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帅哥发表于 2009-1-1 17:00:37

You’ve already learned some of the “middle language” essential to the mastery of<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Chinese. Don’t fear that, because there’s a middle language, you’re being called upon to<o:p></o:p>
learn two languages to acquire just one! It’s a shortcut. The middle language is English –<o:p></o:p>
the way a Chinese person would say it if all he could do were to come up with the<o:p></o:p>
English words literally and nothing more. Thus, “Do you have my pencil?” in middle<o:p></o:p>
language is ‘You have I-belong pencil, no have?” “The man who lives in the white<o:p></o:p>
house” becomes “Live in white house-belong man.”<o:p></o:p>
I find it helpful to look for the middle language no matter what language I’m<o:p></o:p>
studying. In Russian, “The vase is on the table” becomes “Vase on table.” “Do you have<o:p></o:p>
a pen?” becomes “Is by you pen?” “I like the cake” in Spanish is “To me is pleasing the<o:p></o:p>
cake.” “Where have you studied German?” in German is “Where have you German<o:p></o:p>
studied?” “Do you want me to help?” in Yiddish is “Do you want I should help?” – a<o:p></o:p>
construction that should come as no surprise to anyone with immigrant Jewish<o:p></o:p>
grandparents.<o:p></o:p>
The middle language helps you get the hang of things. Once you see the structure as<o:p></o:p>
revealed by the middle language, it’s easier for you to climb inside the targt language.<o:p></o:p>
Learning the “interesting ways” through middle language is especially important in<o:p></o:p>
Chinese.<o:p></o:p>
Chinese has no alphabet. Each ideogram or character is complete unto itself and<o:p></o:p>
each must be learned. There are said to be as many as eighty thousand Chinese<o:p></o:p>
characters. Fear not. You can carry on fairly sophisticated conversations with knowledge<o:p></o:p>
of a few hundred characters and you can carry on like a Ming orator once you compile a<o:p></o:p>
couple of thousand. You can read a Chinese newspaper with fewer than six thousand.<o:p></o:p>
Though lacking an alphabet, Chinese nonetheless has 214 radicals, the elements that<o:p></o:p>
make up the building blocks for almost every Chinese character. The fact that there are<o:p></o:p>
clusters of Chinese characters that surrender to you by the family group makes the going<o:p></o:p>
quicker and easier.<o:p></o:p>
One problem: the pronunciation of each Chinese character is always one syllable<o:p></o:p>
and one syllable only. Therefore, the same sound has to represent a lot of different things.<o:p></o:p>
We have a slight touch of that in English – a pier has nothing to do with a peer – but<o:p></o:p>
imagine how much utterance duplication you’d have if each word in the language were<o:p></o:p>
limited to one syllable only. (Beginners who learn that the Chinese word for “chopsticks”<o:p></o:p>
is kwai dze and “bus” is gung gung chee chuh may object. I simply mean that the term for<o:p></o:p>
“chopsticks” is two separate words in Chinese and the term for “bus” is<o:p></o:p>
four!) A Chinese textbook for Americans that makes no pretense of being complete lists<o:p></o:p>
seventy-five different meanings for the sound shih alone!<o:p></o:p>
Chinese differentiates among the various possibilities of meaning by the use of<o:p></o:p>
tones. Each Chinese word is assigned a specific tone, like a musical note. Mandarin<o:p></o:p>
Chinese has four tones, Cantonese has nine.<o:p></o:p>
The word wu in Mandarin’s first tone means “room,” in tone two it means “vulgar,”<o:p></o:p>
in tone three it means “five,” and in tone four wu means “disobedient.”<o:p></o:p>
Take the sentence “Mother is scolding the horse.” The spoken Chinese transliterates<o:p></o:p>
as ma ma ma ma. If we want to make it a question and ask “Is mother scolding the<o:p></o:p>
horse?” just add a fifth ma. Without the tones a Chinese person would hear an<o:p></o:p>
unintelligible babble. With the correct tones, however, it would be as clear to him as<o:p></o:p>
“Peering at a pair of pairs on the pier” is to us.<o:p></o:p>
Ideally you should know the tone of each word and the circumstances under which<o:p></o:p>
words shifts tones, but until you attain that lofty peak, you’ll be okay if you do your best<o:p></o:p>
to imitate the tonality of the native Chinese speaker on your cassettes.<o:p></o:p>
