ENGLISH AS A WORLD LANGUAGE

ENGLISH AS A WORLD LANGUAGE

Today, when English is one of the major languages of the world it requires an effort of the imagination to realize that this is a relatively recent thing – that in Shakespeare’s times, for example, only a few people spoke English, and the language was not thought t be very important by the other nations of Europe, and was unknown to the rest of the world.

English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother tongue outside England, in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English began in the seventeenth century, with the first settlements in North America. Above all, it is the great growth of population in the United States, assisted by massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has given the English language its present standing in the world.

People who speak English fall into one of three groups: those who have learnt it as their native language; those who have learnt it as a second language in a society that is mainly bilingual; and those who are forced to use it for a practical purpose – administrative, professional or educational. One person in seven of the world’s entire population belongs to one of these three groups. Incredibly enough, 75% of the world’s mail and 60% of the world’s telephone calls are in English.

BASIC CHARACTERISTICS

SIMPLICITY OF FORM. Old English, like modern German, French, Russian and Greek, had many inflections to show singular and plural, tense, person, etc., but over the centuries words have been simplified. Verbs now have very few inflections, and adjectives do not change according to the noun.

FLEXIBILITY. As a result of the loss of the inflections, English has become, over the past five centuries, a very flexible language. Without inflections, the same word an operate as many different parts of speech. Many nouns and verbs have the same form, for example swim, drink, walk, kiss, look, and smile. We can talk about water to drink and to water the flowers; time to go and to time a race; a paper to read and to paper a bedroom. Adjectives can be used as verbs. We warm our hands in front of the fire; if clothes are dirtied, they need to be cleaned and dried. Prepositions too are flexible. A sixty-year old man is nearing retirement; we can talk about a round of golf, cards, or drinks.

OPENNESS OF VOCABULARY. This involves the free admissions of words from other languages and the easy creation of compounds and derivatives. Most world languages have contributed some words to English at some time, and the process is now being reversed. Purists of the French, Russian and Japanese languages are resisting the arrival of English in their vocabulary.

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH. Geographically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of people who speak it. It is the language of business, technology, sport and aviation. This will no doubt continue, although the proposition that all other languages will die out is absurd.

Comprehension

Work in pairs. Do you think the following statements are true or false?

• English was already an important world language four hundred years ago.

• It is mainly because of the United States that English has become a world language.

• One person out of seven in the world speaks perfect English.

• There are few inflections in modern English.

• In English many verbs can be used as nouns.

• English has borrowed words from many other languages.

• In the future, all other languages will probably die out.

Where does English belong?

Although English has a mixed vocabulary and contains a large number of words from different languages, it is essentially a Germanic language in its grammatical structure. The Germanic tongues: German, English, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish belong to the Indo-European family of languages.

English is a branch of Low German, the speech of the lowlands of North Germany. About 450 A.D. different Low German tribes, Saxons, Angles, and Jutes - later collectively called English - began to settle there. They gradually pushed back the Celts, who had possession of the land when they came. Though Celtic is still represented in Great Britain by modern Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, the prevailing literary language has long been English. The present literary language is, in its essential features, an outgrowth of the speech of the Midlands.

How many people speak English?

English is one of the most widely used languages in the world. Recent estimates suggest that the number of second language speakers varies greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured. Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.

According to 2006 Census the countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 million), United Kingdom (61 million), Canada (18.2 million), Australia (15.5 million), Nigeria (4 million), Ireland (3.8 million), South Africa (3.7 million), and New Zealand (3.6 million).

English is the favoured language of the world's major airlines and international commerce. Over 80 per cent of the world's electronically stored information is in English and two-thirds of the world's scientists read in English. Of the estimated 40 million users of the Internet, some 80 percent, currently communicate in English. English is an official language, or has a special status, in over 75 of the world's territories.

If the rest of the world isn't talking English, they're borrowing English words to add to their own language: the Japanese go on a 'pikunikku' (picnic), Italians program their computers with 'il software', Germans talk about 'ein Image Problem' and Czechs say 'ahoy!' for ‘hello’ - a greeting traditionally used by English sailors, which is interesting as the Czech Republic has no coast!

Why are many English words pronounced differently from the way they are spelt? 

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead, 

For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat,

They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

Anon

English spelling is unpredictable at the best of times, and occasionally totally chaotic - an opinion no doubt shared by British schoolchildren and those studying English around the world. However, studies of the language claim that there are only about 400 words in English whose spelling is wholly irregular. Unfortunately many of them are among the most frequently used in the language.

The problem with the English spelling system came about as the language developed over a period of 1000 years. Some complications arose early on, when the Romans tried to write down Old English using the 23 letter Latin alphabet. Old English contained nearly 40 vowels and consonants.

The influence of French after the Norman Conquest also made an impact on English spelling. French scribes introduced 'qu' where Old English had used 'cw' e.g. queen, and 'gh' instead of ‘h’ e.g. night, amongst other changes. 

The introduction of the printing press in 1476 meant that a standard spelling system began to emerge. The system reflected the speech of the London area. The pronunciation of vowels underwent further changes during the 15^th century, but because of the advent of the printing press, spelling never caught up.

Previously, scribes would have simply written down a new spelling to reflect the new pronunciation. Thus modern spelling in many ways reflects outmoded pronunciation of words dating back to the Middle Ages. Despite many attempts to reform the English spelling system, so far no changes have been made since the 16^th century - mainly because nobody can agree on what the best alternative may be!    

Why is English spoken with many different accents?

Most British people can recognise where someone was brought up by their accent. Every region has its own way of pronouncing the words and sentences of English that identifies the speaker with that particular geographical area. Differences arose from the time when English was spoken in a variety of different forms during the Middle Ages - Northern (developed from Northumbrian Old English), West and East Midlands (diverging from Mercian Old English), South Western (West Saxon) and South Eastern (Kentish).

After 1500 the Language of London gradually emerged as the most dominant form, and today the London or Southern accent is usually accepted as Standard English. This is sometimes referred to as 'BBC English' since at one time all announcers on BBC radio and TV were required to speak it.

Regional accents have persisted and diversified over the centuries. Today the identification of an accent can place the speaker in a general area of Britain - such as West Country or South Wales, or be quite specific, referring to individual counties or cities; e.g. Liverpool, Yorkshire or Glasgow accents.

Although Standard English was once the accepted form of English for public speaking or broadcasting, today regional accents are widely used on television and radio.