The Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama is bound to be controversial. The early news in the United States must have spoilt many a breakfast on the rabid Right, and the froth and foam would not have been from the morning espressos.
The Nobel Committee in awarding President Obama the prize for his “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples” would have been aware that their decision was not only hasty, but rather premature. It is likely the decision was more for his intentions, and an investment in future efforts. “We gave you the Peace Prize, now don’t backtrack, or cut deals that go against those hoping you deliver.” It is also possible that this was an attempt to give impetus to his peace attempts, keeping in mind how vicious and vociferous his opponents, especially at home, are becoming each time he takes a step.
But will ground realities allow President Obama to be worthy of the prize?
In Afghanistan he seems ready to up the ante in an ill-advised and immoral war. If terrorist actions by a group of citizens were justification for invading a country, then the deeds of past U.S. governments would have made the United States the most invaded country in the world.
Will Mr Obama be able to stare down a small number of West Bank settlers whose intransigence causes so much unrest in the world as they usurp land they can have no moral justification over?
True, the president’s actions in trying to build bridges to the rest of the world are a welcome change from the Texan gunslinger, and his Mephistophelian ‘pardner’ before him. Some wit has suggested that the award was more an indication of just how bad the previous administration was.
Many of us think that President Barack Obama is the most charismatic and exciting leader on the world stage and desperately want him to succeed.
But Mr Obama might just find out that making peace in the world is as difficult as making peace with the Republican Party.
The quadrennial circus that is the process of electing a U.S. president is upon us once again. It throws up all kinds of performers long on style, short on substance. Most of them, including the pundits and the press, are as profound as the pancake on their faces.
Two elections ago, with a sleight of hands that would have been the envy of any juggler, a clown was thrust upon the country, a midget in mind and morality. Like any raconteur he told the people many stories: about chatting to God every day and about weapons of mass destruction.
Now as this process marches on to Election Day the theatre of the absurd becomes even more ridiculous. The office being contested for is often referred to as the most powerful job in the world. Yet, listening to the issues being raised each day, one cannot help wondering whether this is just another episode of Trivial Pursuit.
Two issues regularly referred to, against one candidate, are race and experience.
This candidate is 50% black. So if he’s half black, he’s also half white. Why can’t he be referred to as white? Or biracial?
If being black is a crime, why don’t they come out and say it? Why don’t they come out and say discrimination and prejudice are bad things when practised elsewhere, but it’s O.K. when we do it. Everybody will understand, because most people already know who the world champions in hypocrisy are.
Being black was never an issue when a disproportionate number of black men were asked, or forced, to lay down their lives in the nation’s wars.
So is America ready to vote for a black man? Well if it isn’t, then shame on it. Spit on it!
The other issue being raised is of experience. The answer is simple. Since none of the candidates has been president before, neither has the experience. The incumbent has been president for almost eight years. Eight years later, not even his mother will say he is experienced.
Sometime ago I watched an interview with a senior, very articulate, Chinese official. At one point, in reply to a lop-sided question, he told the interviewer, “You westerners have the most breath-taking double standards”.
The recent Olympics have brought home to me how alive and kicking, these double standards are.
Remarks by a number of people I’ve met here, and reports in the western media, show how double standards have plunged to new depths of hypocrisy.
Prior to the Games, and during it, there was continuous criticism of Beijing’s security measures and the censorship. Nowhere was there the realization that tight security is inevitable nowadays at large, especially international, gatherings. Obviously, the authoritarian nature of Chinese society and the paranoia of its government, made such arrangements obvious to everybody. I remember reading about the U.S authorities having a tank posted outside one of the stadiums during the 1994 World Cup soccer. Even making allowances for football hooliganism, that was a bit of overkill.
Then there were the constant barbs about the training regimen of Chinese athletes, the use of professional performers for the opening and closing ceremonies (as if Olympic rules precluded these) and any number of other issues. Admiration for the performances of the Chinese sportsmen and women, or the organization and conduct of the Games, was always qualified with caveats about the oppressive nature of the government. The constant sniping about the cost of the Games made me wonder whether they had been asked to contribute to it. The Chinese, it seemed, could not do anything right.
Many articles criticized the lip-synching incident at the opening ceremony when a more ‘acceptable’ face was used instead of that of the little girl with the golden voice.
