Banned language methods

Foreign language tutors are quite common in lists of books banned by the Inquisition. Check for example this page in the 1844 Indice general de los libros prohibidos, which records the proscription in 1797 of a French-Spanish commercial correspondence course and of an English-Spanish conversation primer published in 1719 by the Anglican minister in Seville. The authorities subsequently realised that banning merely stimulates curiosity, so they changed policy, made foreign languages compulsory, and teach them really, really badly.

Related posts

• Language economics
• Testing interviewees for language fluency
• Irish: it’s official! Well, almost…
• Chomsky, anyone?
• Kurdish language schools

Comments

Feeds: RSS2 · Atom

Trackback link.

Tell me if the spam dragon gives you a hard time. Log in if you want to be really foul.