Much is made of our ability to read the Chinese soul through the Chinese language.<o:p></o:p>
“Tomorrow” in Chinese is ming tien, which literally means “bright day.” The character<o:p></o:p>
for “good’ literally depicts woman with child, suggesting that a mother and child are<o:p></o:p>
emblematic of everything good. The character meaning “peace” depicts a woman under a<o:p></o:p>
roof. The character for “discord,” however, is three women under one roof!<o:p></o:p>
All that is indeed fun but hardly a cryptanalysis of the Chinese soul. After all, how<o:p></o:p>
much can you tell about the English soul by noting that the word breakfast really means<o:p></o:p>
“breaking” the “fast” you’ve engaged in since your last bite the night before?<o:p></o:p>
Japanese<o:p></o:p>
Like Chinese, Japanese conversation is fairly easy, but the written language is<o:p></o:p>
complicated. In wartime, America turned out interpreters in Japanese and Chinese at a<o:p></o:p>
satisfactory rate by going straight for the spoken language and ignoring the written<o:p></o:p>
language completely. You may be tempted to do the same.<o:p></o:p>
Certainly you can prioritise the ability to speak and understand over the ability to<o:p></o:p>
read and write, but I urge you to undertake serious study of the written language and<o:p></o:p>
continue steadily. If speech is to be your “hare,” let writing at least be your “tortoise.”<o:p></o:p>
Written Japanese is not as difficult as you might fear. Japanese uses several<o:p></o:p>
thousand characters borrowed from the Chinese, but it uses them in a different and more<o:p></o:p>
limited way that makes them easy to learn. The characters are used along with two<o:p></o:p>
syllabaries, sets of simple written symbols, each of which represents not one single letter<o:p></o:p>
but a complete syllable.<o:p></o:p>
Japanese has no tones to worry about, and Japanese grammar involves the learning<o:p></o:p>
of certain speech patterns more than changes in verbs, nouns, and adjectives.<o:p></o:p>
Japanese has a clarity missing from Chinese. Learn a Japanese word from your<o:p></o:p>
book or cassette and your Japanese friend will understand it at your first attempt to use it.<o:p></o:p>
The commercial advantages of learning Japanese are obvious and on the rise. But<o:p></o:p>
even if your Japanese never reaches a level of proficiency enabling you to do business in<o:p></o:p>
Japanese, your Japanese host and associates will appreciate your efforts. They, after all,<o:p></o:p>
had to learn English. You did not have to learn Japanese. Yet.<o:p></o:p>
Arabic<o:p></o:p>
Arabic is elusive, guttural, and rewarding. Arabic script, written from right to left, writes<o:p></o:p>
each letter differently depending upon whether it occurs at the beginning, the middle, or<o:p></o:p>
the end of a word. Learn it, however, and you’ll be welcome from the North Atlantic<o:p></o:p>
coast of Africa clear through the Middle East to the borders of Iran and Pakistan. Arabic<o:p></o:p>
is also the religious language studied by millions of Muslims around the world whose<o:p></o:p>
native languages are not Arabic. The Arab population of the United States is growing<o:p></o:p>
rapidly. You can hear Arabic on the streets and deal in Arabic in the shops of places like<o:p></o:p>
Dearborn, Michigan, where there is a substantial Arab population.<o:p></o:p>
Your investment in Arabic is likely to gain in value when Israel and the Arab states<o:p></o:p>
achieve a settlement allowing for commerce and development to replace a half century of<o:p></o:p>
open warfare.<o:p></o:p>

帅哥发表于 2009-1-1 17:00:55

Hebrew<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Hebrew is one of the more difficult languages, and the numerical incentives for tackling<o:p></o:p>
it are not great because Hebrew is spoken only in Israel and in small communities of<o:p></o:p>
Israelis in America and other Western countries. Until recently the teaching of Hebrew<o:p></o:p>
was illegal in the Soviet Union, but classrooms are overflowing now across the country<o:p></o:p>
as Jews prepare to emigrate to Israel or assert their Jewishness inside the Soviet Union.<o:p></o:p>
Hebrew is spoken wherever Jews worship around the world, and there is a surge of<o:p></o:p>
interest in learning Hebrew among young Americans who were born Jewish even though<o:p></o:p>
they may not have had a strong Jewish upbringing.<o:p></o:p>