True, that incident like many other things that the Chinese government did, is doing, and will do, was deplorable. But who thought up playback singing, stage names, etc? In the world of make-believe and deceit few people are blameless.
The hypocrisy and meanness, or should it be madness, astounded me when some people kept hoping for a terrorist ‘incident’ that would disrupt the Games and embarrass the hosts. Shocking, shocking, shocking! Obviously, acts of violence against people one doesn’t like are acceptable.
‘Breath-taking double standards’, did we say? What an understatement!
Some of my friends wrote in about a previous post, ‘Biased Broadcasting Corporation’ saying that I was ignoring the fact of inferior Chinese quality.
I think they missed the point of that post. I was not denying that many Chinese products are very shoddy in quality. What I was trying to show was the one-sidedness of a telecast from a news corporation that has, or at least had, a reputation for balanced reporting. To devote 19 minutes of an approximately 25-minute news program to problems with Chinese-made toys in the U.S., when there were so many news stories of equal or more importance, seemed like a misplaced sense of priority. Or was it bias? Considering the spate in the number of recent reports on product quality from China, one could be forgiven for thinking that there is more to it than meets the eye.
Anyway, while there is no denying that many products coming out of China are of very poor quality, in some cases other people, not just the manufacturer, must share the blame for this.
While there are factories producing the ‘thirty-day wonder’ – if it lasts 30 days it’s a wonder – there are also factories producing top-of-the-range quality. Products coming out of these units are at par with anything elsewhere in the world. Even within the same factory the quality offered will depend on the price paid.
This is a fact ignored, or covered up, by China bashers and ignorant or biased journalists.
Many years ago when I was in business I made a trip to Australia to meet various buyers for my leather products. At one meeting with a big importer in Melbourne I was shown the product line that they were sourcing from China. The quality ranged from adequate to awful. Each item had ‘genuine leather’, or for additional snob value, vrai cuir or cuoio reale, embossed on it. The only genuine leather in each item was that particular part which carried the stamp. In most cases this was the most visible external component, while the rest of the product was made of imitation or synthetic leather. Often too, the leather portion was made from split, that part of the hide which is of poorest quality.
When I showed them samples of bags and small leather goods manufactured at my factory there was no reaction from some of the people in the room, while others remarked on the excellent quality. Then I gave them my prices and they were taken aback. I knew my products were being retailed at 10-15 times of what I was wholesaling them at.
They gave me sketches of a range that they would be running during Christmas that year and asked for samples and quotations. Weeks later we met again and they were very impressed both with quality and price. We waited for the boss, one of the persons who had shown no reaction at our first meeting, to arrive. When he came into the room he examined the goods and looked slyly at one of his assistants. He asked the prices and then told me that they were much too high. I knew that the price I was offering was at least a tenth of what they would eventually be retailed at but asked him what he thought the bags should cost.
He quoted prices that were 30% to 50% lower. I didn’t even bother to negotiate. I stood up, collected my samples and told him that he couldn’t afford my quality.
He tried to get back at me by saying that my prices were acceptable only for Italian products. I told him that I realised why quality manufacturers in India thought Australia, and the U.S., were the bottom end of the business.
That incident comes to mind nowadays when I read reports on ‘inferior’ Chinese quality.
The quality of products made in China depends on the prices that foreign buyers pay to the Chinese manufacturer.
Airbus and Boeing supposedly have Chinese suppliers for some aircraft parts. Surely they would not put passenger safety at risk by buying sub-standard components. I’ve just purchased an expensive iPod made in China. I’m sure Apple didn’t pay peanuts for that quality.
When many manufacturers closed down their factories in other countries and moved production to China, they did so to cut costs. Did they pass on those lower costs to the consumer? And in cutting costs did they turn a blind eye to cutting corners?
And what of the others who are culpable for the poor quality coming out of some Chinese factories. Most foreign buyers maintain well-to-highly paid quality control inspectors on site. In most cases to avoid compromise and corruption these inspectors are non-locals. Why weren’t they doing their job?
There are also other reasons when buyers accuse manufacturers of poor quality. Some of them are: products ordered have not clicked in the marketplace; competitors have similar products at lower prices; and the worst of all, trying to squeeze extra discounts from desperate suppliers with cash flow problems who are already operating on wafer-thin margins.
