By Marketing | 19 June, 2020
1. Introduction
First off, this is not a slam against the English language and its use in creating beautiful prose, or literature masterpieces. The focus is on the English language as a “software” (which we call ‘Enlingua’).
Organisations and specialists have long noted that Enlingua is inefficient when it comes to learning and literacy.
2. The hidden costs
There is now incontrovertible published evidence that at present English spelling is a great handicap for literacy compared with spelling systems that have been improved in other languages within the past 150 years. The problem is that at present English spelling has hundreds of rules, and most rules have exceptions. Spelling has to be learnt word by word.
– Dr. Valerie Yule
When all spellings have reliable sounds and the total number of spellings used is only 50 or fewer, as in all European languages other than English, teaching children to read requires very little training. Almost any literate adult or child can do it. Because English uses 185 spellings, 69 of which have variable sounds, English literacy has to be taught by well-trained professionals.
– The English Spelling Society TESS
What are the hidden costs for the State or the individual? The following sections illustrate some of them.
3. The costs for a first language State
3.1 Costs for the taxpayer
Using England as an example.
A 2009 UK report “The long term costs of literacy difficulties” from ‘Every Child a Chance Trust’, originally commissioned by the KPMG Foundation, estimates that literacy difficulties cost England in the region of £2.5 billion every year.
The authors have suggested that these costs are “conservative” because they have not included items such as soft costs (like illness and loss of income) or “social services costs, social housing costs, the costs of generally poorer health, the costs of substance abuse over the age of 18, the costs of women’s involvement in the criminal justice system and lost tax on pension income”.
With a population of 52 million (England) in 2009, that is equal to 2.5e9/52e6 = 48 GBP per head per year.
It can be argued from a national viewpoint that 40 Pounds is ‘peanuts’ compared to the money spent on cigarettes or beer. However for some States it can also be argued, that such an argument does not release the State from its inherent responsibility for its subjects.
3.2 The State Educational System
An improvement in the Enlingua efficiency would enable more students to reach the same efficiency in a shorter time frame, i.e. an improved Return-of-Invest (ROI) of the State’s investment in human resources.
Another interpretation is that the time saved could be used to invest in other basic skills. musical competence, informatics skills, maths, social competences, or whatever the State deems strategic important.
3.2.1 Example England / UK
OECD 2016 statement:
“There are an estimated 9 million working aged adults in England (more than a quarter of adults aged 16-65) with low literacy or numeracy skills or both”
“These 9 million people struggle with basic quantitative reasoning or have difficulty with simple written information. They might, for example, struggle to estimate how much petrol is left in the petrol tank from a sight of the gauge, or not be able to fully understand instructions on a bottle of aspirin. Here they are referred to as ‘low-skilled’. Weak basic skills reduce productivity and employability, damage citizenship, and are therefore profoundly implicated in challenges of equity and social exclusion.””
The report goes onto analyse that a high percentage of younger people in comparison to other peer countries have difficulties and…
“In England,the weak basic skills of young adults compared with other countries can be traced back to a lower standard of performance at the end of initial education.”
This is not surprising as a cross-European team led by Professor Philip Seymour from Dundee University which investigated literacy acquisition rates in 13 languages concluded in 2003 in the British Journal of Psychology:
“…that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. …The rate of development in English is more than twice as slow.”
Sources:
- http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/building-skills-for-all-review-of-england.pdf
- Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies, 2003, Seymour et al. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10710502_Foundation_literacy_acquisition_in_European_orthographies_Electronic_version
From a CoWorld viewpoint, improving the Enlingua efficiency would thus free up schooling hours.
The UK has a yearly intake of 810 thousand children. The teaching of spelling costs around 1000 GBP per year / per child. A simplification resulting in a 10% shorter learning time would free up over 100 hours of teaching, or 6 months.
It would save the State 457 million GBP per year, which could be used for other high priority learning targets.
3.2.2 Example Germany
English is taught as a second language in Germany. Germany has a yearly intake of over 700 thousand children.
Over a 1100 hours are taught over 8 years resulting in per capita cost of 6250 EUR (5660 GBP) or for the State 4.5 billion EUR / year.
Germans have already learnt various lingual tools and methods for the understanding of their own language. Assuming that on average 23% is used for spelling, learning the rules costs 1875 EUR (1700 GBP).
For every Enlingua spelling improvement which can shorten the time of 10% there are savings:
- of 187 EUR per pupil, and approx. two months in teaching,
- or 136 million EUR per year for the State.
Germans are expected to learn the vocabulary at home. Simplification of rules will make it easier for pupils to learn the words faster with more competence and joy.
4. The cost to the world
How much could the world save if Coĺish could improve its efficiency?
10 billion in teaching costs?, trillions for the world economy?
But the biggest advantage is the improved empowerment of the child.
5. The Individual
The learning of literacy skills at an early age has a compound effect on the life of person.
“The long term costs of literacy difficulties” report further states:
“the total resulting costs to the public purse arising from failure to master basic literacy skills in the primary school years are estimated at between £5,000 and £43,000 per individual to the age of 37, and between £5,000 and £64,000 over a lifetime”.
An improvement in Enlingua from the aspect of learning efficiency would improve the life quality of millions of people.