Taiwan to make English official second Language

A few simple questions can really narrow down a Taiwanese dialect. Mandarin also, but less so. In a North American Chinatown I was IMMEDIATELY identified as having a Taiwanese accent. It was a positive experience, since that person was a TW immigrant.

You quote these world leaders, but forget Nobel Prize winning president Barack Hussein Obama for recognising the language of Austrian. I doubt the majority of most of the 57+ American States can Austrians speak German. Maybe except for the intelligent voters in mass-a-two-tits.

youtu.be/8Lrci_exAVM

And what exactly does that have to do with the price of eggs?

You trying to imply that Taiwanese is just a variety of Mininan Chinese. Why you!

They got their own language over there too right? :wink:

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Why me? Because I’m a horse’s ass. Just to amplify the degree to which the well-tanned President Trump has called, invited, and interacted with Taiwanese reps. Obama did %#*$ , all in that department.

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Thanks for sharing your experience. So many issues to be considered: 1) foreign English teachers are not only underused, they are misused (they cost twice as much as a local ET and are paired with a local “coteacher” - triple cost). 2) They don’t prep, assess, or communicate enough. That’s because they don’t get prepped enough before coming here. 3) The English villages I’ve seen are not handled correctly. 4) Schools are so happy to have FETs, they don’t know what to do with them. Thus, no training in culture, lifestyle, language, etc I could go on but dare not!

For me it’s not hate, it’s just that the government has ^and others have been talking about doing this (or something like it) off and on for at least 16 years.

2002:

2003:

MOE to snap up foreign teachers - Taipei Times

2006:

2012:

2015:

2017:

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I’m 100% bilingual but I have no idea what you are getting at here…I spell diarrhea d-i-a-r-r-h-e-a? How do you spell diarrhea?

ef-oo
h-ee
es-ee
quick-a-lee
tee-chuuh

Not to mention people who barely know how to speak English telling them how to teach it. It’s like “wtf did you hire foreign teachers for then?”

don’t forget “el-o”!

One of my favorites. I hated that fact that this was considered acceptable, but it sounds like they are saying two letters, L and then O. One time during a school wide spelling bee at a public school I was working at, a word was “noodles” the kid spelled it “n-o-o-d-l-o-e-s” I said it was wrong, and the local teaching got their fucking knickers in a twist! I empahzied that he added an extra letter and therefore was wrong, but they insisted he got it right, my fellow foreign teacher confirmed that it was indeed incorrect. Point is, when it really comes down to it in something like that, you gotta get your fucking letters right.

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When I ask students how to spell a word, and I am writing it on the board and they say “el-o” I write “LO” or “HE” or “FOO” and they say “no teacher blah blah” and I tell them to say “L” “H” “F” and they say it like that aaaaaan one week later we are back to el-o , h-ee, ef-oo. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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The Sisyphean task of working at a public school.

Is that paragraph an example of google translate? :ponder:

Well they didn’t say which KIND of English would be official.

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The babelfish will come, just like the driverless car. And just like the driverless car, it will be a hard sell as long as its ability to cause injury (and death) is noticeable.

Think social media. If people didn’t care at all about privacy, stupidification, mind manipulation and all that, SM could easily conquer the world. Yet enough people do care enough about those issues that SM’s world domination is a long way off.

Earlier, I predicted that when driverless cars are normal, there will still be a market for human drivers. Some people will still prefer humans, and some will want to show off.

As for translators and interpreters, they already have a tough market, and the generic ones will find it tougher and tougher, yet the highly qualified ones will still be in demand, partly because some customers will prefer their human touch, partly because some will want to show off, and partly because human brains will still be involved in monitoring and fine-tuning the apps.

At least, until the revolution… :robot:

And there is also the famous letter “L” that they conveniently converted into 2 syllables…EL-LO!!
Which reminds me of a time I was in a Taiwanese colleague’s Bday party with about a dozen+ kids and we decided to play “Name that English song” …I would play the chorus part of some very simple songs and the kids would have to write down the name of the Song on a piece of paper…I played about 5 songs …(Roxette’s How Do you do?, Fool’s Garden Lemon Tree, Carpenter’s Top of the World, Ashlee Simpson’s L.O.V.E & Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the wind)…When the excited kids all handed in their papers, this is what I saw on all of them:

  1. How do you do
  2. Lemon Tree
  3. Top of the World
  4. LVE
  5. Blow the wind (Most couldn’t get this right but it was a good attempt)
    Something was obviously very wrong with #4!!! :joy::joy::rofl::rofl:
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I hope this means stopping ridiculous Chinese translated names to people and things. Stop calling actors like Tom cruise 湯姆·克魯斯 and weird Chinese translated movies names.

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Bceause their teacehrs have been forcing them to say it like that because the college instructors have been forcing this on them too. I have been to TESOL conferences here -do not waste time explaiing it is TEFL in thsi context, you´ll rupture a blood vessel and have a stroke- where the teachers argue that this is the way it should be taught. Get angry wit you if you try to propose otherwise or ask why.

They already have that. Locals prefer Dr. Eye or a Beijing based app that I am not going to mention. They claim they are better than Google.

Problem is when they hand in paid work which is obviously just been run through this software. The nonsense cannot be rewritten, it has to be done all over again. By a human.

Maybe we will reach that point where machine translation is that accurate. It is getting there. Maybe even get the chip implant in te brain so people traveling won´t have to worry about learining a foreign languaghe, just download it. That si not an issue.

The issue is with lacking the mental openness to learning. If you want to close yourself to other cultures, fine. China is the power of teh future, right, why learn English? The West is going down anyways. If you do not want or can travel, and do not want to have more research sources than the ones in Chinese -this is especially important for anyone who wants to know about the Martial Law period in Taiwan, for example- then remain monolingual. Happens even to English monolinguals, just because they speak the tool language of the world does not mean it opens their minds. The problem is the attitude.

English is a tool, a skill, an opportunity. What you do with it, as with anything else in that little box of things you have learned, from cooking a mean beef stwe to changing a tire or being able to blanace a checkbook or determine who took teh money just by looking at an accounting ledger, is up to you. The more varied the goods in your box of learning skills, the better, the more competitive you are. That ie teh concept of flexibility applied. English is one more tool, and as with anything else, depending on your skill, that will be the use given. You can see it as trigonometry for a biology master, might not be something that they use every day but it is a good mental exercise. And could come in handy.

Look I come from a fouth world nation and we have all teh range of Englsih teaching, from poor to excellent. We all need those language skills, from waiters to deal with tourists from all over the world, to mechanics who need to read manuals, to peole who load pinnapples and bananas and shipping companies and government officials on international conferences. You coukld say that it is because we are closo eto US but English is not exclusively used with the US.

If you want to engage the world, you cannot sit and expect it to come to you. If you do not want to engage teh world, then d not compalin when it pases you by.

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