Once again Aaron..you have hit the nail on the head!
The buzz words in industry and commerce are now “downsizing”, “shareholder value”, profit maximizing”, just to name a few. The consumer / end-user does not even feature in this equation, except as a stupid consumer, tricked via “clever” marketing and “swanky” advertising into buying sub-standard products at a premium price.
China is currently in “focus” because of basic US fear that their entire manufacturing industry has slowly but steadily been relocated abroad – Mexico, China, India and even an erstwhile “enemy”…Vietnam.
As ABBA sang money, money, money….
PS Let’s just hope that these sub-standard Boeing parts aren’t installed in any planes that I board!
PPS Well argued and written…keep up the good work!
I agree Percy. People like Apple for example are producing all their products in China because it’s cheaper, but, they also insist the best top quality. I guess Mr. Job’s is paying the Chinese for their experience at making quality goods???? He makes a point of telling the press this when he is being bashed by the press for getting Apple’s products made in China. I must say that the Chinese can produce top quality goods if they are paid good money. It is a human fact of life – if you are paid well you produce better quality.
For all your readers out there, a “must read” book…
The State of the American Empire – How the USA Shapes the World, by Stephen Burman
(University of California Press, Myriad Editions, 2007)
Deals basically with “the militarisation and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.”
When people die suddenly, especially if they are young, we generally tend to speak well of them. Maybe that is how it should be.
However, the eulogies to Benazir Bhutto have been quite over the top. Fact is being mixed with large dollops of fiction.
The West says that she was a democrat. I think that their understanding of the term is rather different from mine. Benazir Bhutto wouldn’t have recognized democracy if it had gone up to her and introduced itself.
As prime minister of Pakistan she was as allergic to democracy as most Pakistani rulers have been, before and after her. She showed no respect for the country’s democratic institutions undermining even the judiciary. She treated members of the Pakistani People’s Party like servants in a feudal household and allowed her husband to get away with even greater excesses. As prime minister she was an expert in playing both sides against the middle and all sides against everybody. She encouraged fundamentalism when it suited her and rubbished it when it didn’t. She made deals with Musharraf, her devil, because of her lust for power and her belief in her ability to eventually outsmart him. That she thought she was the destiny of her country was supreme arrogance.
They say she was a modern woman. She was modern when travelling abroad, feudal back in Pakistan.
They say she was intelligent. But she wasn’t intelligent enough to realize, that in her country at least, being close to the U.S. was the kiss of death.
For a ‘democrat’ there were too many allegations of culpability in some murders, including those of her brothers.
And then there was the matter of the corruption; mountains and mountains of it.
In an impoverished country with foreign currency restrictions how did she get the money to afford the lavish lifestyle of holidays in the South of France, Switzerland and other snob destinations?
When she was investigated for corruption she often claimed that these were politically motivated. What did she say when these investigations were conducted by government agencies in the West?
She could hardly have been married to Mr. Ten-per-cent without being, at least, Mrs. Something-per-cent. When she insisted to reporters that her husband was clean, she was probably talking about his hygiene.
Press reports say that in her will, drawn up a few days before she returned to Pakistan, she wrote that if anything happened to her, her husband was to lead the PPP. Obviously, this ‘democrat’ hadn’t heard the term ‘party elections’.
This act – assuming the will wasn’t another fraud by Mr. Ten-per-cent – was one more indication of the contempt she had for her party, her people and her country.
The BBC program ‘Bloody Cartoons’ made interesting watching, not least for the double standards it exposed on both sides of the divide.
Some time ago the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten, carried some cartoons featuring a bearded person. To me he looked like Ali Baba’s father-in-law having a bad day. But bigots on both sides chose to assume that the character portrayed there was the Prophet Mohammed. Each side had its own agenda for such an interpretation.
The cartoons went unnoticed outside of Denmark until a Muslim cleric brought it to the notice of the Muslim world. About half a year later the manufactured ‘outrage over the insult’ resulted in widespread destruction of Danish and other western property in some Islamic countries.
None of the leaders, or any of their followers being exhorted to kill westerners, had even seen the cartoons. But that was irrelevant. The prejudices of one side were being matched by the ignorance of the other.
