Thank you, Dilys! So glad this conflicting response struck a chord – there are 2 sides to every story …

Thanks, Jaehoon! Good point that different people have different language needs and a resilient society should cultivate many diverse language resources!

Thanks, Yeon! I’m so glad to hear what you take away from the unit and good luck with fostering your students’ love of language learning and communication!

According to statistics in South Korea, foreigners living in Korea accounted for around 3.3% in 2020. It is still increasing, expecting to be categorised as a multicultural country in the near future, in which 5% of foreigners living in the country take up the population of the country according to OECD. As a result, the proportion of foreigners in Korea will rapidly become higher as the number of native Koreans is declining. Indeed, you can easily notice that there are now many foreigners in the streets with various races and nationalities including travellers.

Although English, Chinese, and Japanese are still dominant foreign languages for Korean to prefer to learn, the necessity of learning other languages such as Vietnamese and Thai are increasing for the purposes of business and communication for settlement. There is no doubt that English is the strongest language in terms of the amount used and compatibility, but as this article said, we can select our second language to learn according to our own future and needs. Following this trend to be multicultural or multilingual, we need to consider and decide on what language can positively affect my life.

In week 9 we learned about the benefits of multilingualism. It was extremely fascinating to learn that bilingualism not only provides economic benefits, which is rather straightforward, but also has such a significant positive impact on our cognitive abilities and mental health. The fact that bilingualism seems to delay the onset of dementia is an astonishing and groundbreaking finding in the research of brain disorders. It does make absolute sense since as we discussed, the brain is operating at a much higher capacity on a daily basis, which makes it more trained and resistant to some disorders. It will be interesting to follow further research in this field. It would be interesting to find out whether more languages mean even less risk or a longer delay in the onset of certain disorders.
This fact makes me even more grateful for receiving the opportunity and overcoming the challenges of learning a second language at a very early age. It was a long and difficult journey, and I am very proud of the position I find myself in now.

Your comment provides me with some good food for thought. As I observe, a large number of people in Hai Phong work in Chinese manufacturing companies, and a lot go to evening classes to learn Chinese, which is required for a better paid positions in such companies. Meanwhile, a myriad of my friends abandon English right after high school to switch to the more practical Chinese. There were 48 students in my class at high school. All of us studied English for more than 10 years from primary schools. However, surprisingly, half the class have already or are turning to Chinese now, and I am the only one who still use English on a regular basis. Therefore, I assume that Chinese is in greater demand in my city now, although more extensive data should be collected for a more precise conclusion on the popularity of English and Chinese language demand in Hai Phong.

Thanks, Mazhar, for sharing this worth-considering situation. I think that it’s similar to the Vietnamese context where children are sent to private or international schools to learn everything in English from kindergarten. You reminded me of a serious fact that some children are unable to use their native language even though they live in their home country and many people still use it. Looking back to 10 years ago when Cambridge and Oxford curriculums started to gain a wide recognition in Vietnam as the standard for education, many parents who belong to the high-income bracket spent a lot of money to send their children to international schools offering those curriculum. Now, those parents realise how hard it is for their children to “integrate” in their home country as they cannot communicate in their first language. Those children are gradually isolated as others find it hard to talk to them. For that reason, those children are brought back to public school and they need to spend much time learning their first language. It is weird but it happened in my country, Vietnam.
I used to teach in an international school in Vietnam and I could see the real problem for our educational system when the curriculum is directly applied without modification to fit our context. If it continues to happen, I’m afraid that the next generations of my country can lose our values and traditions, which are mostly reflected in our language.

