Comments on: A broken arm in multicultural Queensland

By: Kerry Taylor-Leech

Kerry Taylor-Leech — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:24:30 +0000

Thanks for the good wishes Vahid & Khan. In reply to Diano, I’m no expert but it seems that although Esperanto has been around a while, it has not been widely taken up. Again, I’m no expert but I put that down to the symbolic power of languages, their strong links with identity, their core cultural values and their sociocultural capital. Of course, English has very high capital but it also comes down to effective communication. Some on this blog may call me reactionary, but I think that if one wants to study, work and live a full life in an environment where one is not a native-speaker, communicative competence in the standard form of the local language should be part of one’s repertoire. As an English-speaking patient in an English-speaking country and with a severe and painful injury, I had the right to know my doctors were competent enough to understand my symptoms and communicate clearly to me the best course of treatment. Access to care, goods, services and social justice in a language one understands is a basic human right for all but I believe it is also a duty for non-native speakers to attain minimal competence in the dominant language, regardless of the reason for that dominance. For me, what was important in my original post was the ‘lived experience’, as Khan noted, and the fact that policy contradictions threaten to cancel out important initiatives to support everyday Australian multiculturalism (and indirectly multilingualism). Best!

By: Diano

Diano — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 11:55:43 +0000

Thank you for sharing your multicultural experiences at the Queensland hospital you attended, Kerry. It was very reassuring to know that they all spoke English perfectly, but did you spare a thought for those who weren’t chosen for these jobs because their English isn’t so perfect.

I was teaching English in Japan from 2001 to 2004 and I became acquainted with many well educated Japanese Professors who had studied English for 10 years or more but still did not feel equal with English speakers.

Surely, as humanity matures and develops we must realize that a neutral international language is needed. One which doesn’t belong to any race but belongs to everyone equally. Esperanto was designed for this 125 yrs ago.

Esperanto is 5 to 10 times easier to learn than any national language. It is so easy that any trained primary teacher can teach it to completion to children during their years in primary school and at the same time the teacher learns it too. The resources enabling teachers to do this have been prepared by an Australian teacher over the past 5 yrs. They are now ready to be used.

It is very cheap too. The resources are covered at $2 per child per year, in classes of 20 over 5 years.
Go to http://www.mondeto.com to see more about this.

We need this information to go “viral” and circle the world by internet so that the ordinary people can influence their education bodies and governments to bring this International Language into their schools.

Hopefully,

Diano

By: khan

khan — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:55:42 +0000

Great post. The rhetorics on the policy document and the challenges of the lived experiences; the stated and the implemented model of multicultural and multiethnic langauge policy at work place. The post brings out these tensions very clearly.
I wish you a speedy recovery.
Khan

By: vahid

vahid — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:19:42 +0000

A very well-written, insightful, and informative post, indeed.
Thank’s for sharing.