If you’re not Jewish and choose to learn Hebrew anyhow, you will set loose waves<o:p></o:p>
of appreciation among Jews grateful to outsiders willing to go to that much trouble.<o:p></o:p>
Once you learn the Hebrew alphabet, you’ll be in command of virtually the same<o:p></o:p>
alphabet used by Yiddish, a language based on fifteenth century low German that was<o:p></o:p>
spoken by millions of East European Jews before Hitler’s extermination and is still<o:p></o:p>
understood in a surprising number of places. It’s also the alphabet used by Ladino, the<o:p></o:p>
“Spanish of Cervantes” that became the “Yiddish” of the Jews of Spanish origin who<o:p></o:p>
scattered throughout the eastern Mediterranean after the beginning of the Spanish<o:p></o:p>
Inquisition. There are few language thrills that can match that of an American who<o:p></o:p>
learned the Hebrew alphabet in Hebrew school looking at a printed page in a language he<o:p></o:p>
didn’t know existed (many Jews themselves are totally unaware of the existence of<o:p></o:p>
Ladino) and discovering he can read it and understand it with his high school Spanish!<o:p></o:p>
Greek<o:p></o:p>
Modern Greek has a grammar slightly less glorious than that of its ancient civilisation. In<o:p></o:p>
difficulty, Greek falls somewhere between French and Russian. Each verb has two forms<o:p></o:p>
and verbs change according to person, number, and tense. The future tense is almost as<o:p></o:p>
easy as it is in English – the word tha serving the role of our will. Adjectives agree with<o:p></o:p>
their nouns according to gender (three of them) and number.<o:p></o:p>
Greek enjoys a leftover prestige, not only from ancient times but from the not long<o:p></o:p>
vanished tradition of the scholar who prided himself on being at home in Latin and<o:p></o:p>
Ancient Greek. Every five minutes during your study of Greek you’ll be reminded of our<o:p></o:p>
debt to the Greek language. Zestos means “hot” (“zesty”), chronos means “time” or<o:p></o:p>
“year,” “number” is arithmo, when you want your cheque in a restaurant you ask for the<o:p></o:p>
logariazmo (as in “logarithm”), the Greek word for “clear” describing weather is<o:p></o:p>
katharos (as in “catharsis”), “season” is epohi (“epoch”), and so on.<o:p></o:p>
Greek may be the language of one small European country only, but there are<o:p></o:p>
thriving Greek communities throughout the Middle East, Egypt, and other parts of Africa,<o:p></o:p>
and the United States. Enterprising Greeks have carried the language around the world.<o:p></o:p>
Swedish, Danish, Norwegian<o:p></o:p>
The Scandinavian languages are lumped together because of their similarity and the<o:p></o:p>
reliability with which natives of one Scandinavian country can deal with the languages of<o:p></o:p>
the others. That similarity is something for you to know and enjoy, not something for you<o:p></o:p>
to mention to the Scandinavians themselves. They’re horrified when outsiders say, “Gee,<o:p></o:p>
Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are all alike!” They prefer to dwell upon the<o:p></o:p>
differences. There was a popular movement in Norwegian early in the twentieth century<o:p></o:p>
to change the language for no apparent reason other than to make it less like Danish.<o:p></o:p>
If your aim is to communicate in all three countries, learn Norwegian first. It’s the<o:p></o:p>
linguistic centre of Scandinavia. A Dane can deal comfortably with Norwegian, but much<o:p></o:p>
less so with Swedish. A Swede can deal comfortably with Norwegian, but much less so<o:p></o:p>
with Danish. A Norwegian can deal comfortably with both Swedish and Danish.<o:p></o:p>
The Scandinavian languages are relatively easy for Americans to learn. They’re<o:p></o:p>
Germanic languages, related to English, but vastly easier to learn than German. The verbs<o:p></o:p>
don’t change for person and number, and only slightly for tense. The word order follows<o:p></o:p>
English obligingly most of the way. Like Dutch, the Scandinavian languages have two<o:p></o:p>
genders – common and neuter – and the definite article follows the noun and becomes<o:p></o:p>
one word. (For example, “a pen” in Norwegian is en penn, “the pen” is pennen.)<o:p></o:p>
Holland is said to be the non-English speaking country with the highest percentage<o:p></o:p>
of people fluent in English. The three Scandinavian countries are close behind. You may<o:p></o:p>
