An "English Learning City" must NOT become an "English Speaking City!"

Dear Fellow Earthlings, I have always made it obvious to my readers that if they are going to learn English, then the Jingles will help them supplement their native language pronunciation systems (their primary allophonomes) with a second system called their "secondary allophonome". The whole idea is to give them the ability to speak English with nativelike pronunciation. It is NOT good, however, for a people to replace their community primary allophonome (that is,

the native language of their household, village, country, prefecture, town, city, or country) with

another one to the extent that their primary allophonome comes to be spoken by fewer and fewer

individuals.

Just ask the speakers of Seneca and Rapa Nui, for whom it is probably too late to stop the switch to English and Spanish, respectively. And there is no need to ask the sole surviving speaker of Yagan, for whom Spanish is now the only language the bilingual-with-no one-to-speak-with-in-the-mother-tongue is now obliged to speak as she nears the end of her time on Earth... In this morning's "The Japan News" there is an article which puts out the message that the "local government of Sasebo, Japan" has "swung into action" to make sure that "economic activity" will suddenly increase with the invitation to Americans from the Sasebo Naval Base to "come into the city" so that young children can learn "practical English". Whoa! Hold on here. Hold on here!!!! For one thing, Sasebo's biggest problem is an aging, shrinking population. Here we see a situation in which English could completely overwhelm Japanese as the language of the city-->town-->village (as the population shrinks with the shirking of the Japanese people's sense of responsibility to reproduce their numbers -- leading to a concomitant precipitous drop in the

number of Japanese speakers in town). Sasebo, get your priorities straight!!! Make babies! Don't make English speakers! Steve Walker Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.