The presenter of the program interviewed a number of people on both sides including the Danish prime minister. Some of the Muslims interviewed were emphatic that insults to their religion, and especially blasphemy against the Prophet, would not be tolerated.
There was no mention of the blasphemy, intolerance and persecution that some Muslims practise against people of other faiths. There was no mention of the daily risks to life and limb, often institutionalised in many Islamic countries, for people belonging to other religions. There was no mention of the fact that some Muslims would willingly deny to other religions those rights that they demand for themselves. And there was no mention of the fact that in their adopted countries some of them seek to impose the very restrictions that they have fled from. They are oblivious to their distortions of Islam and the shame they bring upon their co-religionists.
On the other hand, the resolve to defend the freedom of speech sounded equally hypocritical.
The cartoonist and other people interviewed, mainly Danish and French, talked of the need to defend freedom of expression. But would such a claim stand up to scrutiny?
The western media has a long history of ignoring, glossing over or biased reporting on issues that are not part of their agenda. There have been instances galore in the western press where stories critical of Israel and her illegal occupation of Palestinian lands have been suppressed. In the United States, that so-called bastion of free speech, reporters, columnists and academics have seen their careers destroyed for daring to have a balanced view of the situation in the Middle East.
In the BBC program one of the Muslims interviewed tendentiously wondered why, if freedom of expression was so sacrosanct, did some countries have laws to prevent any questioning of the Holocaust? The line of reasoning was sick but correct.
The Danish premier who had earlier defended the right of freedom of expression suddenly lost his ardour for free speech when there was talk of boycotting Danish products in the Middle East. His principles, it turned out, weren’t in his heart or his head, but in his wallet.
Liberalism is very often a point of view we take when our vested interests are not at stake. Similarly, freedom of the press is often freedom for the owners and editors to publish what does not affect their profits.
“If your GOD is WEAK he (definitely a HE) needs all the help he can get….”
Monotheism amongst all the “isms” is the most dangerous and intolerant “ism”. Simply because the fight always starts with “my god is the ONLY true GOD”…and the rest of you are infidels, goyim or unbelievers.
I recommend all your esteemed readers to beg, borrow, steal or buy (last resort) Prof. Richard Dawkin’s last book “The God Delusion”.
And may YOUR god go with you…
Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, appears to be a thoroughly odious man, and it is a pity that he ‘won’ the election. But it’s fair to say that if there are more poor Iranians than rich ones, and that they were his electoral base, then he actually did win the elections. While it can be argued that not all the poor voted for him, it can also be said that not all the rich or middle-classes or westernized Iranians voted against him. Any alleged rigging only increased the margins.
So, no matter how unpleasant the victor is, he is still the winner.
The situation is somewhat similar to that which exists in Thailand; though the big difference is that in one of these countries the army is behind the incumbent.
The coverage in the international media has been so one-sided that it disregards this. Images on TV have been so manipulative focusing only on opposition supporters with little or no coverage of the other side.
Sadly, it will appear, the Iranians are in for a long period of turmoil which is neither good for them, or for the region.
The people of this troubled nation will continue to pay the price for the long history of outside meddling in their internal affairs. Another country cursed by its oil wealth.
(Published in the Bangkok Post, Monday 29 June 2009)
(Note: This short story got me more rejection slips than all my other writing combined. One editor wrote me a personal note that he loved it but couldn’t understand how it could fit into his magazine’s fiction section. It also got me two job offers from national magazines. Years later, it was read by a psychotherapist, who asked me if it was really fiction. He asked permission to use it in a psychotherapy seminar at the University of Chicago.)
Today is my twenty-fifth birthday. Being the silver jubilee of my existence on earth, I guess it ought to be a particularly significant day for me. But I feel that I’ve already lived twenty-five years too long.
I’m having a massive attack of depression, which in itself is not unusual, only this one is the most severe, ever. Have you ever experienced one? If not, you have no idea how fortunate you are. Believe me, it’s terrible. I don’t know about depression in others, but I suppose each one has his or her own experiences. And if they’re anything like the ones I get, you have my deepest sympathy. Felicity of language could never explain adequately, the intense misery.
