How about foreign and indigenous languages mandated in the primary school curriculum? (Nah, too hard to find the teachers to make it work.)

How about a requirement that students count two years of language learning towards their year 12 final results? (Nah, too hard for the students who don't want to be at school in the first place.)

How about Vice-Chancellors agreeing that every undergraduate degree include passing at least two years of a language other than English? (Nah, too hard to administer.)

How about all professional level public servants in federal and state governmets being required to demonstrate a foreign language proficiency as one of the essential selection criteria? (Nah, nobody would take it seriously.)

I think we should agree that this is a good concept in principle, and then call a far-ranging inquiry that can do a proper snow-job on it.

I don't see the point of forcing the bulk of the population learn something if that something is never going to be used by most of them.

I learnt German in high school. When I had the opportunity to travel to Germany I though I might finally have the chance to put all that time to some use. When I got there it seemed like even the Germans were giving up on German. I was at an international conference. Everybody started the conversation in English - then swapped to a more comfortable language if they had one in common.

That was to be expected I guess. What I didn't expect was how hard it was to buy obviously German souvenirs. Being in a German store, with everybody speaking German and yet every piece of clothing in sight plastered with English slogans was just weird. Even the clothing tags are printed in English. The final straw was a young German couple we met. He was an apprentice plumber. Apparently their central heating systems create a lot of work for plumbers. He showed me his training manuals. They were printed in German ... and English. This was apparently required by law.

So why was I forced to waste all that time learning German? All the talk of "sharpening the mind" sounds like a complete furphy to me - just about any mental challenge will do that. Kids should only be forced to study a subject for years if we know its going to be useful to them in our society. The rest should be optional. Frankly, for males I think spending a semester on home maintenance basic skills like using a hammer and a nail, and wielding an angle grinder safely would be much more useful. Learning a bit about how our society works - things like civics, or how news is "spun", or what phishing looks like and how Internet security works wouldn't go astray either.

Philip,

A major initial problem is that most teachers leaving high school after 1975 don't adequately understand English or Grammar or Vocabulary.

In a recent guide to teachers, at a particular school, the direction was to not use hyphens, especially, cooperative, rather co-operative. With co-opetaion the two vowels are sounded differently. A cooperative is a pen for chickens!

I have dealt in business in Asia for nine years. Where there is monet to made I found language was not a problem.

Cheers.

O.

Language teaching just doesn't work in a school context of two hours face-to-face teaching every week. It is not a 'subject' like history but a way of thinking that can be learnt best through immersion. (I learnt more Spanish from a month of morning lessons in Spain than I learnt French in four years at high school.)

If schools are serious about promoting language learning then they need to take kids out of school for a month, put them in an intensive language laboratory for three hours a day and surround them with speakers of that language. This would take the same amount of time and resources as the current approach but would produce genuine results. Right now language teaching in Australian schools is just a way for language teachers to perpetuate themselves.

I do not know if this is helpful, but it is food for thought.

English for EU

The United/European Union Commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for American and European communications rather than German, which was the other possibility.

Conceding that English spelling has some room for improvement, a five year phased plan to convert to EuroEnglish was made.

The first year “s” will be used for soft “c”. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. “k” will replase hard “c”. This will make English Konform to German. Not only wil this klear up konfusion but keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when they replase “ph” with “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” twenty persent shorter.

In the third year publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, whish have always ben deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e”s in the lanuage is disgrasful.

By the fourth year people wil be reseptiv to steps sush as replasing “th” by “z” and “w” by “v”. Vuns again mor in konformuns viz German.

During ze fifz year zi unecsesary “o” kan be dropd from vords containing “ou” and similar shanges vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombiations of letters.

After ze fifz yer ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find ezi tu understand esh ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

What is the aim ? Global communication, foolproof, and with the minimum of effort and resources expended...
It is not laziness, it is commonsense.
Why not "to each his own" plus "one for all"
Every human being has the right to keep his own native language.
In addition let's all learn ONE language,THE SAME AUXILIARY LANGUAGE.

Learning Chinese wont'help us with Japanese
Does a Maori feel at home in Tahiti ?
Can Indians or Koreans chat with New-Guineans ?
Does a Filipino understand Shinto ?

Esperanto ! Couldn't we ALL learn Esperanto ?
No more "foreigners"
All equal fellow learners
Getting to know one another
Then if for deeper knowledge
Into some cultures we yearn
Esperanto will give us an edge
Other languages to learn

Latin was recommended for mind stimulation; Esperanto can be "the new latin" preparing the brain to absorb language study, including that of English. As a bonus, within a few weeks one can have penfriends in almost any country on earth. Albert Einstein, Rudolf Diesel, G-B Shaw, Lusin, Jules Verne etc. believed in it. Let us at least look at it. After all, Musicians have done it, one common system.