Celebrate National Punctuation Day by Testing Your Knowledge
TIME | 24 September 2015
Commentary by Ms. Theary C. Seng
Excerpts:
Several attributes contribute to the language
deficit in Cambodia and other developing countries.
Third, the policymakers in education tend to function in a developed language (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, German, etc), usually English, and thus their entry point into education policymaking is too advanced.
Third, the policymakers in education tend to function in a developed language (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, German, etc), usually English, and thus their entry point into education policymaking is too advanced.
One of the development sectors normally associated with language is formal education. Currently, when education policies in developing countries like Cambodia are developed and implemented they tend to focus on physical infrastructure of schools, books, transportation or access for girls and teachers’ salaries. What is completely taken for granted and amiss is the focus on functionality, comprehension, and ease of reading of the local language.
Understandably so.
The local elites who are policymakers tend to be knowledgeable of either
English or French, and unconsciously, fluidly use the second more developed
language for higher education and refined thinking. In many of these societies, Cambodia being
the prime example, it is rare to have an educated Cambodian (or Laotian, etc)
who only knows her respective language.
Higher education is always reliant on a second, more developed language.
Similarly, the donor representatives of USAID, the
European Commission, UNICEF, UNESCO, et al, tend to have multiple
advance degrees and be fluent in at least English, French or both. Their entry point to the issue of basic
education is within their developed language context of 600 years of
punctuation and text development, long enough for all of them to believe that
punctuation has always existed.
Fourth, the grammar of these local languages has never been scrutinized to the same degree of developed languages. Or, in the rare occasion when punctuation is lightly raised in the context of the local language, it is quickly and confidently dismissed as contrary to culture or incongruous to that local language. This confident wrong answer quickly ends any further inquiry as no one wants to be insensitive to another’s culture or identity.
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