Do you remember where you wanted to go to study as a child? Was it abroad or within your country of birth? As a child I wanted to go very badly to Galapagos, because I had read about an amazing environment with tame animals, but then later as a teenager with the 80s music I shifted my focus to London, simply because I saw it then as the center of the planet. A recent research by Nikkei Shimbun showed for me surprising results, when 200 school children in the age range 11-16 were asked, where they would like to study abroad.
1. United States of America
2. Australia
3. Great Britain, Canada
5. France
6. I don’t want to study abroad
7. Italy
8. Switzerland
9. Germany
10. New Zealand
Solely 37 kids were not interested to study abroad, which is a much lower figure than I had expected. In the media commonly the young generation is described as less interested to go abroad than previous generations. Furthermore I was completely surprised to find Switzerland on the list. I would have never guessed it, but I am wondering at the same time, which language these kids would like to learn: German (with a distinctive pronunciation differing from “proper German German”, or maybe even Swiss German?), French (with its own special twists), Italian (could be possible, but why then not Italy?) or then Romansch (who from outside of Switzerland would bother to learn this archaic language?). I guess I will never know.
Brought to you by Sibylle Ito (シビル伊藤)
