ENGLISH LANGUAGE: A POWERFUL TOOL

Soon the voice boxes of everybody in the whole world will speak English but the sounds will be different from each other.

I want to begin with a story. Here in our place in the Cordillera, we have what is called “Kiangan English”, so it is their failure to pronounce the letter “W.” The story goes about a handsomely dressed tourist guide who was waiting at the bus depot at their place for a lady who was supposed to arrive. When she did, he approached her and asked, “Where (pronouncing the word as whore) are you going?” the offended lady slapped him and left. The guide never knew why but it was the way he pronounced the word “where.”

Here in our city alone, Baguio City, English schools are sprouting in every building for rent and filled with young men and women from Korea who are here to learn the English language. They seem to be everywhere here in our place. Some English teachers are being employed because of the demand.

The whole world now is a massive industry for learning English. Books and tapes are mushrooming everywhere for learning the language. Even strange spellings are added like “ve” for “we”, and lately, a word “selfie” is now in the dictionary for an additional vocabulary term. The world is learning non-native English words, which will change our ways of communicating with each other.

As being observed in our place, parents are investing money in sending their children to English schools because they believe that English is the turbine to globalization. That anybody who does not speak the new language is like a deaf and dumb person.

It is now being reported by researchers that the number of English speaking in Asia “roughly equals the total in Canada, America, and Britain.”

Accordingly, there are millions of Chinese people who are learning, absorbing and shaping the English language. The whole world nowadays accepts that English is the “business of language, empowerment, and technology.”

Migrant from foreign countries who are coming here in our place feel at home because people are English speakers like them.

Based on the studies, we, the Filipinos, who learn English at a young age has a big advantage over the older learners of other countries. As said by my college friend who is teaching English online, most of her foreign students are older than she is.

English is said to be powerful tool or instrument in dealing with other people of different places and of a different culture. We cannot understand each other without the knowledge of the language. Nowadays, even on the internet, English is widely and commonly use like what we have been using here in literacybase when posting articles, topics, or discussions.