JarJar Nixon's Blues Kitchen

There is a funny cartoon in today's issue of El Mercurio, the leading dailty here in Santiago. A bus driver is listening to the APEC Summit-visiting passengers speaking in Chinese and Japanese, and he mutters--in espanol--"Why'd I spend so much time learning English???" That really captures the position Chile is in--it has been a member of APEC since 1993 and is trying to integrate with the Asian-Pacific economy. They have treaties and agreements in place, as well as some of the world's best wine (and other products, of course) to export, but they realize that the 'soft' side of international business--the cultural and linguistic side--is at once the most important and the most difficult aspect of globalization to grasp.

The irony is that globalization would seem to demand that countries all over the world adopt English and become internationalized creatures, but actually globalization requires more local knowledge than ever before.