The presence of English has indeed increased steadily from the beginning of the 2013. Along with its increased visibility, its status has changed dramatically. The period from the 1991 to the 2003, a period of major social, cultural and political change, was particularly important in this process. Until 2007, all students began learning English in Kurdistan in elementary school at approximately 11 years old (grade 5). In September 2007, the Ministry of Education held the second conference which concluded with a resolution No. 211 requesting the English to be taught even in kindergartens (Ministry of Education).
Kurdistan has long been the target of racism and Arabization policy which raised many problems to the people that hindered acquiring education in their mother tongue and “destroyed the basis for development of the Kurdish language or for any of its dialects.” (Michael Eppel 256) Therefore, the Kurdish language remained undeveloped and was on the verge of decay. The liberation of Kurdistan in 1991 and the whole Iraq in 2003 has opened up new horizons, influenced Kurdistan’s economy and the balance of power to a great extent. Kurdistan became one of the key players in the region and a vital partner in rebuilding the new Iraq. In this domain, rapidly developing Kurdistan felt a huge pressure to learn English to keep pace with the globalizing world. ???? introduction ????
The growing significance of English in Kurdistan stems partly from a range of socio-historical factors related especially to Kurdistan. As the data show, English in Kurdistan has partly sprung from a negative attitude toward Arab people but a positive attitude towards Americans. However, the greater portion of Kurdish enthusiasm for learning English comes fro...
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...language.
The increased impact of English on daily practices has not gone unnoticed within Kurdish society. Indeed, it has provoked a great deal of discussion and debate among the general public. In these discourses it has often been depicted in explicitly positive terms. One the other hand, Arabic has also been seen in public discussions as a negative language, which is regarded by some of them as the oppressor’s language of Arab rulers in Iraq. While these language ideological debates are familiar to Kurds, there is little, if any, research evidence on the particularities of the increased presence of English at the expense of Arabic, and people’s views and attitudes concerning English. Therefore, the paper concludes with a call for more extensive and empirical research to be conducted investigating the acquisition, attitudes and language preference in Kurdistan.
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
Language is a means of communication and it varies from one community to another. Everyone has a mother tongue which depended on the family’s upbringing. A second language can be learned along the way. There are also instances where a person is born in a community that speaks two languages and therefore, had to learn both languages. The quality of the languages learned will be affected by how well the community speaks both languages. This can later develop into a new form of language. The essay describes the frustration of the author who felt rejected by different groups for speaking a different form of language. Her essay aims to gain sympathy from readers by seeing the issue from her point of view. Anzaldua attempts to achieve this in her essay by raising issues on identity and discrimination. She wanted to highlight that language is not determined by a country’s physical borders.
...influenced. This correspondence leads to individual growth because it pushes our understanding. As we begin to see the individual as a person and not as an “other,” we can, as a country, grow stronger. Regardless of our growing humanitarian stance towards immigration reform, many Americans still insist on having English as our national language. Though speaking the language would greatly close the distance witnessed in towns like Shelbyville, we must provide methods for language acquisition by working through difference. With the transition towards inclusiveness, an increasingly global perspective should also follow suit.
Crawford, James. “A nation divided by one language.” Guardian.co.uk. 8 Mar 2001. Web. 11 October 2014
A smooth transition into society is a necessity that only a few institutions like bilingual education can offer. Every year, hundred thousands of students enter the United States from all over the globe: in the 2008/09 school year, over 672,000 international students came to this country. While many are here to pursue higher studies in college, a great number of international students enroll in primary education. It is during these elementary educational years that developing speaking and social skills are vital. Language barriers present a hindrance in doing this effectively. Hence, public schools have instituted bilingual programs like ESL...
In the United States of America we have become a large melting pot of ethnic and cultural peoples. Along with these peoples have come many different languages and alphabets. However the US has been seen as a mostly English speaking country. Yet many of this country's newcomers do not speak English. Adults and children alike come into the US speaking and writing only their native tongue. This poses a huge gap in communication. If the adults are unable to teach their children English, then it becomes the school districts' responsibility. However to make learning easier on the child, many school districts choose to teach the child in their native language, while they receive English lessons on the side.
Wiley, Terrence G. "Language Planning, Language Policy, and the English-Only Movement." Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Ed. Edward Finegan and John R. Rickford. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 319-38. Print.
