Re: OT: For information only !
| From: | Mark P. Line <mark@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, June 14, 2004, 21:04 |
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Philippe Caquant said:
> Well, any project whose goal is to make people
> understand each other is exciting, isn't it ?
Of course. That's what's so exciting about ESL (English as a Second
Lanaguage) programs.
> When, as a bonus, one could save some millions
> (billions?) euros in the Community budget, and thus
> maybe pay less taxes, it's even more exciting.
Pursuing universal bilingualism (or multilingualism) in English would save
even more money for the EU, since so many people already speak it as an L1
or L2. Descriptive and didactic materials are much more readily available
for English than for any other language, natural or constructed, and
there's a large infrastructure for teaching ESL (and for training ESL
teachers themselves) already in place. International economic, technical
and scientific vocabulary is already based on English. English is a
national language on every continent of the world, and according to the
Ethnologue, it is spoken in 104 countries -- making it the international
auxiliary language of choice that it is today.
-- Mark
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