Younger and younger

When out cycling around my Tokyo suburb I sometimes see a group of small children playing in the park with their teacher. Most of them look Japanese, but he looks European. And they all chatter away in English. They are from a pre-school popular not only with the small number of foreign parents in my locality but also with many Japanese who hope their kids will grow up to be bilingual.

It was not until this year that English classes were officially introduced into the Japanese elementary school curriculum, after many years of experiments and debate about whether this would mean too much work for children and teachers alike. But increasing numbers of parents are circumventing the standard education system by finding opportunities for their children to learn English. In 2006 it is estimated that 21% of Japan’s five-year-olds were taking private lessons. Are their parents’ expectations realistic?

Yuko, a Tokyo housewife who tries to teach her daughter basic English after she comes home from elementary school, feels Japan’s education system is in crisis and wants her child to have chances that she never had because of her own poor English - including the possibility of going to an overseas university. Doubts about Japanese higher education are growing as the decline in the birth-rate forces many universities to lower standards in order to compete for fewer and fewer students. But for Akiko, an elementary schoolteacher, Yuko’s views are unrealistic. Teaching English to young children means either increasing total classroom hours or reducing time spent on other subjects. And she worries that ability to read and write Japanese will decline.

Almost everyone knows of some child picking up two or more languages quite easily by being in a multilingual environment. But the evidence that young kids learn languages much more easily than older ones is not as clear as many people think. One of the strongest factors in language acquisition is the amount of exposure. It is rare for older children, let alone adults, to be able to immerse themselves in another language because they have so many activities in their lives. But if they did, perhaps they could learn quickly too.

Many other Asian countries have been much more enthusiastic about early English. In the major cities of China and Taiwan, children start the language from grade one, and those parents who can afford it have their kids in private English classes from much younger – a practice that is increasingly common in Saudi Arabia too, where state schools don’t offer English until age ten. In South Korea, where English starts in the third grade at state schools, 74% of children get a head start by taking private lessons in the 1st and 2nd grade. There are even English DVDs for babies. In a survey conducted by Park Yaku of Gyeonggi National University of Education, over a third of parents of 1st- and 2nd-graders said they spent $60 – 100 a month on these classes. Significantly, parents said they would be likely to spend even more on private English if the government carries out plans to introduce the language from the 1st grade. “It’s not that I’m so crazy about English,” one young father told me. “I just don’t have much choice. If I don’t send my son [to private English classes] he’ll fall behind the others.”

The killer language

Finnish linguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas describes languages that spread at the expense of others as killer languages. She calls English "the biggest killer of them all". Languages by themselves cannot kill, but the people who learn and teach them can (usually unintentionally) kill off the culture and ideas of people who speak other languages.

According to UNESCO, one third of the world's 7000 languages are in danger. British linguist David Crystal estimates that one dies every two weeks. By the end of this century perhaps half of our current languages will have disappeared. While many languages are dying, English is growing. Another British linguist, David Graddol, claims that nearly a third of Asians already use it on a daily basis. But how strong is the link between the growth of English and the death of other languages?

On the one hand we have the example of the United States, where 53 local languages have disappeared since 1950. Another example is Australia, where hundreds of Aboriginal languages have been lost and many Aborigines speak only English. On the other hand, languages are disappearing in non-English-speaking countries too. Thousands of people are abandoning their traditional languages in Indonesia and India in favour of Indonesian and Hindi. In Japan, almost everyone speaks Japanese now and very few speak Ainu or Okinawan any longer. Nashi in southwest China, and Lisu in northern Thailand, are in danger from the spread of Chinese and Thai.

Another reason to question the idea of English as a killer language is the prevalence of bilingualism. If someone starts speaking English it does not mean they stop speaking other languages. However, while most of the world's people are indeed bilingual, in practice it is very difficult for small languages to compete with big ones.

Take Bidayuh. Spoken by 200,000 people in East Malaysia, where 140 primary schools have Bidayuh-speaking teachers, the language should not be in danger. But it is. It is neither a medium of instruction nor a school subject – partly because there are hardly any books in Bidayuh and there is no standard form that all its speakers understand. Children grow up studying in Malay and English. They may use Bidayuh in their village but have little need for it after moving to towns for work. When their grandparents die they often stop using it altogether.

For linguists, language death is tragic. Different languages give us different ways of describing the world. But most people are less interested in preserving their grandparents' language than in teaching their children languages that help them get jobs. History shows us that languages grow, change, recede and finally die. Few have lasted for more than a thousand years. Some dying languages undergo a process of revival, such as Israel's national language, Hebrew. But Bidayuh has no nation or religion behind it and is not used in newspapers or on television.

English may not be a cold-blooded killer, but it is not completely innocent. The main reason for the disappearance of so many languages nowadays is economic globalisation, and the main language of globalisation is English. Many English speakers themselves are monolingual and fail to understand the problems of people who speak small languages. Sri Lankans call English kadda (sword) because it is a useful and powerful weapon. But like many swords, it is double-edged.