My argument is why not chose an easy language as a first foreign language?

Lots of different languages are spoken in the world, so which ones should we teach? I don’t think we should teach only the languages most widely spoken.

There is one language well worth considering, but many people seem to know very little about it, even though there are millions of pages in or about it on the Internet. It is called Esperanto. It has been created 120 years ago and is now used by upto 2 million people from over 100 different countries. It has proven itself as a very good means of communication, it is much easier to learn than national languages, but nevertheless enables to express anything as well as other languages.

It seems to me that Esperanto would be an ideal first foreign language to teach. Many people put learning a foreign language in the too hard basket and you can't really blame them when it comes to have to learn all the irregularities of the French language, Japanese script, etc. It is extremely time consuming to learn a foreign language if one wants to become fluent. Esperanto can be learnt much faster and therefore it boosts enormously the children's self-esteem. Furthermore it helps a lot with the learning of subsequent languages. In music, children don't start by tackling difficult instruments, in languages it should be the same, start with an easy language and then go on to more difficult ones.

Schools have a limited amount of time, so expecting them to spend enough time to make students fluent in national languages is unrealistic. Primary schools could teach Esperanto and then high schools could offer a variety of languages.

To see what Esperanto looks like, you could check the free online course Vojagu kun Zam (complete with sound) at www.lernu.net

I have a LOTE teaching certificate specifically for Esperanto which I received last year from the University of NSW.

I have written a book too about awareness for foreign languages, see http://members.iinet.net.au/~nicolee/bookad.html

Sometimes I share Tom's cynicism about policy inquiries and Australian apathy (see Fiona Mueller's 2003 article "Learning languages in Australia - too much like hard work"). But languages teachers know that students can and do succeed – we just lament the pitiful numbers. I see “the point of forcing the bulk of the population to learn” any language if that hones their thinking and linguistic skills in a hundred ways, improves their openness to difference, shows racism for the hateful, self-destructive, throwback thing it is, equips them for rewarding careers around the world, makes Australia more secure, prosperous and mature because we understand our world better.

I find rstuart’s reaction to his German travels a furphy. Did it not occur to you to want to persist with German until you could be like them: code-switching at will as you say, able to trade in other languages, comfortable with foreign language publications all over their country? Germans “giving up on German”? Nonsense. Languages make us who we are. Language students know keenly who they are.

If kids only follow “a subject for years if we know its going to be useful to them in our society”, who defines useful? Would you also toss Phys Ed., most maths, studies of societies ancient and modern, poetry, music, science beyond anything “useful” in the everyday world, like your “home maintenance skills”? Did you really say: “for males”? Do you think languages are for girls and sissies? I have met Aussie blokes who cycle around Europe for a living and who spoke great French. Had to. I met a gang of young English “hard men” in Greece and their kingpin spoke seven European languages for street, club and work purposes. Our human world is made of our ideas, thoughts and words (e.g. the society, civics, how news is "spun", the internet that you mentioned) as much as by hammer and nails, and weapons. Behind the material is the mental. So much human joy and misery proceeds from our minds and our mouths. Yet you don’t think it is worth studying language and languages? Quel dommage!

Just a brief note Henriette:

Contrary to your expressed nay-saying, learning Chinese WILL help with Japanese. Indeed, your reference to the (non-spoken) "Chinese" seems to betray the fact that Chinese textual/character language is the very place where the broader "Chinese" and Japanese cultures interact perhaps most closely. I understand that Japanese Hiragana characters derived from Chinese precedents.

Also, a Maori may well feel at home in Tahiti, at least in a certain linguistic sense. One related example I witnessed personally was a Maori in Jakarta whose smooth integration with local language and society was conspicuous and remarkable when seen against all other expats in his wide professional and recreational circles. Although not "Tahiti", the local linguistic heritage is largely "Malay-Polynesian", and I recall reading studies about many close similarities - even identical vocabularies - between Maori and Javanese, for example.

These above points may highlight my misgivings about what I perceive as Esperanto's relatively artificial and rootless place in our Babel Tower. On a less argumentative note, I laud languages study for the insight it gives into the interdependent relationships linking all peoples' languages at some level, at some time. Even commonalities of onomatopoeia offer such genuine cross-cultural joy when studying "authentic" languages.

