[Mount Athos]

Maybe we could encourage the spread of Ebonics to foreign countries.

[Jaysun]

This is nonsense.

[Vince Ferrer]

I live this article.

[dead]

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
- Yogi Berra

[Cronos]

"The competitive advantage of speaking English is ebbing away," said the author of the report, linguistic consultant David Graddol. "Once everyone speaks English, advantage can only be maintained by having something else -- other skills, such as speaking several languages.

Nearly all Indians are trilingual -- speaking the two National languages -- Hindi and English and the regional language (e.g. Kashmiri, Haryanvi, Punjabi, Marathi, Rajathani, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Konkani, Oriya, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Tulu, Sikkimese, Naga, Assamese, Mizo, Manipuri etc.) and sometimes a 4th: their own dialect (can be one of the others listed above or another one of the 800 odd languages in India)

[AlexW]

English is, becoming the international language.
I am teaching English conversation to Slovaks, and also
have 5 French, one Italian executive, and one Korean, all living here in Bratislava.
In the Communist days, English was discouraged and not offered in normal schools. German was the only western language available, as it was the business language, and
the Communist held East Germany.

It is hard to find people over 30 in these countries that
can speak any English, but most all children are learning.

I might note, my French students are the worst with their
knowledge of English.

[billybudd]

is now beginning to undermine the competitiveness of both nations,

I don't think so.

monolingual English graduates "face a bleak economic future"

Really? What language is *replacing* English as the global language?

Boy, now I know how Reuters reporters come up with their stories. They take a dump in the morning.

[kb2614]

Hah!! Let's fix them and start speaking Latin!!! That should screw things up nicely!

;-)