ENGLISH ABROAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 27

ENGLISH ABROAD

It is estimated that about 300,000,000 people in this world grow up in a knowledge of English, and it would seem that the number is, if anything, increasing. Lord Lloyd, who has just completed an 11,000-mile tour of foreign lands by air, says that one of the things that impressed him most was the increasing desire by foreigners to learn English and to understand and appreciate everything British. In some places, where English is an optional language in the schools, "it has been taken up so widely that there is a growing tendency to include it among compulsory subjects. This may not always be due entirely to an admiration for Britain and her institutions. Probably the cinema is an influence. Talking films so often are in English— though not always, as Lord Lloyd regrets, in good English—that people everywhere are eager to understand them. When he was in Cape Town Lord Lloyd asked a well-known statesman there how the propaganda was progressing in favour of Afrikaans. The statesman had to confess the campaign was not going particularly well, and added: "When you realise there is not a single film written in Afrikaans you will understand how difficult it is to get children to study Afrikaans instead of English."