I cannot disagree with Oliver that “teachers leaving high school after 1975 don't adequately understand English or Grammar or Vocabulary.” All education would be improved if Australian teachers learned English and other languages really well. I hardly ever make spelling mistakes in English. I think it may be because since I was 12, I have been learning French, did three years Latin, and German in hobby fashion after growing up. I quite enjoy looking up the origins of words and I marvel to think that coming out of our mouths, pens and keyboards are actually Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Greek, Latin, and a host of borrowings from hundreds of languages. English is a total fruit salad (“food for thought” is right) which is why its spelling is so challenging for many, as mr nobody points out above in comic vein. Except if you’ve done some study of the contributing languages! I agree too with Oliver that “Where there is money to made I found language was not a problem.” Although we may think so and never know what business opportunities, profits and rewarding experiences we missed out on because we do not know the language, do not know what makes those customers tick, do not know if we’re being done or if the “interpreters” are really on our side.

Some of the best times of my life have been sitting chatting with local people in Indonesia, getting to know about their lives, thoughts and concerns as I would a fellow Aussie. I see busloads of tourists get off their air-conditioned bus and click click their cameras at whatever tourist attraction the guide says is special and then away to the next temple or scenic view (that they can see in a book or on a doco). And I wouldn’t swap places for all the tea in China.

As for Esperanto, I see all the reasons its advocates push for it and I wish them well. Myself, I prefer genuine, organic languages. Esperanto has European roots. Do you think Asian and African decision makers will throw over English for Esperanto?

I really can’t understand what you mean by genuine languages. Why would Esperanto not be a genuine language? Someone chose long ago to call a dog a dog, someone chose to call a dog “hundo” in Esperanto not that long ago. What’s really the big difference? Obviously Esperanto doesn’t have a history as long as other languages, but basically it is not really that different from other languages. Have you ever read something written by people who learnt Esperanto from birth. For them Esperanto is a language like any other.

You say you prefer, I suppose you mean, national languages. OK, so you can learn Indonesian and maybe another one and reach fluency, but that’s still not enough to communicate with many people, you might like to communicate with people from Iceland, from Hungary, do you want to learn each national language? We need a common language and then according to one’s tastes, interests, etc people could learn one or two national languages.

I don’t think decision makers will immediately throw over English but many ordinary people will. In another forum Henriette put a good quote from a Chinese lady who explains very well why she prefers Esperanto and that for her Esperanto is just like Chinese..

Claude Piron who used to be a UN translator gave me some figures and said a European person needs about 200 hours to learn Esperanto, a Chinese person will need longer about 240 hours, but Claude Piron spoke with quite a few people in China who had spent 240 hours learning Esperanto and 2,000 hours learning English and spoke better Esperanto. So what do you think they prefer to learn Esperanto or English. Esperanto might not be perfectly fair, but if we reject Esperanto and use English we get to a solution much, much unfairer.

And here you can listen to Esperanto speakers from Africa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GW3RulGjIA

To Her nobody,

Vel don, yu are very funy. Sory goto go, hav to vatsh ze fotbal now.

This article brilliantly exposes the lack of action and wasted opportunities of the various state Labor governments over the past decade. All education, up to University level, has been their responsibility for years.

Does the writer understand his motherhood statements have all been dished out by these state governments for years.

Does his solution include another of Kevin's labor policy endorsing do nothing talkfests and another tier of memo-writing do nothing, but this time federal, useless public servant bureaucrats?

Same problem, endlessly suggesting the same solution with the same results is close to insanity.

It seems I've seen it so often recently that it's becoming the norm.

Such displays make me really fearful for Australia's long term future.

Thank God I've already raised my kids. They are not just becoming widely read, are bilingual and computer literate but also speak with great common sense. They won't let their kids suffer from this type of incompetent nonsense and spin doctoring that we are currently contantly witnessing.

In the past we used to dump incompetent governments now all we seem to see is media fools and blind ideologues attempting to blame the blameless and excuse the culprits who are their idealogical incompetent mates. That is just exacerbating the problem. It's just exasperating.