It’s like you’re going down a narrow mine shaft and that feeling of sinking is worse because you’re descending into total darkness. You are drowning slowly but dare not cry for help because others might hear you and laugh at you in your predicament. You are suffocating but dare not shout out for it will only invite ridicule. Huge hands knead your heart as if it were of Plasticine. Two gigantic plates start to crush your skull but at the last moment ease off the pressure. Starting again and suddenly stopping. Crush, relax, crush, relax. All above you people are rushing past oblivious to the peril you are in. You try to choke a cry, fail and start sobbing uncontrollably. You hate yourself for the show of weakness but are unable to do anything about it. You are creeping towards that line that divides sanity from insanity and are terrifyingly aware of it.
Life can be miserable, and boring too when it’s in a shambles. It’s especially worse when you’re one of those types that is unwilling to fight your way out of the rut because you like wallowing in self-pity. You think sensitivity is a good thing, that it’s essential for creativity. And martyrdom too. And since in this case sensitivity is being kicked in the teeth you allow it to happen again and again. You force yourself to be aware of the feelings of others and not of your own; which is being thin-skinned in a cock-eyed way. And if you are the romantic or emotional type and women play an important role in your life, you get kicked ever so often. This is not to suggest that women are poison but the very nature of man-woman relationships makes the chances of having an ideal partnership as remote as winning the jackpot or writing a bestseller.
Occasionally you do get the chance to kick back but those you kick do not deserve it and those who deserve it, kick you first. I think of the woman who still obsesses me and it hurts to think that she now probably considers me just an episode in her past. That is if she even remembers me. I remember the woman who loves me, ‘a hundred million, billion times and if there’s anything more than that, I love you that too,” and I’m sorry that I cannot reciprocate. It’s really one large, vicious and unhappy circle.
I’ve been kicked a number of times recently; good and proper. Each time I’ve taken a sanctimonious and martyred attitude and come back for more. I got my last dose only yesterday. The emotional hangover I’ve got explains this depression I’m having on this twenty-fifth birthday of mine.
I know how to spite her, how to make her suffer! I’ll commit suicide. When she hears about it she’ll be filled with remorse. So will anybody who has ever done me a wrong turn. But then I realise that I will only be cutting off my nose to spite my face. And when she hears about it her reaction will be typical, “poor sod”, or more likely, “stupid sod.” So I try to take my mind off such morbid thoughts by thinking about something else. Anything else.
I look at the papers and see that the witch hunt is gathering momentum. I hope that Mrs Gandhi gets what she deserves for all the unhealthy precedents she has created. I read about the present leaders, who claim that they have no personal scores to settle, but aren’t doing a good job of masking their thirst for revenge. I read about the antics of some of our ministers and wonder if they constitute a central cabinet or national circus. My mind wanders to their policy of prohibition and think, “What nerve! who are they to impose their whims on others?” I wonder how many paying lip service to this cause, will actually practise it in private. I’m willing to bet that liquor will not be any more difficult to obtain. I think of their desire to impose Hindi throughout the country and I remember my experiences in railway stations in Patna, Varanasi and Allahabad. In those bastions of Hindi, I with my limited knowledge of the language have had to patiently read the timetables to those who spoke the vernacular fluently. There are statistics, fudged I’m sure, that show Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India and I wonder what percentage are literate in it.
I am touring Rajasthan and today I’m in Udaipur. Beautiful Udaipur!
The Rajputs seem to have had a glorious past but I cannot help feeling that a good portion of their history is sheer legend. Public spirit must have something to sustain it, even if only tales of valour.
I notice that there are fewer beggars to be seen in this state than in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
What interests me are the Rajasthani women, with their shapely figures. I feel that if the peasant women were only more feminine, they would have been a very comely lot. Their blouses are so short that they cover only half their breasts and when they carry anything on their heads, which is often, the blouses ride up to their necks. I am amused to note that in spite of this, their faces remain covered all the time.
Thinking of women, my mind comes back to the woman I love who does not love me anymore; to the woman who is the cause of this king-size depression that I’m having on this twenty-fifth birthday of mine. I sit and brood, longing for her. Suddenly I get a brain wave. I know, or at least I think I know, how I can forget her.
And I stuff some money into my pocket as I make my way in search of a brothel.
Robert Patnicroft’s letter (Saturday, 11 June 2005) made absurd reading.
