Jeg hvad hvad I tænker. I tænker, at jeg er faret vild og at der snart kommer en op på scenen og ligeså stille fører mig tilbage til min plads. Bifald Det sker for mig i Dubai hele tiden. „Er du på ferie her, kære?“ [Latter] „Er du her for at besøge børnene? Hvor længe bliver du?“
I know what you're thinking. You think I've lost my way, and somebody's going to come on the stage in a minute and guide me gently back to my seat. (Applause) I get that all the time in Dubai. "Here on holiday are you, dear?" (Laughter) "Come to visit the children? How long are you staying?"
Faktisk, lidt længere endnu, håber jeg. Jeg har boet og undervist i Golfen i over 30 år. [Bifald] Og i den tid, har jeg set mange ændringer. Den statistik er ret chokerende. og i dag vil jeg tale om sprogtab og globaliseringen af engelsk. Jeg vil gerne fortælle jer om min ven som underviste voksne i engelsk i Abu Dhabi. Og en skønne dag besluttede hun sig for, at tage dem ud i haven for at lære dem nogle gloser om natur. Men det var hende der endte med at lære alle de arabiske ord for de lokale planter, såvel som deres brug; medicinale brug, kosmetiske, madlavning, urter. Hvordan fik de studerende al den viden? Selvfølgelig fra deres bedsteforældre og endda deres oldeforældre. Det er ikke nødvendigt at sige, hvor vigtigt det er, at være i stand til, at kommunikere på tværs af generationer.
Well actually, I hope for a while longer yet. I have been living and teaching in the Gulf for over 30 years. (Applause) And in that time, I have seen a lot of changes. Now that statistic is quite shocking. And I want to talk to you today about language loss and the globalization of English. I want to tell you about my friend who was teaching English to adults in Abu Dhabi. And one fine day, she decided to take them into the garden to teach them some nature vocabulary. But it was she who ended up learning all the Arabic words for the local plants, as well as their uses -- medicinal uses, cosmetics, cooking, herbal. How did those students get all that knowledge? Of course, from their grandparents and even their great-grandparents. It's not necessary to tell you how important it is to be able to communicate across generations.
Men desværre, dør sprog i dag i et omfang som ikke tidligere er set. Et sprog dør hver 14. dag. På samme tid, er engelsk det ubestridte globale sprog. Kan der være en sammenhæng? Det ved jeg ikke. Men jeg ved, at jeg har set en del forandringer. Da jeg første gang kom til Golfen, kom jeg til Kuwait, dengang det stadig var et belastet område. Faktisk, for ikke så længe siden. Det er lidt for tidligt. Men ikke desto mindre var jeg rekrutteret af det Britiske Råd sammen med omkring 25 andre undervisere. Og vi var de første ikke-muslimer der underviste i de offentlige skoler i Kuwait. Vi kom for at undervise i engelsk fordi regeringen ville modernisere landet og styrke borgerne gennem uddannelse. Og selvfølgelig fik Storbritannien gavn af noget af den dejlige rigdom pga. olie.
But sadly, today, languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. A language dies every 14 days. Now, at the same time, English is the undisputed global language. Could there be a connection? Well I don't know. But I do know that I've seen a lot of changes. When I first came out to the Gulf, I came to Kuwait in the days when it was still a hardship post. Actually, not that long ago. That is a little bit too early. But nevertheless, I was recruited by the British Council, along with about 25 other teachers. And we were the first non-Muslims to teach in the state schools there in Kuwait. We were brought to teach English because the government wanted to modernize the country and to empower the citizens through education. And of course, the U.K. benefited from some of that lovely oil wealth.
Okay. Det her er den store ændring jeg har set- hvordan engelsk gradvist har forvandlet sig fra at være en gensidig gavnlig praksis til, at blive den massive internationale forretning det er i dag. Ikke længere bare et fremmedsprog i skolens pensum. Og ikke længere Moder Englands domæne. Det er blevet populært for alle engelsktalende nationer på jorden. Og hvorfor ikke? Den bedste uddannelse findes jo, ifølge den seneste bedømmelse af universiter i verden, på universiterer i Storbritannien og USA. Så, alle vil have en engelsk uddannelse - naturligvis. Men hvis engelsk ikke er dit modersmål, skal du bestå en prøve.
Okay. Now this is the major change that I've seen -- how teaching English has morphed from being a mutually beneficial practice to becoming a massive international business that it is today. No longer just a foreign language on the school curriculum, and no longer the sole domain of mother England, it has become a bandwagon for every English-speaking nation on earth. And why not? After all, the best education -- according to the latest World University Rankings -- is to be found in the universities of the U.K. and the U.S. So everybody wants to have an English education, naturally. But if you're not a native speaker, you have to pass a test.
