Second Can Never Reign Over First

By Park Soo-yeon

It should be a natural thing to question why English, only a second language, is becoming the subject of everyone's pursuit in our country where we have our own language. Every prestigious university and big company asks for English proficiency as a prerequisite for admission _ it's true that English has not only become the most influential language for international communication but also a requirement for any kind of acceptance within the country.

We must say that this phenomenon, the ``English boom,’’ is wrong. It is wrong because English is being taught as a requirement to children when their mother tongue language has not been fully developed. However, no one really seems to realize this problematic issue or the destructiveness of its consequence.

Language is the distinct representation of culture. The loss of language means the loss of identity. That's why domination over a language is called domination over a culture or perhaps over a country.

Some criticize our education system for its poor result in its English teaching sector because not many, even those who are said to have great English competency as shown by test scores, can really speak English. However, I doubt if anyone whose first language is not English, who learns English in school one hour every day can speak English fluently? If it happens, it is absurd.

I met a French diplomat who couldn't speak a word in English, but he wasn't ashamed of it. He proudly spoke in his language although he knew no one could really understand what he was saying. The lack of English proficiency is neither a thing to be ashamed of nor a thing to be debated over for improvement.

The problem is that we lack pride in our own language. Whether it's German, French, or English, any language other than our native language is all a second language. A second language should remain second. It should never defeat the first. About why we can't speak the second perfectly, we must find out the reason perhaps from our first language. Who knows? Perhaps, it's because we can't speak our first language that we can't speak the second. In other words, if we can speak our native language perfectly, then it will not be so hard to learn the second.

There are similarities as well as differences between the Korean and English languages. This means that there is a component in Korean despite its distinctiveness that is surely applicable to English. Finally, I must insist that English should be learnt at the time we achieve our cognitive ability to learn it. This means that English mustn‘t be learnt until adulthood after our cognitive ability advances and our native language fully develops.

The writer is a graduate student in Seoul.