never need their language no matter where you go or who you deal with in Scandinavia,<o:p></o:p>
but Scandinavians are among the most appreciative people on earth if you know their<o:p></o:p>
language anyhow.<o:p></o:p>
Polish, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian<o:p></o:p>
These western Slavic languages use the Roman alphabet. The eastern Slavic languages<o:p></o:p>
use the Cyrillic (sometimes mistakenly called the Russian) alphabet. Don’t suggest it<o:p></o:p>
after a few drinks in Warsaw, but Polish might be better off using the Cyrillic alphabet. A<o:p></o:p>
Polish sound resembling the sh combined with the following ch in push charlie is spelled<o:p></o:p>
szcz in Polish. That sound, which requires four letters in the Roman alphabet, needs only<o:p></o:p>
one in the Cyrillic! Romanising Slavic languages leads to orthographical madness. A<o:p></o:p>
newspaper reporter in a small Southern town went into his editor’s office and said,<o:p></o:p>
“There’s been an earthquake in the Polish city of Pszczyna.” He showed the editor the<o:p></o:p>
story off the wire. After a momentary frown the editor looked up and said, “Find out<o:p></o:p>
what the name of the place was before the earthquake!”<o:p></o:p>
Except for Polish, none of these languages has much bounce beyond its borders, but<o:p></o:p>
if your reason for wanting to learn them involves family, love, or business, that won’t<o:p></o:p>
matter. All Slavic languages are grammatically complex. Verbs change for reasons that<o:p></o:p>
leave even those who speak Romance languages weeping over their wine and wondering<o:p></o:p>
why. There are at least six noun cases in every Slavic language, sometimes seven.<o:p></o:p>
The big payoff in learning any of these Slavic languages is the automatic down<o:p></o:p>
payment you’re making on Russian itself. Russian will be a breeze if you already know<o:p></o:p>
another Slavic language, and conversely, the other Slavic languages will come more<o:p></o:p>
easily if you already know Russian.<o:p></o:p>
Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Ukranian,<o:p></o:p>
Byelorussian<o:p></o:p>
Everything stated above about the western Slavic languages applies to these eastern<o:p></o:p>
Slavic languages with one exception – they use the Cyrillic alphabet, with slight<o:p></o:p>
variations from language to language.<o:p></o:p>
The similarities between Serbian and Croatian, the main languages of Yugoslavia,<o:p></o:p>
are so striking the languages are usually lumped together as Serbo-Croatian.<o:p></o:p>
If you know any two Slavic languages, you can make yourself understood in any of<o:p></o:p>
the other Slavic languages. That may be challenged by Slavic scholars, but it works well<o:p></o:p>
in real life between the western border of Poland and the Ural Mountains and from the<o:p></o:p>
arctic tip of Russia to the Black Sea beaches of Bulgaria.<o:p></o:p>
Indonesian<o:p></o:p>
Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Consisting of hundreds of islands<o:p></o:p>
spread out over a South Pacific area the size of the United States, Indonesia is easily the<o:p></o:p>
largest country in the world about which the most other people in the world know the<o:p></o:p>
least. With enough mineral wealth in the ground to make it an economic superpower,<o:p></o:p>
Indonesia is still frequently confused with India or Polynesia.<o:p></o:p>
Indonesian is the easiest major language in the world for a foreigner to learn. It was<o:p></o:p>
called Pasar Malay (“Bazaar Malay”) by the colonial Dutch who looked upon the<o:p></o:p>
Indonesian language as a kind of baby talk for servants and merchants. When Indonesia<o:p></o:p>
won independence in 1948, the ruler, Sukarno, did his best to take that unstructured<o:p></o:p>
language and graft some sophisticated grammar onto it to make it more regimented and<o:p></o:p>
thus difficult. He failed.<o:p></o:p>

帅哥发表于 2009-1-1 17:01:15

Indonesian still has nothing that will be regarded as grammar by anybody who’s<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
done battle with Latin or Russian. There are suffixes and prefixes aplenty, neat and<o:p></o:p>
regular, that convert verbs into nouns and give verbs additional meanings and the like,<o:p></o:p>
but no inflections according to person, number, tense, aspect, or anything else.<o:p></o:p>
Indonesian uses the Roman alphabet and is delightfully easy to pronounce. If<o:p></o:p>
