"Don Phillipson" <d.phillipsonSPAMBLOCK@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> From mediaeval times until 1970 or 1980, it was generally accepted
> that every scholar must have at least a good reading knowledge of
> two or more other languages than his mother-tongue. High school
> graduation usually required proof by examination of competence in at
> least one such language
I realize that you're writing from an officially bilingual country,
but has this ever (at least in the 20th century) really been the case
elsewhere, at least in the sense of "if you don't pass this test you
don't graduate"? I certainly don't remember my parents talking about
any such requirement.
There may have been, and still are, requirements that students take
clases in foreign languages, but not that any useful level of
competence be demonstrated.
You'll be happy to know, I'm sure, that well over half of my son's
public elementary school's students are getting intensive instruction
in a language other than their mother tongue and will be expected to
demonstrate a rather substantial degree of competence in it. My son,
alas, doesn't qualify for this status, having learned English as his
first language.
> and the PhD degree required proof of at least two. These
> qualifications were generally abandoned late in the 20th century:
> but the idea survives, that scholar****p requires competence in
> languages.
Which, of course, brings up the reason that it was expected that
scholars be able to read and write in other languages: those other
languages were the lingua francas of academic (and commercial)
discourse. Today, that discourse is overwhelmingly in English, so
there's less draw to other languages (and more draw to people with
other mother tongues learning English).
In my own field, I can't think of a single im****tant book or paper
from the last twenty or so years that was first widely published in a
language other than English. Internationally, the conferences and
journals that "matter" are all English-language. Now, clearly, that
won't last forever, but I don't think I'd want to bet serious money on
when it will change or what will supplant it.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum
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