a tone. Somebody emphasizing a syllable or raising the voice (mad or asking a question) is also not a tone - it is not part of the correct pronunciation of the word.

Japanese grammar is more complicated that English or Mandarin in a few ways (I don't know about Korean, I never studied that language), but at the same time it is highly regular. One example is verb/adjective conjugation. In English, if a car is red or was red, the adjective "red" stays the same, present or past tense. Similarly, in Mandarin, the chejì would be hóng, same word form. In Japanese, the kuruma would be akai or akakatta (or akakunai or akakunakatta to complete the conjugations). On the other hand, there are basically 2 kinds of adjectives in Japanese (-i and -na) and they follow fairly regular patterns with only a handful of exceptions.

English is complicated because so many words have multiple meanings, wildly different (spring as coiled metal, a season of the year, jumping) so almost everything requires context to decode, it is highly idiomatic, has a large number of exceptions to almost any grammar rule from conjugations to pluralizing and so on, pronunciation is a crap shoot with general rules about sounds and again as many exceptions as their are rules. One thing about Japanese and Mandarin is the pronunciation is consistent (and you start by studying pinyin or hiragana/katakana) even if it is difficult.

Re:Exactly Backwards

[donscarletti]

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.

Re:Exactly Backwards

[Kjella]

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.

Re:Exactly Backwards

[smash]

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.