you’ve ever studied any other language, you’ll marvel at how quickly and clearly you’ll<o:p></o:p>
understand and be understood.<o:p></o:p>
Indonesian is closely related to Malayan, the language of Malaysia and Singapore,<o:p></o:p>
and gives you a head start in Tagalog, the major language of the Philippines.<o:p></o:p>
Hindi and Urdu<o:p></o:p>
The spoken languages of India and Pakistan, Hindi and Urdu, are so close that the true<o:p></o:p>
language lover is tempted to take the plunge even though both languages use different<o:p></o:p>
and, to us, unfamiliar scripts (Devanagari, and a mixture of Persian and Arabic). Though<o:p></o:p>
other languages abound on the Indian subcontinent, Hindi-Urdu united their respective<o:p></o:p>
nations and whoever jumps in (despite the current lack of good learning materials) will<o:p></o:p>
be able to communicate with a population second only to that of China.<o:p></o:p>
Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian<o:p></o:p>
Despite the grammatical complexity and the relatively small pool of native speakers, an<o:p></o:p>
occasional adventurer is drawn almost masochistically to the three Finno-Ugric<o:p></o:p>
languages. If you were the hated kid in ninth grade who stayed after algebra class to beg<o:p></o:p>
the teacher to introduce you to calculus, they might want to try one of these.<o:p></o:p>
Every word in all three languages is accented on the first syllable – every single<o:p></o:p>
word, names and all, giving those languages the sound of a pneumatic jackhammer<o:p></o:p>
breaking up a sidewalk. There are, in Finnish, fifteen noun cases in the singular and<o:p></o:p>
sixteen in the plural. Hungarian and Estonian aren’t far behind. And that’s the easy part!<o:p></o:p>
People whose language you choose to learn often ask polite questions about why<o:p></o:p>
you wanted to learn their language. Let on to a Finn, a Hungarian, or an Estonian that you<o:p></o:p>
know a little bit of their language and you will not merely be questioned. You’ll be cross<o:p></o:p>
examined!<o:p></o:p>
Swahili<o:p></o:p>
Swahili enjoyed a surge of support beginning in the late <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:chmetcnv w:st="on" TCSC="0" NumberType="1" Negative="False" HasSpace="False" SourceValue="1960" UnitName="’">1960’</st1:chmetcnv>s among young American<o:p></o:p>
blacks who wanted to reconnect to their African roots. Anyone who pressed on and<o:p></o:p>
mastered Swahili would today speak a language spoken by fifty million people living in<o:p></o:p>
central and eastern Africa, including the nations of Kenya and Tanzania in which Swahili<o:p></o:p>
is the national language. Swahili is a Bantu language, and once you learn it you can<o:p></o:p>
expect easy going when you decide to learn Kiganda, Kikamba, Kikuyu, Kinyanja,<o:p></o:p>
Kichaga, Kiluba, Kishona, Kizulu, Kikongo, and Kiduala, all of which are spoken over<o:p></o:p>
smaller areas in Africa south of the Sahara.<o:p></o:p>
Swahili uses the Roman alphabet. The Say It In Swahili phrase book advises us not<o:p></o:p>
to be discouraged by words like kitakachonisahilishia, because Swahili grammar is<o:p></o:p>
mercifully regular and logical!<o:p></o:p>
English<o:p></o:p>
The mere fact that you’re reading these words right now calls for self congratulations. It<o:p></o:p>
means you’re fluent in the winner, the international language, the number one language<o:p></o:p>
of all time!<o:p></o:p>
When a Soviet plane approaches the airport in China, the pilot and the control tower<o:p></o:p>
don’t speak Russian to each other. They don’t speak Chinese. They speak English. If an<o:p></o:p>
Italian plane is about to land in another part of Italy, the Italian pilot and the Italian traffic<o:p></o:p>
control person also speak English.<o:p></o:p>
When the Israeli general and the Egyptian general met in Sinai in October 1973 to<o:p></o:p>
talk truce in the Yom Kippur War, they didn’t speak Hebrew. They didn’t speak Arabic.<o:p></o:p>
They spoke English.<o:p></o:p>
When Norwegian whaling ships put into the port of Capetown, South Africa, to hire<o:p></o:p>
Zulu seamen, the interviewing is not done in Norwegian or Zulu. It’s done in English.<o:p></o:p>
The parliaments of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway send delegates to a body called<o:p></o:p>
the Nordic Council. Their official meetings are conducted – at great expense in<o:p></o:p>