He seems unaware that Thai students find any strong accent confusing. Some Indian accents (and there are many aside from those caricatured on TV or in the movies) are difficult to understand but so are many British, American and the typical Australian one too.
What the Thai authorities should be concentrating on is hiring educated teachers with neutral or “international accents”.
To state that the quality of teaching will deteriorate if teachers from the subcontinent are hired, smacks of racism. I am sure that he is aware that many of the westerners teaching in Thailand are semi-literate or poorly educated and have managed to get jobs as teachers solely because the Thais have a complex and look up to anybody, especially a white man, who knows a little more English than they do. In my opinion, hiring teachers from the subcontinent would improve the level of education and ensure that students in Thailand are not shortchanged. One of the main reasons for the poor standards of English in the country is that the Thais have not been very discerning about the quality of the people they hire, very often choosing people who would be unemployable anywhere else in the world.
Further, Mr Patnicroft states that it is an indictment of the level of funding if the educational system cannot afford native speakers of English. This clearly shows that he does not know the meaning of native speaker. A native speaker of English would be somebody whose principal or sole language is English. Some educationists define it as the language one speaks before the age of seven. In either case, there are millions of such people in India.
I wonder if Mr Panticroft is aware that an increasing number of teachers from the sub-continent are being recruited to teach in the U.S, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. And if he cares to switch on some of the international news channels on TV, he will find many newsreaders from the subcontinent.
It seems to me, that Mr Panticroft is worried that the days are numbered for those westerners, who with little or no skills, have managed to dupe themselves into jobs as “teachers” of English.
Couldn’t agree with you more on this one.
However, I am certain, that this applies not only to Thailand but to most other Asian countries as well, especially Japan, China and Korea, just to name a few. Globalisation and the dominance of English has somehow given many cause for concern and a reliance on so called “native English speakers”.
You are spot on. Very often teachers who are non-native speakers of the language make better teachers because they can relate to the difficulties students face in learning English. If teaching pronunciation is a problem the there is no shortage of tapes and other listening material in the market
I could write volumes on this topic…and will perhaps eventually do. I’ve now been around on this England-USA circuit rubbing shoulders with ‘qualified’, ‘half-qualified’ and ‘poorly-qualified’ academics who parade ‘English’ and really leave a lot to be desired in terms of knowledge or delivery. But the British Pound is strong and the American Dollar still holds sway, with the Euro fast catching up and the Australian and Canadian Dollars travelling places in those ‘western’ concentric circles. Somewhere along the line ‘colour’ interferes and then the image gets blurred…
Colour takes over and you are just made to believe!!!
Money and colour are two dangerous bed-fellows, but strangely today they dominate a world of show; not too many days back, our own great ‘Ponting’ made quite a show of ‘coloured’ aggression, and he’s nearly got away with it!
Language is a skill, an art. it is not related to any one species. the sub-continent speakers (you have rightly pointed out) would perhaps bring in education, and English alongside. Many of our ‘bright-coloured’ brethren perhaps only get the flip side of the need.
More on this another time…heaps of experiences to recount. but lest you should generalise….there are some good ones, and some really good ones, among all that host of experimenters…who almost by accident claim affinity to the ‘native English’ clan.
I’d like to write more about also how Indian English should move forward with improved usage and diction. Maybe use more of ‘Cobuild’ and ‘Daniel Jones’ and less of ‘desi’ experiments.
CNN-IBN and NDTV need a makeover in language. I’d be willing to help out.
I think another few points to add to this debate are the questions of, “Why are the students learning English”, and “What is English?” They could sound like absurd questions, but in fact they aren’t.
The first point regarding the WHY is extremely important. Are the students learning English in order to travel to an English country, and in that case which? Are they learning English for business purposes, and in this case, who will they be using their English with? Americans? Indians? Japanese, Italians? In all of these cases, in order to learn expediently, should the students therefore be exposed to the style of English spoken in their target area, or should they be taught a more international English?
Which leads me to my next point, what exactly is English? A mix of languages that was given birth to on a very small island and then exported overseas. Native and proficient speakers alike know the inherent flexibility that exists in English, there is no official academy that dictates what is correct English or not and even the Oxford dictionary appears to be loosening its mothball ridden criteria, though surely more for economic reasons than academic.
