With the world shrinking and becoming a global village, it is becoming imperative that we know the English language
RAWALPINDI: This is with reference to an editorial published in this paper called, “The Language Dilemma” on November 18. English is an international language. Most books, the media, including the internet, and other communicative mediums are in English. With the world shrinking and becoming a global village, it is becoming imperative that we know the English language. Countries that did not promote English initially are working doubly hard to catch up. I have been to Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Russia; these are countries that recognise the importance of understanding, conversing and writing in English despite the robust health of their own languages. For learning and communication in today’s globalised world, English is a must.
We as Pakistanis were lucky to learn English as a subject in our schools right from our primary classes. There is a recent trend in the country to associate English with values foreign to our culture, as if every English-speaking person is a ‘gora’, and this is not acceptable. With years of neglect and poor attention paid to education, the standard of English taught in our educational institutions has suffered a setback. We are losing connection with the rest of the world.
Most of our television channels are in Urdu. How can the rest of the world understand our points of view? On the other hand, Indians have more than 50 news channels that are in English. China, France, Germany, Qatar and many other countries have English channels as well. Unless we encourage the speaking of English, we will not have people to fill job vacancies where the language is required. For the modernisation of the country, learning in and speaking in English are a must.
Khalid Rashid
Published in The Express Tribune, November 20th, 2015.
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