On article on World Englishes

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 08/23/2007 1:24 PM  |  Opinion

Your columnist Setiono Sugiharto in his item on ""World Englishes"", (The Jakarta Post, Aug. 18, p.7) takes aim at the ""notoriously resorted norms from either British or American English"".

I presume this is a reference to standard English, the very norm The Jakarta Post adheres to.

Elsewhere in his piece, the author admonishes English native speakers to be ""cognizant that their long-standing norms are neither congenial nor appropriate when English is spoken or possibly learned as a school subject in countries"" other than the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

People learn foreign languages in order to engage in the wider world of business, arts, science and technology.

Native speakers are not all pedants wielding grammar books determined to enforce those dreaded ""norms"" at all costs. On the contrary, they are an invaluable resource for students aspiring to fluency in a foreign language, a fluency that requires an adherence to the standards of English spoken by the 400 million or so people who use it as their first language.

WILLIAM DANIEL
Jakarta

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