It's the truth, but too few Australians are willing to accept it.

Many people around the world do business in English, but they often fraternise and build strong personal networks in their mother tongue. If you don't make an effort to join that circle, you won't stand out from the crowd.

Revel in monolingual complacency if you want - you're writing your childrens' ticket to 21st century poverty. Don't say you weren't warned.

The good news is, it only takes a few years to catch up. Just 5 years of decent language support in secondary school is enough to equip the next generation with the essential extra-linguistic capacity they will need - the benefits will last 50+ years.

Mercurious

You have contradicted yourself. You say that many do business in English but socialise in their mother tongue. That is because they can express feelings in their mother tongue which they cannot in English - no matter how technically fluent they are in it.

No matter how long you studied Chinese, you would never gain the abilty to socialise as a native-born Chinese.

The point you have made does not hold water.

Healthwatcher, if you misrepresent what I say then it's easy to refute my position. But all you demonstrate by doing so is your ability to misrepresent an argument, not to address one honestly.

Nowhere have I claimed that it is possible or necessary to converse in the same depth as a native speaker. All I said is that we have to make the effort, we have to try and join the circle - there is nothing whatsoever contradictory about that.

Just the other day I was conversing in Japanese with a friend of mine saying how nervous I am speaking in Japanese. I said it poorly, in halting Japanese. It doesn't matter. What matters to my friend is that I made the effort.

And I have non-native speaking Chinese and Japanese friends who are perfectly capable of discussing their dreams, goals and aspirations with me in English. They cannot do so with the same proficiency as a native speaker, but it is not necessary that they do so - it is still possible to build a personal multilingual network.

Moreover, many empirical studies have demonstrated that learning other languages increases one's overall level of language proficiency including in your mother tongue.

I emphatically reject the view that we shouldn't bother at all because we can't attain native-like proficiency. It is a defeatist attitude that condemns us to mediocrity.

I repeat: Revel in monolingual complacency if you want - you're writing your childrens' ticket to 21st century poverty. Don't say you weren't warned.

I believe that all these surveys of what language people speak is deeply flawed.

For years, whenever I am asked on a form what language I speak at home, I always put down: "Bad"

I know many friends that do the same thing, but it never shows in the published percentages.

The language issue is IRRELEvANT.

Computer technology WILL obviate language barriers for commercial transactions within a decade.

The problem we really face is women's need to have children against the backdrop a an unsustainable world population approaching 8.5 billion by 2025.

Not only will language barriers be irrelevant but so too will women and megalomaniac contributors in the media, politics, business, property development taxpayer ripoffs and gambling enterprises who foolishly see population growth as a personal route to gold, glory and personal pleasure.

These imbeciles, are currently leading and lobbying world governments for ridiculous end-of-world Greenspanian-economic-growth rates. But PEAKOIL, laziness, the intrinsic viciousness of individualistic aspects of human nature and CHAOS arising from all manner of emerging global resource shortages are going to kill off some 6 billion people by 2025. There is no guarantee that those forcing this scenario will be spared. They, as tall poppies will be the first and easiest targets.

As PEAKOIL worsens, you won't need to be multilingual to survive. Rwanda showed us all you need is just a gun and a hammer to save ammo.

Its time to talk population stabilisation and if langugae is a barrier to getting that message across then computer literacy will be the mode of choice, not learning 100's of soon to be irrelevant languages.

KAEP

Even though there seems to be something loose in your brain, you have made a valid point.

People who like opera think I am missing out on something essential in life. But – they don’t try to manipulate the school system into forcing a love of opera into children captured within that system. Many of those who love language are doing just that.

The basis of all understanding is communication. It is incomprehensible that Britain, the USA, Canada, NZ or Oz ever go to war against each other. We need one world language because we have some enormous global issues looming up ahead requiring the maximum cooperation possible.

The teaching of language is a waste of a school student’s time. He or she can learn one as a hobby later in life. The fact that children are leaving school with no idea about what science has revealed about the essential nature of existence is evidence of the influence that the arty types are having on our education system.