書き抜き読書ノート 686

2010 年 8 月 15 日

Robert McCrum 著「Globish − How the English Language Became the World's Language」Penguin
Books, Viking 2010 刊を読む

Prologue:'Crazy English'
１．The twenty-first century has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time... Will westand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran or the voter inZimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words 'never again' in Darfur?
Barack Obama, speaking in Berlin, 24 July 2008
２．The Renmin University of China, also known as the People's University, in Beijing has about36,000 students, studying everything from politics to social anthropology. The university, one ofseveral in the capital, is based to the north-west of the city, on Zhongguancan street in Haidiandistrict. Its alumni are typical of the post-Mao Zedong generation. Every Friday evening, quite
informally, several hundred gather in the so-called 'English Corner' to hold 'Englishconversation'. This extraordinary scene, reiterated on campuses across China today, is a popularroutine that says a lot about the aspirations of contemporary Chinese − and the state of thenation. This is, after all, an authoritarian, one‑party regime in which dissent is ruthlessly
crushed, and its enemies imprisoned, beaten up or sent into exile. However, here in the twilight,
on a cool March Friday, under the shady pine trees of a little square, there are hundreds ofyoung Chinese in running shoes, jeans and puffs jackets chatting together, in English, about
anything and everything, including asides about Tiananmen Square. I remember the Soviet
Union before glasnost and perestroika in which the atmosphere was menacing and fearful;surveillance everywhere; and the state inflexibly vigilant. This feels different. Perhaps these
Chinese have been cunningly infiltrated by informers, or perhaps everyone in exercising heroic
self‑censorship about the topics that matter, but the mood is unquenchably relaxed, friendly
and inspired by a common purpose, which is to learn better English.
３．As a tall westerner, I stand out in this crowd like Gulliver, and is not difficult to start up aconversation. When I begin with 'I'm from London', about a dozen students crowd round at once.
Everyone's interested, there's a murmur of 'London' across the group. One brave soul strikes up
with 'Where in Lon‑don?' I explain that my home is near Notting Hill. Oh yes, they have allheard of Notting Hill. Now the conversation, initially a stilted Q & A, goes quickly forward;
movies, film stars, Hollywood, America... So then, I ask: 'Has anyone been to America... orLondon?' No, not yet; but they all seem to want to. I hand out Chinese business cards with anemail address. We get on to the US presidential race. 'Hillary' is a hard name for the locals toget their tongues round, but, apart from a few stumbles, the level of conversation is remarkably
high. The group's interest is really to ask about the UK, about football, Victoria Beckham, BBC
television and so forth. Eventually, I move on to another circle, which is learning basic language
skills by rote.

４．The instructor stands by a blackboard, as much like a bookie at a racetrack as a foreign
language teacher, and reads out a line of English: 'I'm sorry I misjudged you, Mr Prescott.' The
group repeats it: 'I'm sorry I misjudged you, Mr Prescott.' Someone hands me a flyer with some
Chinese characters beneath the slogan 'Never Let Spoken English Become Your Limitation'. Theteacher intones another line: 'If you hate this job, why don't you quit?' 'If you hate this job,'
repeats the group with the furrowed concentration of a prayer meeting, 'why don't you quit?''Jobs aren't that easy to come by,' says the teacher. 'Jobs aren't that easy to come by.' Repeats
the class. Less than a 'conversation', this seems more like boot camp, but no one's complaining.
They are here to join the English‑speaking world, and will submit to whatever extraordinary
adjustment it takes. After all, Mandarin (more than 1,000 million speakers) outnumbers theglobal figure for English by more than two to one, and the marketing of China's quest for
English suggests that even the Chinese recognize it as slightly eccentric. One of the more
popular ways of learning English in China is through a course entitled 'Crazy English', wherethe emphasis is on learning to speak the language before writing it down: 'To shout loud, youlearn.' But the process is not as bizarre as one might think and the way that the English
language has travelled and changed through time and space throws up many examples ofcontemporary craziness.
P1 〜 3[コメント]
中国での熱狂ぶりからスタートした本書は、英語の実用性をよくあらわしている。 English
Makes Money という中国映画を思い出した。Global English を略して Globish と著者は言うが、われわれはよき Globish の使い手を目指さなくてはと思う。
− 2010 年 8 月 15 日林明夫記−