Maldives is using English as the Lingua franca, primarily in conducting our international business and our cultural, political and diplomatic exchanges.
Because of the influence of the British empire, the English language has spread across the world, making it a global language widely used in communications, science, business, aviation, and entertainment.
While English is not an official language in many countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a second language around the world. Some linguists believe that it is no longer the exclusive cultural sign of "native English speakers", but is rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it continues to grow.
With a population of 3.89 million living on a small island of 640 square kilometers, about 3.5 times of the size of Washington DC, Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world.
After its independence in 1965 from the British, Singapore decided very early on to make the three native languages, Chinese, Malay and Tamil as official languages, and use English as the working language so that no race would have an advantage. All four languages are official and equal. Singapore needed to develop and promote international commerce for its survival. So the English language became critical to its success.
The status of English as a country's official language does not necessarily correlate with the number of English-speakers in that country.
When we look at our neighbour and emerging Asian superpower India, we find India, with a population of 1.1 billion, has fewer than 200,000 native speakers of English and approximately 100 million second-language English speakers (who form less than 10% of its population).
India's linguistic picture is complex. According to the Constitution of India, "Hindi in the Devanagari script" is the official language of the union and English the 'subsidiary official language'; however, English is mandated for the authoritative texts of all federal laws and Supreme Court decisions, and (along with Hindi) is one of the two languages of the Indian Parliament.
In Maldives, the rich have perpetuated an elite upper class leaving the poor to perpetuate an underclass. This situation creates intractable problems for society like abuse of drugs, poor discipline in schools, and emerging gangsters which we are seeing all around.
We have to find a way to empower our kids with the skills that can help them earn a decent living and stay out of trouble. Once they see that there is a better way, they would move away from drugs and from aimlessly roaming around without contributing to the good of society.
If English becomes the working language, that can open up more opportunities for our people. A class gap between those educated in English and able to take advantage of business opportunities through globalisation and others who are not fluent in English is increasing.
Since we do not have politicians with the Midas touch to solve our problems, we have to do it ourselves by educating our children and empowering our younger generation. Our government will have to spend the money on education and improve teaching of the English language to facilitate our people to communicate effectively in a globalised world just like it is doing for the infrastructure development in Hulumale'.
Without going for the nationalistic drum beat as we did when we reversed Divehi Latin writing script, let us do what will practically benefit our people. Let us urge the political parties to include 'English as our working language in addition to Divehi as the official language' as a political campaign issue for the next election so that the people can accept or reject it.
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6 comments:
I am in complete agreement that this is the practical way forward. There was a time when our educated bureaucrats went as far as proposing to have a Dhivehi medium education for the atoll schools, not too long ago.
The problem is we don't have visionary leaders in our midst.
How can we encourage such people to come into the decision making arena and engage themselves with the decision making process at this crucial time? That is my question. I have no answer.
I support your proposition. What bothers me most is that Dhivehi is a crippled language and the amount of literature we have in Dhivehi is simply shameful yet few seems to be willing to admit this fact.
The intellectual material ( scientific, philosophical, factual/non-fiction) in Dhivehi seems so minute and lags behind decades (even centuries). How is a person to make a rational and sensible decision if he/she is ignorant of the realities in the contemporary world and ignorant of basic history and science?! Sadly, the general Maldivian remains robbed of this privilege for now...
I support this wholeheartedly. What do we do now to move this discussion forward?
Hi Yasir
I think we need to find a lobbying group or institutions like NGOs, Chamber of Commerce, MATI to take the lead and influencial individuals including top govt. officials willing to sign on so that a convincing proposal can be sent to the political parties, government and to the members of the parliament. The idea can only take off when we get people with clout to back it.
It will involve some organisational work like communication, reaching out to the kind of persons who can put their weight behind the proposal.
What's your opinion as the best way to go forward and who could volunteer pursuing this objective from Male'?
It can only get done with
political will.
What is so different now from having English as a working language so to say?
We don't have literature, yes, because we didn’t write them... who do you expect to write them?
In a world every nation wants to differ and be unique why would we want leave few uniqueness that we he been blessed with.
I don't think my kids will speak less English or better English depending on whether we make it a working language or not.
Yes, if we teach better English, they will speak better. The present 12 year generation are better English spoken than myself at that age.
Why don't we make all primary schools nation wide Dhivehi medium and change English language teaching more modern and better? Developed world's developed psychologists thinks that children taught in native language are more brainy.
I beg to differ, I am sorry. With every interaction with developed world and people there I find them very nationalistic reserving and protecting all they can language or anything else..
Yes, we from developing world obsessively fancy globalization which no developed nation considers unless it works for them?
Do you want your kids to be smarter or sound smarter?
Hi Shahuru
Thanks for your opinion.
I think it will be futile for us to debate how brainy our children will become if they are taught in Dhivehi just becoz some developed world psychologists say so.
There are some developed world intellectuals who argue that it will be better for indigenious people in some third world countries to remain so in order to preserve their way of life. Should we do so depriving modern medicals and clean water to primitive socities as the rest of the world advances?
You tell me how our children will become smarter if we teach them in Dhivehi every subject such as history, geography, science, mathemetics etc.
I am not a fanatic of globalisation, neither of ruthless capitalists who only make the rich richer keeping the poor subservient to them.
Whether anyone of us like it or not, we can only take advantage of the opportunties in the world we live in and try to make our best contribution. English language helps as a tool to do that because it is widely spoken.
This is precisely the reason why we should teach English to every student even as a second language and use it as a working language. That means whoever wants to use Dhivehi can use it as the official language. Who ever wants to use English can also use it.
The nationalists do not have to fear English taking over anything. They can promote Dhivehi all they want.
If we never made English as our working language, most who are reasonably educated are using English to advance their life. I don't understand what is so unique about what we are right now.
It's interesting to have diverse views. Let us be pragmatic not just be driven by emotions.
So Shahuru. Let us move an open debate.
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