The people of America need to reshape the country in which we live, to show off the patriotism expressed so warmly after the horrific attacks of September 11. American citizens must come to unison with the most vital tool we can use to combat those problems, our communication between different dialects. Senator Hayakawa writes in his essay, The Case for Official English, that ?[i]t is with a common la...
Bilingual education in our schools is crucial: but still there is talk about banning the use of foreign language in the instruction of our young children. We have to work to change that kind of attitude. We have to proceed from the assumption that bilingual
It is tied up in the culture of the people, that the language cannot be adequately criticized without calling up the ire of the people who speak it. As a result, Anzaldua says that, “if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language.” (Anzaldua, pg. 3) Cultural identity, she declares, personal and independent identity, those are inherently tied up in the language we speak. That is the universal message Anzaldua champions: that language defines who we are as much as the color of our skin, our sex, or a million other
Dating back to the Ottoman Empire, tensions between the Kurds and the state were apparent. As the Republic of Turkey developed, a strong sense of nationalism engulfed the country, which led to the oppression of many non-Turkish elements of society. Through this oppression we see attempts in the 1920’s and 1930’s at Kurdish autonomy with the eventual development of the PKK in 1978. With the first armed attack against Turkish soldiers in 1984 we see the issue gaining pace and becoming more severe. The Kurdish problem has claimed the lives of around 35,000 people, displaced even more, and has created economic and political problems not only domestically, but also internationally. Becoming one of Turkeys most important security issues, there have been attempts at peace on multiple occasions, but until now they were to no avail. This essay attempts to address various aspects of the Kurdish Problem; the domestic implications the Kurdish problem has created, such as the political disarray that develops when discussing the creation of pro-Kurdish parties, their opposition, and their inability to have any form of success within the government. The “terror problem.” The economic impact associated with regions most closely related to the Kurdish people. International implications dealing with Turkey, it’s neighbors, and the United States. Syria and Iraq are essential to discuss when dealing with the Kurdish problem because they add greater context to an issue that spans along the borders of multiple states. Furthermore, this essay will conclude with a discussion of the resolution attempts to the decades long dilemma such as recent developments, expectations by both sides, and prospects for the future.
United States is a nation accommodating multi-ethnic groups of almost 500000 Americans. Since 1960s, America has received an increasing number of newcomers and immigrants from all over the world. However, language communication has somehow become a latent problem, whether in economical, political, or social aspects. Although English has been the common language of America for over two hundred years, it has never become the official language. Therefore, question like "Does America need an official language?" has been raised and argued in recent decades. Both sides hold very strong arguments on this controversial issue. In the articles "English Should Be Official" by Bradley S. O' Leary and "Language Cements Nationhood" by Ron Saunders, two authors uphold to make English the nation's official language, while the articles "English Shouldn't Be Official" by Victor Kamber, and "Does America Need an "Official" Language" by Tuben G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes are opposed to this resolution. The different attitude toward common language, money, and communication are the major arguments discussed in these four articles.
Language is one of the most basic necessities for human interactions in a society. Ng and Bradac (1993) stated that, “some of the most remarkable human tools are the specific languages that particular groups of human have developed and adapted for use in their daily lives” (p.1). Without language, socialization between individuals in society would be highly difficult; which would possibly result in a lack of social solidarity that ties people together. From social and academic institutions (family and school), we were taught to use the most favorable language to survive in society. Brunei Darussalam centers on the Malay and English language. Depending on the surrounding and how Bruneians were raised, the use of language may differ for different individuals. In this essay, I’ll be talking about the language that my family and I have acquired. I will also talk about the existence of bilingualism in my family and the use of different languages during travelling.
To commence this discussion, it is first essential to establish an understanding surrounding the role of language in relation to national identity. Theoretically, the more power language has in this relation, the more powerful language planning may be when creating a national identity. However, the role language plays in this respect is somewhat problematic to define and has proven to be a debatable topic among nationalists, sociologists and sociolinguists. For instance, May demonstrates that ‘sociological commentators, unlike sociolinguists, have generally been loath to apportion a prominent role to language in the explanation of minority ethnic and national identity claims’ (2001: 8). Consequently emulating distaste from sociologists to credit language with significant power in a national identity. In a similar sense, de Vries notes that, in relation to a language community, ‘social scientists have generally ignored the systemic properties of language’ (1991: 39), thus, concurrently suggesting with May, a disagreement from the social sciences over the role of language in terms of identity and national identity. Similarly, circa the French revolution, the concept