Hi, thank you for sharing your point of view. Your comment mentioned fake IELTS certificates and poor-quality teaching in some English centers due to the fast-developing English trend. Actually, I used to think about this topic, and I think the government can consider teaching IELTS in high schools due to the high demand of high school students. This method might help decrease the number of students paying for wrong and poor-quality centers. However, the requirement for English teachers will be higher because they need to gain particular scores in IELTS that are enough to teach students. This method might create a pandemic in teaching society because a huge amount of current teachers and students in teaching English major will race to take the IELTS exam. However, in the long term, this might be not only effective and beneficial for students but also drop the amount of low and fake-quality teachers. Besides, the educational minister can enact a law related to controlling as well as checking degrees of teachers in English centers, and students should ask to check teachers’ degrees before taking the course.

Thank you for your insightful response. This has opened my eyes to the stunning sociolinguistic parallels that exist between Switzerland and the United States that I didn’t fully realize before, since it appears that both countries battle with the consequences of multilingualism within their borders. In the United States, there has been a significant increase in nativist feeling, which considers English as an integral aspect of American identity, often to the point of marginalizing other languages and their speakers. This problem is shown by incidents in which Spanish-speaking persons are verbally attacked for not utilizing English in public places.

This represents a monolingual language ideology that sees linguistic variety as a danger to national cohesiveness, similar to the elder doctor’s reluctance in Switzerland. Similarly to how the elder generation in Switzerland may feel a feeling of loss or dilution of traditional culture as a result of the entrance of English, many Americans see the rising importance of Spanish or other languages as a compromise of American ideals and identity.

Linguistic conduct is a political activity that relates to bigger arguments about cultural legacy, national identity, and societal change in both situations. This is worsened in the United States by a highly polarized political atmosphere in which language has become another battlefield in the cultural wars. This often-unspoken conflict functions as a microcosm of bigger social and political beliefs in both countries.

The distinction is seen in how these countries have institutionalized their own languages. Despite the elder generation’s opposition, Switzerland has a level of official multilingualism. Although English is de facto the language of administration and public discourse in the United States, it is not legally established as the official language, allowing for regional linguistic variety.

I believe there is a cultural backlash to globalization among older generations and the less educated, which contributes to rising nativism in the United States and the generational linguistic divide in Switzerland, both of which highlight the complexities of managing multilingual societies in an increasingly interconnected world. These tensions highlight not just the pragmatics of language usage, but also the deeply embedded beliefs that individuals associate with the languages they use.

Dear Jaeoon Kim,
your comment really extended my thinking about the relationships of languages! For example did you mention the essential qualification of English. While reflecting on this, I think it puts a lot of pressure on so many non-native speakers, while first-language English speakers are never confronted with these struggles!
Despite the inequality, heterogenic language knowledge comes also with advantages and made me think of what the addressed mentioned emerging value of other languages could mean in regard to my country and its educational system.
As we should also embrace other languages, we could make more use of language similarities.
As it is probably the case in the Japanese Korean language relation, the ease of similar language learning situations can give students relative quick successes and can positively influence their self-confidence.

Recently, I have been in contact with a lot of Norwegian exchange students and we found out about the language similarities towards the German language.
Taking new steps in language learning could inspire the German school system to use new strategies, for example through the promotion of language learning of nearby languages like Norwegian, which could also be diversely helpful, like for the job market as you mentioned.

Thanks, Sharmaine, for sharing about the Indigenous people of Mindanao! Maybe a presentation topic?

By the way, I’d like to share about an Indigenous community in my hometown in the Philippines, the TAGAKAOLO tribe. It is one of the indigenous groups that contribute to the cultural mosaic of the Philippines. They are a unique community with their own distinct customs, traditions, and way of life and are known for weaving, embroidery, loom weaving, blanket weaving, headdresses, and beaded necklaces. Language is a vital thread that connects the TAGAKAOLO tribe to their ancestral wisdom. Their language, Kaolo, serves as a vessel for the accumulated knowledge, stories, and insights of their people.

Thanks a lot for your comment on my post! I was familiar with the Arabic influences, but somehow the link between the importance of the spending behaviour and the spread of language in a certain area, like Munich, didn’t come to my mind. Somehow it makes sense to me due to the system we live in.