Trilingualism

In April 2016, almost a year ago, the Republic of Kazakhstan officials declared the policy that will, hopefully, make Kazakhstan trilingual country. Some people supported that idea but some were very skeptical about it. Today, the news about trilingualism policy is still hot topic. I googled the word ‘трехъязычие’ and ‘trilingualism’ in google news. In English, three out of ten news are about Kazakhstan, and as for Russian language it’s 10 out of 10.

I decided to write my post in English. I want to contribute my efforts to this ambitious, but very bright idea. Simply because I feel like people need English content about Kazakhstan, from Kazakhstan and free from editing, just like that.

I know that my English is far from ideal and I am not an English language teacher, but I also know that I am good at spoken English. I just want to say sorry in advance for typos, slang, stylistic and grammar mistakes.

Back to topic. When I googled ‘trilingualism’, I realized that we are not alone out there. The world has many trilingual and even quadrilingual countries and almost everywhere it is a problem. As I told you, 3 out of 10 news were about Kazakhstan, which is the most popular. Two of that news were about Chinese city Hong-Kong (HK). I was wondering, what’s wrong with HK? From the course of history and a lot of Hollywood movies, I know that HK is one of the most modern and fashionable city that stands one step further than other Chinese cities, in terms of progress. I also know that English is official and a major working language in HK. One of the news that I found said that Hong-Kong is losing its English proficiency and today people that live in such Asian countries as Singapore, Malaysia, Philippine and South Korea, know English better than HK. Wait, what?

I know for sure, from many resources, that English proficiency in China significantly increased. My professor told me that China is about to become the largest English speaking country soon. On the other hand, news report decline of English proficiency in HK, which is English speaking part of Chine.

For me, it doesn’t make any sense. I did small research and found out that the HK language problem is TRILINGUALISM. Chinese kids have two languages to master - Putonghua and English - while most HK kids must know three different tongues - Putonghua, Cantonese and English. I am not expert, but as I understand Putonghua and Cantonese are kinda Chinese dialects but they are completely different. Today I also learned that China has 297 living languages. OMG!!! (Oh my God!).

So, guys, we don’t have that problem. Thanks God, Kazakh language in South is basically the same as Kazakh language in North, West, East and Center. Russian language is Russian and English is English. So why don’t we push our self and learn/improve our languages? It’s hard but doable. Good luck!

Sincerely yours,

Alik Sarsenov