Prejudice against speakers of one style of English doesn’t only exist in Asia but here in Europe where I teach as well. I constantly come across learners with the ingrained idea that for some reason British English is the ‘real’ English. What does this mean? That hundreds of millions of people using the language around the world are somehow using a pirated version?
My point being, the English that should be taught is the one that the particular teacher uses and is most comfortable with. Learners only stand to benefit from being exposed to the broad spectrum that is English and hopefully motivate them with the realization that it is indeed the world’s language now. Debates around this topic will then hopefully migrate to the more important issues that affect the English teaching profession, those of qualifications and methodology. A native speaker is not a teacher for the simple fact that s/he speaks the language. A teacher is someone with the tools to guide learners with the most efficiency possible.
Early one morning in Vientiane I was on my daily walk in the square in front of Wat That Luang, Laos’ iconic stupa, when a man sidled up to me.
‘Excuse me, what your name?’ he asked. I told him, ‘oh, very good, very good,’ he replied.
I asked him his name and he answered.
‘What your job?’
‘I’m a teacher,’ I replied.
‘Very good, very good,’ he said.
I asked him what he did, and he told me that he taught Lao at the National University of Laos.
Despite his limited English, he was friendly and I thought I’d take the opportunity to practise my Lao. I asked him a question but in fractured English he told me that he wanted to practise his English. I was sure he was having trouble understanding my mutilations of his very tonal language.
As we passed a group of joggers he asked at the top of his voice, ‘where you live?’
‘In Ban Nongbone,’ I replied.
‘Very good, very good,’ he repeated. ‘You married?’ he continued.
‘No, I’m not,’ I said.
‘Very good, very good,’ he exclaimed. ‘You have girlfriend?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I smiled.
‘Very good, very good,’ he answered.
He was about chest high and so I lengthened my strides and quickened my pace to get away from this very limited conversation but he trotted alongside me.
‘Girlfriend yours, she is Lao?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Very good, very good,’ he repeated. ‘She is beautiful?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very good, very good,’ he panted, struggling to keep up with me.
‘Excuse me, your father what he do, he teacher too?’ he asked breathlessly.
The story “very good” is funny , but if we look the other way that is pity of his poor English. I think he tried to practise his English with a foreigner. Yes, he is teacher in university, but he has less chance to speak/communicate with foreigner (speak English)
Ohhh it’s good experience about you and him. This story teaches me that everybody should have confidence. Don’t be shy to speak the language you’re learning . Although your language or pronunciation may be wrong, it’s okay. Try again and again and learn from mistakes.
I read the article and I agree that
speaking other’s language can be very difficult, to understand and
to communicate with others. Sometimes there are funny conversations and
sometimes there are not.
Thanks Percy! It was described a lots of local Lao Education by the vocabulary that we handle less than we should know. Laotian are always friendly, we’re interested to speak with foreigner to improve English skills.
In my opinion, I would like to say he’s very good, very good to try and don’t be shy to speak up even it wasn’t good enough but he was worked for it.
This story describes the situation when beginners practice a new language. Usually we are interested but shy to show our English skills especially at speaking, In this situation, I would like to say he was very good, very good in not being afraid to practice his English with a foreigner. I’m sure that he will improve his skills by learning from his mistakes.
Learning languages is difficult especially for the beginner. It seems that he has a quite low level of English but he is eager to practice it in any situation.
Anyway, very good very good
This story is very funny. I think i was in his situation many years ago but that is the only way to practice speaking with foreigners but it’s very funny that he always answers ”very good , very good”
The story ‘very good very good’ is very funny ! I like it. This man is trying to practice communicating with a foreigner, I think is a good way to practice English by not being shy but we need to understand the meaning because sometimes it’s not funny at all.
The story is really funny. But I can see if we can only reply “very good” that will make conversation uncomfortable. I think in future this man will develop more and more.
I’ve observed that this is a very common interaction among locals and foreigners, which I think is a very good thing. It should happen more often. It indicates that nowadays locals are not afraid or intimidated by foreigners anymore. Although his vocabulary was very limited he did not hesitate to start a conversation. When situations and interactions like this happen it makes me happy, as I am aware that people, especially youth, often make fun of each other because of accents, etc. I strongly dislike this as it discourages learners. I’m very glad that people are more open and accepting of others now.
Wow Laos 