China's Linguistic Impoverishment: Focusing on 'Cash Crops' too?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/world/asia/singapore-language-hokkien-mandarin.html?mcubz=1
“Singapore used to be like a linguistic tropical rain forest — overgrown, and a bit chaotic but very vibrant and thriving,” said Tan Dan Feng, a language historian in Singapore. “Now, after decades of pruning and cutting, it’s a garden focused on cash crops: learn English or Mandarin to get ahead and the rest is useless, so we cut it down.”
Comments
i stopped reading nytimes since none of my hometown folks READ it anyhow.
susan, August 29, 2017, 1:59p.m.