Six years has passed, and we met again last night. Dinner was good. The exchanges were fun and short. That night, I thought nothing could be more fun than reminiscing the happy days we spent studying at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in 07.
After a hearty late afternoon lunch, the next best thing to do is to sit in a chair and be a spectator to looming dark clouds that are about to bring the usually heavy June rains.
But the situation compares ironically with the contest of English and Spanish in North America in the same period, where if anything Spanish – in its version seeded to Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and Puerto Rico – is growing at the expense of English, in many big cities and much of the south-west of the USA. All these developments, however, tend to underline the true determinants of language spread: population growth and population movements. When an official language was an artificial thing, created by international elites, and spread as far as possible among local populations, it is understandable that the bigger budget should have created the bigger language. But when the population starts to grow, as the urban population of Metro Manila has, its language (Tagalog) has come to dominate the country just as its speakers have, English or no English (378).
But the situation compares ironically with the contest of English and Spanish in North America in the same period, where if anything Spanish – in its version seeded to Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and Puerto Rico – is growing at the expense of English, in many big cities and much of the south-west of the USA. All these developments, however, tend to underline the true determinants of language spread: population growth and population movements. When an official language was an artificial thing, created by international elites, and spread as far as possible among local populations, it is understandable that the bigger budget should have created the bigger language. But when the population starts to grow, as the urban population of Metro Manila has, its language (Tagalog) has come to dominate the country just as its speakers have, English or no English (378).
Going against the current 