Tag Archives: Arabic

The British Metro came with a hilarious article a mere 12 hours ago. The quote is not enough; it already starts with the title. With: ‘British children aren’t learning foreign languages after the Brexit vote‘ is just too funny. We can clearly state that they were not learning foreign languages before Brexit either. To be more precise, not for decades! And, why should they? Now, let’s be fair, there is a benefit to learning languages. For the Dutch it is essential, because only the Dutch (and perhaps the Flemish) can understand the Dutch. So they (me in my youth) got to learn German, French and English in our first year of secondary school. I dropped French in favour of Physics and continued. In the years that followed I learned a few more languages, and as such I can get by across the planet. It was only in Asia where I learned that English is not a language that was used much, yet until that moment, I had learned that nearly everyone spoke English (except the Americans, they have a weird variation on it). So from that point of view, and when you see “The council claims the lack of language skills is holding back international trade performance by nearly £50 billion each year and worries there could be a gulf once the UK leaves the EU“, I merely reply that I want to see evidence here! I want that the British council to show actual data proving this, because at present, the British council is showing to be a joke. This joke is personified in Schools advisor Vicky Gough who stated “At a time when the UK is preparing to leave the European Union, I think it’s worrying that we’re facing a language deficit“, well Vicky, for your information the Brits have always been language deficit since before World War 1, so we can agree that your logic is faulty at best. This is followed by “And I think without tackling that, we stand to lose out both economically, but also culturally. So I think it’s really important that we have a push for the value of languages“, I will agree that she has a case on the cultural side. There has always been a cultural benefit to knowing languages that much we can all agree on. But in this day and age, should we focus on the local languages (German, French and Spanish), or should we concentrate on the global economic area languages (Hindu, Chinese, Arabic and Japanese)? That is a much harder consideration to make. You see do you cater to your local setting or are you catering to a workforce to become global. This is not an easy question to answer, because the planet is in flux and what is now wisdom might be folly in 5 years, so after 6 years to truly have linguistic skills in some areas; those areas are no longer viable as international players, so how does that pan out? So when we see “A report by the British Council claims Spanish, Mandarin, French, Arabic and German are the top five languages the UK will need post-Brexit“, my view seems to be correct, yet in what setting? The Spanish only speak Spanish (for the most), so why adhere to that side? So why would the UK need German and French? Most of them speak English and hiring a foreign national in your company is likely cheaper and more productive, that is if you have quality business with that nation, if not, why bother? At that point, the article comes with an interesting view “One pupil studying Mandarin at London’s Alexandra Park School said: ‘We can’t just presume that countries are going to learn our language, because if we don’t do the work why should they?’” It is a good point, but those people also realise that Mandarin is one of the most complex languages in the world and if you are not born in that environment you start with a large disadvantage. Now, there are plenty of reasons to study Mandarin and learn the language, but on the premise that it might lead to a job is long term folly, taking the language up when you are to be in China, perhaps even after you arrive makes a lot of sense, perhaps more sense. Now, we can see that the only way to do business in Saudi Arabia is to learn Arabic and plenty of brits trying to make quick bucks are up to the challenge, but that nation has its own set of rules, customs and culture and those all need to be taken in, merely learning the language will not get you there, so in my view, not only is the article to some part a joke, it is merely another jab at giving stress in relation to Brexit. So, until Metro publishes clear evidence from the British council that the UK is missing out on 50 billion, the entire matter is hilarious and folly at best.

And it is merely one of several articles. the Guardian with ‘Britain’s tired old economy isn’t strong enough for Brexit‘, Computer Weekly with ‘We must avoid the Brexit risks to London’s tech community‘, and Clean Technica with ‘Current State Of Brexit Likely To Leave UK Environment Worse Off‘, all fearmongering, and Social Europe is giving the people: ‘Reversing Brexit: Legal Route Via Vienna Convention‘. Social Europe is actually setting the premise to protect bankers and the IMF. I have not seen such levels of what I regard to be deceptive and naive conduct since the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who stated on September 30th 1938 that the British people would have “Peace in our Time“. Do you remember what happened after that? In the end, on the Allied side alone, up to 3.7% of a population of 2.3 billion ended up dead, both military and civilian, excluding 7 million Germans and 26 million Russians. I think that fearmongering and the naive approach to all this needs to stop.

It was never said that there was not going to be a hard time, but it seems to me that the financial sector has now become so afraid of losing the ability to fulfil their greed driven needs that they are using every media outlet to spread the fear and see if they can get a recount whilst getting at least 4% into the Bremain group.

In all this, the Guardian article makes a decent point, but does so by keeping certain parts unmentioned. With: “Manufacturers were unable to make things cheaply, reliably or efficiently enough against the headwind of a high-value currency, forcing many to give up. An economy that boasted 20% of its income coming from manufacturing in the 1980s found it was the source of barely 10% at the beginning of this decade” they are telling you the truth, but they do not tell you that opposing this were China, India and Japan, with almost no labour laws, whilst both India and China had no protection for child labour, so these nations made goods with 90% less costs, giving them a large advantage. Even now, in 2000 some sources gave us that there were approximately 11,500,000 children at work between the ages of 10 to 14 in China. This violates article 32 of the Convention of Rights of The Child. So if the Guardian article was being fair, why not mention these parts that clearly impact it all in a negative way?

So as we see the linguistical joke that Metro brought and the additional articles that raises questions as they go overboard not mentioning things, we need to consider why such presentations are not clearly shown by the media. Even the IMF is involved in all this, whilst their prediction have been wrong regarding the UK three times, so should they be given any level of reliability as they try to downgrade the UK, whilst upgrading the other European Nations for 2018? I know that this might be a hard year for the UK, yet as the stimulus train called ‘the Draghi Disaster‘ is running its final stage, the moment that ends, will spell even harsher environments for Europe and particularly France who could see a downturn of their economy for 0.5%-0.75%, this implies that they will barely be above 0% for the three years that follow. In this I might be equally wrong. Even as France24 (at http://www.france24.com/en/20180122-macron-hosts-140-business-leaders-versailles-investment-france-economy), predicts “Economic growth has been forecast to rise to 1.9 percent in 2018 by the central bank”, which is already slightly too positive. Even as it books the Toyota move into the positive, France will soon realise that at this point Toyota is likely to push for additional rebates beyond the 25% corporation tax (as is Microsoft for 4 new data centres), which will closer to the end of this tax year will show up in the news as ‘unfortunate bad news on the economy due to a miscalculation’, it is not the first time and the French are not the first to do this. Yet in that, we can see that the IMF boast is overly positive towards Europe, implying that the view from that point shows the UK economy as stated to be overly negative. I personally see it as another ploy to undermine Brexit that could bite them in much harsher ways down the track, if the media is actually able to show some balls standing up to large corporations.

So even if I see the linguistic joke as a large one, there is no denying that France is clearly opening its doors to certain people and in only that moment there is a sense of truth in the words Vicky Gough, yet what is equally not given is that this is the first time since I started my first job in 1979 that such a view is given by France. With the graying population they are not the only ones doing that and as such the working population will make a drastic change, I cannot predict how it will filter out for France, but at least Emmanuel Macron is making active changes to an ancient unyielding protocol and that might be the best news of all for France, that alone could spell my realistic numbers to be slightly less positive than the actual numbers will turn out to be.