Kan det være rigtigt at afvise en studerende på den lingvistiske evne alene? Måske har du en computervidenskabsmand som er et geni. Ville han have brug for det samme sprog som advokat, for eksempel? Det tror jeg ikke. Vi engelsklærere afviser dem hele tiden. Vi sætter et stopskilt op og vi stopper dem på deres vej. De kan ikke følge deres drøm længere, til de har fået engelsk. Lad mig sige det sådan; hvis jeg mødte en monolingualist i hollandsk, som kunne helbrede cancer, ville jeg da forhindre ham i at blive optaget på mit britiske universitet? Det tror jeg ikke. Men det er virkelig det vi gør. Vi engelsklærere er portvagterne. Og dit engelsk skal være godt nok til, at kunne tilfredsstille os først. Det kan være farligt, at give så megen magt til et smalt segment af samfundet. Måske ville barrieren være for universel.
Now can it be right to reject a student on linguistic ability alone? Perhaps you have a computer scientist who's a genius. Would he need the same language as a lawyer, for example? Well, I don't think so. We English teachers reject them all the time. We put a stop sign, and we stop them in their tracks. They can't pursue their dream any longer, 'til they get English. Now let me put it this way: if I met a monolingual Dutch speaker who had the cure for cancer, would I stop him from entering my British University? I don't think so. But indeed, that is exactly what we do. We English teachers are the gatekeepers. And you have to satisfy us first that your English is good enough. Now it can be dangerous to give too much power to a narrow segment of society. Maybe the barrier would be too universal.
Okay. „Men“, hører jeg jer sige, „hvad med forskningen? Det er altsammen på engelsk.“ Ja, bøgerne er på engelsk, journalerne skrives på engelsk, men det er en selvopfyldende profeti. Det forstærker det engelsk krav. Og sådan fortsætter det. Så spørger jeg, hvad skete der med oversættelser? Hvis du tænker på den Islamiske Gyldne Alder der var mange oversættelser dengang. De oversatte fra latin og græsk til arabisk og persisk og så blev det oversat til Europas germanske sprog og de romanske sprog. Og så kastede lyset sig på Europas Mørke Tider. Forstå mig ret, alle engelsklærere derude; jeg er ikke imod at undervise i engelsk. Jeg elsker, at vi har et globalt sprog. Vi har brug for et i dag - mere end nogensinde før. Men jeg er imod at bruge det som en barriere. Vil vi virkelig ende op med 600 sprog og hovedsproget værende engelsk eller kinesisk? Vi har brug for mere end det. Hvor trækker vi stregen? Dette system tilsidesætter intelligens med et kendskab til engelsk der er ret arbitrær.
Okay. "But," I hear you say, "what about the research? It's all in English." So the books are in English, the journals are done in English, but that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds the English requirement. And so it goes on. I ask you, what happened to translation? If you think about the Islamic Golden Age, there was lots of translation then. They translated from Latin and Greek into Arabic, into Persian, and then it was translated on into the Germanic languages of Europe and the Romance languages. And so light shone upon the Dark Ages of Europe. Now don't get me wrong; I am not against teaching English, all you English teachers out there. I love it that we have a global language. We need one today more than ever. But I am against using it as a barrier. Do we really want to end up with 600 languages and the main one being English, or Chinese? We need more than that. Where do we draw the line? This system equates intelligence with a knowledge of English, which is quite arbitrary.
[Bifald]
(Applause)
Og jeg vil minde jer om, at de giganter, på hvis skuldre nutidens intelligentsia sidder, ikke behøvede at have engelsk, de behøvede ikke at bestå en engelskprøve. Einstein er et eksempel på dette. Han fik iøvrigt specialundervisning i skolen, fordi han var ordblind. Men heldigvis for hele verden, behøvede han ikke at bestå en engelskprøve. For de fandtes ikke før 1964. Med TOEFL, The American test of English Nu er det eksploderet. Det er masser af engelskprøver. Og millioner og millioner af studerende tager disse prøver hvert eneste år. Du og jeg tænker sikkert, at betalingen for det ikke er så slemt; det er okay, men de er uoverkommelige for så mange millioner fattige mennesker. Så vi afviser dem med det samme.
And I want to remind you that the giants upon whose shoulders today's intelligentsia stand did not have to have English, they didn't have to pass an English test. Case in point, Einstein. He, by the way, was considered remedial at school because he was, in fact, dyslexic. But fortunately for the world, he did not have to pass an English test. Because they didn't start until 1964 with TOEFL, the American test of English. Now it's exploded. There are lots and lots of tests of English. And millions and millions of students take these tests every year. Now you might think, you and me, "Those fees aren't bad, they're okay," but they are prohibitive to so many millions of poor people. So immediately, we're rejecting them.
