[Foundation-l] The problem with native languages vs. the lingua franca

[Amir E. Aharoni]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 13:38, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/world/asia/10iht-malay.html
>
> The Malaysian government has declared that science instruction will be
> conducted in Bahasa rather than English. Parents, teachers and
> professors are very unhappy because "English is the language of
> science."

It depends on the balance of the public's desires and the powers that be.

In the past Mahathir Mohammad has made very unpleasant comments about
my country, and it is even less pleasant to me to read about his
uneducated attitude towards the language of his own country.

I am not quite sure that *all* Malay parents, teachers and professors
are very unhappy. The natural condition of any person around the world
is to prefer their own language and to the best of my knowledge,
there's nothing inherent in the Malay language that makes it less
useful than English for teaching math (there could be - see
[[Piraha]]). English can and should be taught separately as a foreign
language, simply because it is, indeed, a useful lingua franca around
the world, but all local languages should be equally respected and
promoted among their speakers.

The article [[Technion]] in en.wp very briefly mentions the "language
war" that occurred when the Institute of Technology in Haifa was
opened in 1912. It deserves a full article, but until i write it,
here's what basically happened: The German philanthropists who
contributed money to the Technion and most of the teachers wanted to
use German in the classroom, while public figures and educators from
among the Jews who lived in Palestine then wanted the language of the
instruction to be Hebrew. Despite the importance of German in exact
sciences and engineering at the time, Hebrew eventually won thanks to
the public pressure and Hebrew language experts of the time worked to
adopt the language to be used in teaching modern science by inventing
new words for the lacking terminology and writing basic textbooks.

Almost a hundred years later: Technion is a respected higher education
institution. Hebrew is still the only language used in the classroom
there (except in lectures by foreign guests). Most textbooks are in
English, though, because few people bothered to translate them, but
that's not a big problem, as the level of English around Israel is
pretty good. It could be better, but i strongly doubt that teaching
math in English in high school would improve it.

Wikimedia projects provide a good platform for developing local
languages, although apparently only vigorous volunteers actually build
Wikipedia's and Wikibooks in their languages. Sakha is a lovely
example of a language project on WMF platform - it develops slowly,
but surely, simply because the people behind it are true enthusiasts
of their language. The interesting point is that the lingua franca
used in their discussions is Russian, and one of the frequent topics
is when to use Russian terminology in Sakha texts and when to use
Sakha neologisms. The discussions themselves are very serious, and
their very existence show a good deal of health of that small, but
vibrant community.

-- 
אמיר אלישע אהרוני
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore