Ejovi Nuwere

I guess I touched too closely on the topic of English throughout the globe since I received my first negative comments on my blog. In my question “Why are these countries so different?” I’m asking why is it that more people in Japan speak English than in Spain? Is it because Japanese import more Western movies, music, culture?

In Spain for example they make it a habit to pronounce foreign words in a uniquely Spanish way. Wi-Fi (Why-Fie) is pronounced wifi (weefee) in Spain. I saw no companies, buildings etc with foreign names. Many buildings, cafes and businesses in Japan use foreign names. Ask me why? I don’t know.

Of course no one HAS to speak English. As I said, I want to improve my Spanish if I plan on spending more time in Spain. I speak Japanese but I find that when I’m in Tokyo, a very foreigner friendly city Japanese people try to speak English to me! Even when I am speaking Japanese to them. It becomes a contest of who will give up first.

Its ridiculous to assume I want everyone in the world to speak English. But when a city is competing for the Olympics one of the top three things the committee looks at is how friendly it will be to foreigners. This means signs in English. Not portugese, or farsi. With more than 21 countries in the EU if you want to do business in Europe, what are you going to do? Learn 21+ languages? No, you learn English! You don’t have to speak English. But if you want to communicate with anyone outside of your country, you better.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 11:13 pm and is filed under , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.