So I have met some great people from South Korea in my time.
A few in real life and many more online.
I was getting served some news a few days ago about some craziness going on in Korea regarding an English test that I assume, based on what I’ve read, is like a standardized test to get into some schools or such.
This morning I finally watched a BBC news bit on it.
While I need to research the whole thing more, the BBC video had this exampled of English that is apparently on this year’s test.
“A video game has its own model of reality, internal to itself and separate from the player’s external reality, the player’s bodily space and the avatar’s bodily space. The avatar’s bodily space, the potential actions of the avatar in the game world, is the only way in which the reality of the the external reality of the game world can be perceived.”
Now first off, that above paragraph IS NOT NORMAL English!
That is not conversational English nor is it English a typical person would come across in a typical day in the US, Canada, England, Australia, or any other country where English is the primary language.
That paragraph looks like it is taken out of some kind of academic paper. Or worse, it looks like it was taken out of a written article in which the writer was getting paid by the word.
English is a bastard language of Old Englisc, Norman French (Normaund), with Old Norse (dǫnsk tunga) and some Latin thrown in for good measure because of historical reasons.
It is a language in desperate need of spelling housekeeping as well as other miscellaneous cleanup.
Unfortunately, language doesn’t really work like that since all of them are living things that evolve and change based on this or that influence.
Anyway, I digress.
I need to look more into the whole kerfluffle in Korea over this year’s exam in more detail, but I cannot image any country’s “English as a second language” studies going to such levels of insanity as that paragraph. (I suspect I am wrong though.)
There are different levels of language mastery.
I would assume that even typical American English speakers have difficulty with that paragraph, but that also comes from the US having a totally shit education system and American arrogance to not learn additional languages to any real fluency.
Anyway way. I found this whole thing interesting.