The march of English yields surprising losers
Anthony Bolton, veteran star stock-picker at Fidelity International, is moving to Hong Kong to set up a China fund. He is following Michael Geoghegan, HSBC's chief executive, who has already announced he is moving from London to Hong Kong. “The centre of gravity is clearly shifting,” Mr Bolton says.
It certainly looks that way, although it is worth recalling that it was not that long ago that Japan was tipped to be the new number one. Economies have their ups and downs – look at Dubai.
What we can forecast with some confidence is that English will remain the world's leading language for as long as anyone reading these words is alive. Economies can tip into crisis, fund managers can switch their investments at the click of a button and executives can relocate to the other side of the world, but it takes a lot more to topple the global language.
If Mandarin – or Spanish, or Arabic – is to replace English as the world's lingua franca, children in São Paulo, St Petersburg and Auckland had better start learning it now. Forget all those advertisements promising you can learn a language in three months. You can't. You may be able to summon up a few phrases. Perhaps you could engage a taxi driver in a minute of conversation before you seize up.There are many ways to learn a language, but they all require years of graft, getting new words to stick, mastering grammatical forms and endlessly watching television and films until the indistinguishable babble separates itself into the odd word you recognise. It takes much of a lifetime to master a language and the world's pilots, seafarers, traders and academics have already devoted their best years to learning English. They would not relish the prospect of starting out again in, say, Portuguese or Hindi.
English will endure, but its predominance is throwing up some surprising winners and losers. A forthcoming British Council report, English Next India (I hope the Council can find a way of punctuating that before it comes out), says India may now have fewer English speakers than China.
This is an extraordinary outcome, given India's colonial past, the fluent English of its cricketers and its profusion of call centres providing train times and computer support to the English-speaking world.
The report points to various reasons why India's English has fallen behind China's. First, India's colonial heritage has left it with an ambivalent attitude to English, along with a desire to preserve local languages. Second, much Indian schooling is poor and the teaching of English is often inadequate.
This year, the government of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu asked the British Council to test the English-speaking skills of a group of primary teachers. The teachers had Bachelor of Arts degrees in English, which meant they were above the average. Yet, while most were able to make themselves understood, they made the sort of mistakes that cause misunderstandings. Very few had reached the level of English that would have allowed them to play an active role in a business meeting or academic seminar.
No one is sure how many Indians speak English. In one survey, over a third claimed to be able to. The consensus figure of those who really do is 5 per cent, although the Indian National Knowledge Commission this year put the proportion who speak it well at 1 per cent.
This is troubling because, the British Council report says, it is not only technology and outsourcing workers who will need English. If Indian tourism is to develop, taxi drivers and waiters will need it too.
The suggestion that the number of English speakers in China is higher than in India is an estimate, but it does indicate how much effort the Chinese are putting into learning English and how serious China is about becoming the world's leading economy. The report says that China's government schools are better-equipped than India's.
The key for any country that wants its children to learn English, the report says, is to start teaching them in the first years of primary school, to teach at least part of the secondary school curriculum in English and to provide some university courses in English or ensure that students can read English-language text books.
As English continues to sweep the world, there could be another set of losers: native English speakers. The rest of the world is not just learning English. It is becoming multilingual. International companies are already full of senior executives who manage in English, but speak Italian or Spanish or Urdu too. Even if only 1 per cent of Indians speak English well, that is still millions of bilingual or multilingual people for native English speakers to compete with.
Mr Bolton is a talented stock-picker, but he does not speak Chinese. Good luck to him.
谁是英语普及的受害者？
富达国际(Fidelity International)老牌明星基金经理安东尼•波顿(Anthony Bolton)准备移师香港，创立一只中国基金。他是在追随汇丰(HSBC)首席执行官纪勤(Michael Geoghegan)的脚步，后者已宣布将办公室从伦敦迁至香港。波顿表示：“重心显然在转移。”
情况看起来的确如此，不过值得一提的是，就在不久前，人们还预计日本可能成为新的老大。经济体有自身的起伏——这一点不妨看一看迪拜。
我们能够略带自信地预测，只要阅读这些文字的人还活着，英语就仍将是全球主要语言。经济体可能陷入危机，基金经理可能点击按钮来改变投资，高管们可能搬到地球的另一边去办公，但要想颠覆这种全球性的语言，难度要大得多。
如果说汉语（或西班牙语、阿拉伯语）将取代英语，成为世界上的通用语言，那么圣保罗、圣彼得堡和奥克兰的孩子们最好从现在就开始学习这种语言。别轻 信那些承诺能在3个月掌握一门语言的广告。你做不到。或许你能够说上几句。或许你可以与出租车司机聊上1分钟，然后就张口结舌了。 学 习语言有许多种方法，但它们都需要多年的磨练，记住新单词，掌握语法规则，不断看电视和电影，直到这些难以辨别的嘈杂之语变成一个个你所认识的词汇。要掌 握一门语言，需要花费人生中很大一部分时间。全世界的飞行员、海员、交易员和学者们已经将自己的黄金时期用于学习英语。他们不会愿意重新开始，再去学习葡 萄牙语或北印度语。 英语将经久不衰，但其主导地位正催生一些意料之外的赢家与输家。英国文化协会(British Council)即将发表的一份报告《English Next India》（我希望该协会能够在报告发表前找出加标点的方法）指出，现在印度讲英语的人可能没有中国多。 鉴于印度曾经是英国殖民地，板球运动员操着一口流利的英语，而且到处是向讲英语国家提供培训时间和计算机支持的客服中心，这是一个非同寻常的结果。 报告提到了印度说英语人数落后于中国的诸多原因。首先，印度的殖民地历史，使其在对待英语的态度上十分矛盾，同时它还希望保留当地语言。其次，大多数的印度学校教育落后，英语教学往往不足。 今年，印度泰米尔纳德邦政府请英国文化协会测试一组小学教师的英语口语技能。这些教师拥有英语专业的文学士学位，这意味着他们高于平均水平。然而， 尽管大多数人能够让人明白他们想说什么，但他们犯下了一些会引起人们误解的错误。很少有人能够达到在商务会议或学术会议上活跃发言的那种英语水平。 没有人确切知道有多少人印度人会说英语。在一项调查中，超过三分之一的印度人声称自己会说英语。人们的普遍看法是，真正会说英语的印度人比例约为 5%，不过今年印度国家知识委员会(Indian National Knowledge Commission)表示，流利使用英语的印度人比例为1%。 这种情况令人不安。因为英国文化协会报告指出，需要英语的不仅是技术人员和外包工人。要想发展印度的旅游业，出租司机和侍者也要会英语。 中国说英语人数高于印度的说法只是一个估计，但它的确说明了中国在推动英语学习方面是何等努力，以及对于成为全球领先经济体的目标是何等严肃。英国文化协会的报告认为，中国的公办学校条件好于印度。 报告认为，对于希望孩子学习英语的任何国家来说，关键是要在小学头几年开始教授英语，在中学至少开设部分英语课程，并提供大学英语教育，或保证学生能够阅读英语课本。 随着英语继续风靡全球，可能存在另一类输家：英国本土的说英语者。全球其它地区的人不只是在学习英语，他们正成为讲多种语言的人。跨国企业中已经到 处是用英语进行管理的高管，但他们也说意大利语、西班牙语或乌尔都语。对英国本土英语使用者来说，即使只有1%的印度人可以流利地说英语，也意味着自己不 得不与数百万双语或多国语言使用者进行竞争。 波顿是一位天才的基金经理，但他不会说汉语。祝他好运！ 译者/君悦
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