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English To Be Universal Lingua Franca With EFL Space Broadcast
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** BREAKING NEWS **
English looks set to be a universal lingua franca, thanks to groundbreaking technology which strengthens radio broadcasting into space.
Yes, space!
The TEFL Academy is excited to announce our partnership with the TEFL Space Alliance to build the world’s first EFL radio transmitter.
The transmitter has been dubbed EFL-ULF (English as a Foreign Language – Universal Lingua Franca).
The plans involve the creation of a radio broadcast facility in the Karoo, South Africa, to send out into space a looping self-learn audio course on the “fundamentals of learning English”. It will introduce grammatical concepts and explain English linguistic patterns. The hope is to facilitate communication with extraterrestriall life.
The transmitter will form part of SKA in the Meerkat National Park in the Northern Cape.
The use of satellites in space is not a new phenomenon, with the first manmade satellite – the Sputnik 1 – being launched in 1957. Today, thousands of satellites are in operation for weather forecasting, television broadcasting, radio and internet communications and the ever-useful Global Positioning System.
More recently, Space X’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper have opened the door to affordable, uncapped communication channels.
South Africa is a leading power in satellites and space communication and broadcasting, spearheaded by SANSA, the National Space Agency. If you’ve heard of SUNSAT, SumbandilaSat, ZACUBE-1 and Kondor-E, then you’re already familiar with SANSA’s projects.
The recent discovery of mysterious radio waves which have been hitting Earth for decades – every 20 minutes for approximately the last four decades – has brought about a renewed interest in inter-planetary communication.
Now researchers have identified ways to harness the power of satellites to improve broadcasting into space. Satellites have been found to be able to increase the strength of radio transmissions into space.
The Arecibo message was the first interstellar radio message, broadcast in 1974. The message contained seven parts, including the numbers one to ten, a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA, and the atomic numbers of certain elements.
The decision to change the radio broadcast to incorporate the fundamentals of learning English is a logical next step. English is already a global lingua franca, which refers to the use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice.
It makes sense to extend the reach of English to become a universal lingua franca, though Spanish and Mandarin Chinese were also strong contenders.
There are plans to utilise stratospheric drone technology to further the project in the coming years.
The TEFL Academy is proud to be at the forefront of this groundbreaking work and we are excited to extend the reach of TEFL into space.
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