interpreters and simultaneous interpretation equipment – in Swedish, Danish and<o:p></o:p>
Norwegian. When the meetings end, however, and the delegates from the three<o:p></o:p>
neighbouring countries adjourn to the bar and the dining room, they all start speaking<o:p></o:p>
English with each other!<o:p></o:p>
Haven’t you noticed something odd about protestors you have seen on TV<o:p></o:p>
demonstrating in Lithuania, Estonia, Korea, Iraq, Mexico, and other countries where<o:p></o:p>
neither the protestors, the ones they’re protesting against, nor the local media speak<o:p></o:p>
native English? In addition to the signs and banners in their own languages, they always<o:p></o:p>
carry signs and banners in English. And for good reason. They want their message to<o:p></o:p>
reverberate around the world.<o:p></o:p>
On a map of Africa, Nigeria seems a tiny patch where the bulge of that gigantic<o:p></o:p>
continent meets the body. Inside that patch, however, live between 100 and 120 million<o:p></o:p>
people speaking 250 different languages, with names like Yoruba, Ibo, Hausa, Nupe, and<o:p></o:p>
Oyo. From their first day of school, the children of Nigeria are taught English. Without<o:p></o:p>
English, not only could Nigeria not talk to the world, Nigerians couldn’t even talk to each<o:p></o:p>
other.<o:p></o:p>
When a Nigerian educator, Aliu Babtunde Fafunwa, proposed in early 1991 that<o:p></o:p>
Nigerian children begin their education in their 250 respective mother tongues, the<o:p></o:p>
government newspaper itself wrote in an editorial, “The least luxury we can afford in the<o:p></o:p>
last decade of the twentieth century is an idealistic experiment in linguistic nationalism<o:p></o:p>
which could cut our children off from the main current of human development.” That’s<o:p></o:p>
hardly a hate filled denunciation of former colonial masters.<o:p></o:p>
Every attempt to launch an artificial international language has so far failed.<o:p></o:p>
Esperanto, Idiom Neutral, Kosmos, Monoglottica, Universalsprache, Neo-Latine,<o:p></o:p>
Vertparl, Mundolingue, Dil, Volapuk, even an international language based on the notes<o:p></o:p>
of the musical scale, all started out weak and gradually tapered off. My guess is they<o:p></o:p>
always will. You can no more “vote” a language into being the international language<o:p></o:p>
than you can vote warmth into a blizzard.<o:p></o:p>
Languages attain prominence something the way individuals and countries do,<o:p></o:p>
through all kinds of force, including war. There’s an added element in prominence,<o:p></o:p>
however. Brute force is not enough. The winning language must have a degree of<o:p></o:p>
acceptability to the losers.<o:p></o:p>
Russian emerged from World War II as a mighty language, but it failed to bluster<o:p></o:p>
beyond the bounds of the Communist empire. Russian even failed to inspire people to<o:p></o:p>
learn it inside their empire. Students in Hungary, Romania, and East Germany knew no<o:p></o:p>
more Russian after eight years of schooling than Americans know French after similar<o:p></o:p>
exposure.<o:p></o:p>
English, on the other hand, was welcomed. Africans and Asians may not have<o:p></o:p>
rejoiced at being forcibly incorporated into the British Empire, but they recognised that<o:p></o:p>
the English language, if learned by all, was a unifying tool that enabled different tribes<o:p></o:p>
who lived five miles apart to communicate for the first time, in a language brought down<o:p></o:p>
upon them from thousands of miles away.<o:p></o:p>
A wolf will lift his neck to let a larger wolf know that he accepts the other’s<o:p></o:p>
dominant role as leader. The entire world has lifted its neck to acknowledge English as<o:p></o:p>
the language of choice in the modern world. It wasn’t all military and commercial power,<o:p></o:p>
either. American movies, songs, comic strips, TV series, even T-shirts all helped make<o:p></o:p>
English the international language of the earth by acclaim.<o:p></o:p>
But only the shortsighted will consider the dominance of English reason to return<o:p></o:p>
foreign language materials to the bookstore and forget the whole thing. It’s precisely<o:p></o:p>
because the peoples of the world honour our language that we get so much more<o:p></o:p>
appreciation when we go out of our way to honour theirs.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>

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