[Bifald]
(Applause)
Det får mig til at tænke på en overskrift jeg så for nyligt: „Uddannelse: Den Store Kløft“ Nu forstår jeg det, jeg forstår hvorfor folk fokuserer på engelsk. De vil give deres børn den bedst mulige chance i livet. Og for at kunne det, skal de have en vestlig uddannelse. Fordi de bedste jobs selvfølgelig går til studenter ved de vestlige universiteter, som jeg forklarede tidligere. Det kører i ring.
It brings to mind a headline I saw recently: "Education: The Great Divide." Now I get it, I understand why people would want to focus on English. They want to give their children the best chance in life. And to do that, they need a Western education. Because, of course, the best jobs go to people out of the Western Universities, that I put on earlier. It's a circular thing.
Okay. Lad mig fortælle jer en historie om to videnskabsmænd, to engelske videnskabsmænd De foretog et eksperiment der havde med genetik at gøre og de forreste og bagerste lemmer på dyr. Men de kunne ikke få det resultat de ville. De vidste virkelig ikke hvad de skulle gøre, indtil der en dag kom en tysk videnskabsmand som opdagede at de brugte to ord for lemmerne forrest og bagerst på dyret, hvilket genetikken ikke skelner imellem - og det samme gælder for tysk. Så bingo! Problemet var løst. Hvis du ikke kan tænke en tanke sidder du fast. Men hvis et andet sprog kan tænke den tanke kan man, gennem samarbejde, opnå og lære så meget mere.
Okay. Let me tell you a story about two scientists, two English scientists. They were doing an experiment to do with genetics and the forelimbs and the hind limbs of animals. But they couldn't get the results they wanted. They really didn't know what to do, until along came a German scientist who realized that they were using two words for forelimb and hind limb, whereas genetics does not differentiate and neither does German. So bingo, problem solved. If you can't think a thought, you are stuck. But if another language can think that thought, then, by cooperating, we can achieve and learn so much more.
Min datter kom til England fra Kuwait. Hun havde studeret videnskab og matematik på arabisk. Det var på en arabisk middelskole. Hun var nødt til, at oversætte det til engelsk på grammatikskolen. Og hun var den bedste i sin klasse til de fag. Hvilket siger os, at når vi får studerende ind fra udlandet, giver vi dem måske ikke credit nok for, hvad de ved og hvad de ved på deres eget sprog. Når et sprog dør, ved vi ikke hvad vi mister med det sprog.
My daughter came to England from Kuwait. She had studied science and mathematics in Arabic. It's an Arabic-medium school. She had to translate it into English at her grammar school. And she was the best in the class at those subjects. Which tells us that when students come to us from abroad, we may not be giving them enough credit for what they know, and they know it in their own language. When a language dies, we don't know what we lose with that language.
Det her er -jeg ved ikke om I så det på CNN for nyligt- de gav Heroes Award til en ung kenyansk hyrde som ikke kunne læse om aftenen i hans landsby, som de andre børn i landsbyen kunne det, fordi røgen fra petroleumslampen havde skadet hans øjne. Og alligevel var der aldrig nok petroleum for hvad kan du købe for en dollar om dagen? Så han opfandt en omkostningsfri solcellelampe. Og nu kan børnene i hans landsby få samme karakterer i skolen, som de børn der har elektricitet i hjemmet. [Bifald] Da han modtog denne pris, sagde han disse vidunderlige ord: „Børnene kan lede Afrika fra det det er i dag, et mørk kontinent, til et lyst kontinent“. En simpel idé, men det kan have så vidtrækkende konsekvenser.
This is -- I don't know if you saw it on CNN recently -- they gave the Heroes Award to a young Kenyan shepherd boy who couldn't study at night in his village, like all the village children, because the kerosene lamp, it had smoke and it damaged his eyes. And anyway, there was never enough kerosene, because what does a dollar a day buy for you? So he invented a cost-free solar lamp. And now the children in his village get the same grades at school as the children who have electricity at home. (Applause) When he received his award, he said these lovely words: "The children can lead Africa from what it is today, a dark continent, to a light continent." A simple idea, but it could have such far-reaching consequences.
Mennesker der ikke har lys, uanset om det er fysisk eller metaforisk, kan ikke bestå vores eksaminer og vi vil aldrig finde ud af hvad de ved. Lad os ikke holde dem eller os selv i mørket. Lad os hylde forskelligheden. Hold af dit sprog. Brug det til, at sprede gode idéer.
People who have no light, whether it's physical or metaphorical, cannot pass our exams, and we can never know what they know. Let us not keep them and ourselves in the dark. Let us celebrate diversity. Mind your language. Use it to spread great ideas.
[Bifald]
(Applause)
Mange tak skal I have.
Thank you very much.
[Bifald]
(Applause)