A Dios Le Pido
~Juanes

Today has been BUSY! For those of you wishing a baseball update, the Tigers won the series here in Venezuela. They are currently playing another team called the Lions from Ponce in Puerto Rico. As you might have guessed, I'm routing for the Lions. First, Puerto Rico is my favorite island in the entire world. (Pardons from those who love Jamaica) Second, we have very good clients in Ponce who are wonderful people that come from a wonderful city. I love it there. Third, I'm so sick of all things Venezuelan that I'd route for anyone they were playing against at this point. Unfortunately, the Lions lost last night and they're losing tonight as the fifth inning comes to a close. *sigh* Maybe they don't want me as a fan...

As I was eating my dinner tonight, five Japanese businessmen who are staying at my hotel came into the restaurant. (Yes... You know where this is going) They tried to order dinner in broken English, from a menu in Spanish they couldn't read in the first place, to a waiter who couldn't understand a word of what they were saying, in the second place. It wasn't just that the waiter didn't speak English. *I* could barely understand these otherwise intelligent human beings who were forced to sound like aphasiacs due to the lack of a common tongue. Of course, I offered to help and wound up trying to interpret for the waiter. I'm not fluent in either language, but I know enough of each that I wouldn't starve if left to my own devices. That being said, one of the hardest things an interpreter can ever accomplish is to translate between two tongues of which neither one is his native. I did it for five minutes and wound up with such a headache that I geniunely did not wish to engage in pleasantries with these, otherwise, very interesting people. Heck... Lately, I've been so tired that I haven't even felt like translating my blog. (Something I geniunely enjoy doing!)

Now it is time for my standard rant which many of you have heard before but which bears repeating. ENGLISH IS FAILING MISERABLY AS A LINGUA FRANCA. IT DOESN'T WORK. IT IS TOO HARD TO LEARN. Only about 5% of the world claims to be able to speak English. Only half of that number are native speakers. The number of European English students who have tested competent in the English language is about 1 in 200. The number of Asian students with the equivalent compentency level is about 1 in 2000. Even if the 5% number assumes they speak with absolute, perfect fluency (which I doubt) that means that 95% of the world's population cannot communicate with us. Please get the idea out of your heads that the world speaks English. It is a LIE!!!It doesn't. When you see these giant conferences with all the scientists trying to solve the problems of global warming being held in English, has it ever occurred to you how many of those brilliant minds are sitting in silence for fear of embarrassing themselves by displaying their language deficiencies? Imagine if every one of America's great minds in medicine, science, art, politics, engineering, etc had to learn their individual disciplines in school PLUS become proficient in a foreign language. How many would do it? How many could? And yet, that is what 95% of people on our planet have to do in order to participate in the global discussions, the solutions to which effect all of us. Think about how many souls are being shut out?

Laugh at idealists like myself who believe in the Esperanto movement all you like. At some point, globalization is going to FORCE this problem into the spotlight. It is already happenning. How, in the name of God, can we solve our common problems when WE CAN'T EVEN SPEAK TO EACH OTHER? And the backlash against English speakers is going to catch us all by surprise. America is in a unique position to push for a world language since ours is the world's current lingua franca. This will not always be so. Someday in the future, a new lingua franca will take our place. History has proven this. What's more, the vast majority of the world's previous lingua francas are now dead languages. (Latin, Aramaic, Sanskrit) This was partially because of the backlash against them. And rest assured, this backlash is coming. Those of us in the trenches are already seeing it. You will too.