Teaching Comparative

Multi-lingual communication

Languages pose a difficulty that comes with multi-national communication. (This is even true within a country like Nigeria.)

How do people adjust their institutions and procedures to accommodate the nationalism and the politics of multi-national government? You might ask your students to compare what the EU is doing with what Nigeria does.

The EU now has 20 official languages. The New York Times reported recently that 3 more languages are about to become official.

Soon, Europe Will Speak in 23 Tongues

"At the European Union's daily news conference recently, the names of the 20 languages into which questions and answers would be translated shone in red lights on an elevated board, like the departure information for flights to exotic places. At the top, the mundane English, French and German; at the bottom, Lithuanian, Hungarian and Slovenian.

"As the union has grown, so, too, has the number of its official languages. One side effect is that English is emerging increasingly as the union’s lingua franca, much to the chagrin of the French, once the guardians of the group’s foremost tongue...

"The French are not taking the spread of English lying down. For one thing, they obtained a commitment several years ago that all European Union officials in Brussels must be fluent in at least two languages other than their mother tongue, on the assumption, usually correct, that the first will be English and the second French. They have also begun offering a program of free French classes for union officials in Brussels and for more senior bureaucrats at Avignon, in the sunny south of France...

"The French emphasis on the right to one’s own language echoes throughout the European Union, and it does not make life easy..."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:56 AM