LL-L "Language politics" 2012.05.16 (03) [EN]

[Lowlands-L]

=====================================================
 L O W L A N D S - L - 16 May 2012 - Volume 03
lowlands.list at gmail.com - http://lowlands-l.net/
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Archive: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
=====================================================


From: M.-L. Lessing marless at gmx.de <hannehinz at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2012.05.16 (01) [EN]

Dear Sandy, my spontaneous reaction was "Oh dear no!", and after reading
the article, it's the same reaction. Extremely frustrating. This is bad for
Italian, bad for English, bad for science and bad for people. It's another
step towards reducing diversity in the world and establishing a crippeld
English as lingua franca. And why the heck shouldn't people who want to
study in Italy learn Italian?! Is it considered a waste of time?!
Inefficient, inexpedient, obsolete? Because in truth, there is money behind
this decision. Is life only there to polish your eligibility for
multinational companies?! Who wants to live in such a world???? Where
Italian spoken in Italy is nothing but a nuisance!!!

I guess we will have more of this in the future. Every little cultural
extra that doesn't pay off is erased. Who thought Globalization meant
having all sorts of people communicate? It seems it means having only one
sort of people after all, and they not really communicating -- in their
500-words-minimal-grammar-English.

Angry greetings

Marlou

----------

From: Andy Eagle andy at scots-online.org
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2012.05.16 (01) [EN]

Sandy  wrote:

>Article on an Italian university adopting English as its official language:

>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17958520

>I haven't really decided what I think about that yet!

Mainly seems to be about operating as an institution in a global
marketplace where English is the lingua franca. No one seems to be
suggesting that Italians abandon Italian and adopt English in order to get
on in life, or that teaching Italian in schools will hold pupils back and
disadvantage them... multilingualism seems to be the flavour of the day.

Andy Eagle

**
=========================================================
Send posting submissions to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to
listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands.list at gmail.com
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html .
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=118916521473498
==========================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20120516/20262b0b/attachment.htm>