Foreign vs. SA Languages during the 2010 FIFA WCBackground
With the world cup looming, there has been a lot of buzz
around the country, football fans,
commercial traders, and even your ordinary street vendors. This excitement over
the world cup, to take place, for the very first time on African soil has been
met with a lot of enthusiasm, some cities have even gone as far as teaching
street vendors foreign languages, and then there are also organisations that have developed local terminologies
for the world cup. It would seem, everyone is doing the best they can to ensure
that soccer fans from all over the world
will have an unforgettable time in South Africa.
Now things are clear and vivid that the outcome of the
event on tourism and on the economy will not be nearly as spectacular as we
were initially led to believe. For instance, there have been several signals
lately that the number of foreign visitors could fall well short of earlier
projections of 450 000 plus. Then there are ticket sales. Figures
change daily but South African soccer fans are clearly in the majority,
followed by the US, UK and Germany
Our Question is:
With South African soccer fans leading the
ticket sales do you think it is fair to spend money promoting
foreign languages by teaching street vendors these languages at the detriment
of our own indigenous languages? Wouldn’t it be better to teach the
foreigners some of our local languages to remind them that they were in South Africa?
Date Posted: 175 days ago 
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