[etni] fw: Re: the use of English in Israel

From: ask@xxxxxxxx
To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 21:24:04 -0700
From: Sergeiy Sandler <sergeiy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: the use of English in Israel
 
Hi,

Just to make my point clear - it's not that I claim that English is not
used in Israel, or that English use is somehow inferior to Russian use.
What I claimed was that there is no Israeli brand of English, because
English is not spoken here as a first language, other than in isolated
communities.

Now, the arguments brought against this position mostly have to do with
the place of English as a lingua franca, which in Israel is strongly
enhanced because of its historical ties with Great Britain and its
political ties with the United States, and for a few other contingent
reasons, which there's no point in listing here. When one wants to
practice one's English - that precisely indicates that English is a
foreign language for that person. When one has to know English to read
papers in university, that's not a sign of English being a living
language in Israel, but it's a sign of English being a very useful
foreign tongue. It's not that Israelis set the standards for the ways
in which that English should be written. The English of academic
publications is written in the US or elsewhere, and Israelis assume a
passive role with regard to it. They do not constitute their own,
Israeli, brand of English.

The only thing that might indicate the existence of an Israeli-English
of sorts is the existence of English writing based in Israel: the
English newspapers, the writing competitions, etc. I'm not at all sure
there are characteristics, which would make this writing distinct from
all other forms of English writing, enough to count it as another
dialect or kind of English. And in any case, this would still all be
restricted to the relatively small community of English-speaking
immigrants in Israel, not actively involving the population at large,
so Doron's original point about our pupils being entitled to their own
dialect of English (against which I was making my remarks in the first
place) would remain inaccurate.

Thanks,
Sergeiy.



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[etni] fw: Re: the use of English in Israel

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