Mind your language | Patricia Ryan | TEDxDubai

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.
English is big business and languages are dying as never before. Is there a connection? Is this another manifestation of McDonaldisation -- the undesirable face of globalization? Do we want to lose the variety of languages and all the rich culture that comes with them?

I get that all the time in Dubai,

"Here on holiday are you dear?"

(Laughter)

"Come to visit the children?"

(Laughter)

"How long are you staying?"

Well, actually I hope
for a while longer yet.

I have been living and teaching
in the Gulf for over 30 years

(Cheers) (Applause)

and in that time I have seen
a lot of changes.

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 their 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.

But sadly, today, languages are dying
at an unprecedented rate.

A language dies every 14 days.

I don't know how they know that
but that's what they say, right?

At the same time, English
is the undisputed global language.

Could that be a connection?
Well, I don't know.

But I do know that
I have 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 UK benefited
from some of that lovely oil wealth.

OK.

This is the major change that I have 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 UK and the US.

So, everybody wants to have
an English education, naturally.

But if you are not a native speaker,
you have to pass a test.

Now, can it be right to reject a student

on linguistic ability alone?

Perhaps you have a computer scientist
who is 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 till they get English.

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.

It can be dangerous to give too many...

(Laughter) (Applause)

to give too much power
to a narrow segment of society,

maybe the barrier would be too universal.

But, I hear you say,

"What about the research?
It's all in English."

The books are in English,

the journals are 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 were 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 am fine with it, 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 ones
being English or Chinese?

We need more than that.

Where do we draw the line?

This system equates intelligence

with a knowledge of English —

(Laughter)

— which is quite arbitrary.

(Cheers) (Applause)

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
do take these tests every year.

You might think, you and me,

that those fees are not that bad,
they are OK,

but they are prohibitive
to so many millions of poor people.

So immediately we are rejecting them.

(Applause)

It brings to mind a headline
I saw recently,

"Education: The Great Divide."

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 is a circular thing.

Let me tell 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 'hindlimb',

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.

My daughter came to England from Kuwait.

She had studied science and mathematics
in Arabic at 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.

This is a lovely —

I don't know if you saw it
on CNN recently,

they gave the Heroes Award

to a young Kenyan Shepard 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.

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!

(Applause)