Chapter 1 The changing world of English
A
A language story
By the end of the twentieth century English, was a language which was used widely as a
form of communication by people who do not have the some mother tongue or not even
the same second language. This is what we call a .
lingua franca
For example, Latin in
the Roman empire. For many people English is their mother tongue, they are what we
call
native speakers.
Braj Kachruguessed in 1983 that by the year 2000, the non native speaker will have
outnumbered the native speakers. And he was right but on a larger scale than he
probably expected. You could say that
the native speaker of English is the decreasing
minority.
However, you need to take into account that there are some difficult questions in
dertermening whether or not someone is seen as a speaker of English. For instance,
does a beginner of English count as a speaker or only the litterate English speakers?
Stating that there is ‘one English’ is too simple, there are many kinds of different
‘
Englishes’ around the world. This also raises the question of which English should be
taught at schools.
A1 The triumph of English?
English is taking over many other languages and not everyone agrees that this is a good
thing. Some people try to fight English as the dominant language.
There are a number of reasons which have caused the widespead use of English.
Colonial history , The Pilgrim Fathers landed on the coast of Massachusetts in 1620 and
brought the English language with them. The same happened in Australia when
Commander Phillip settled in Sydney Cove in 1788. It also because sort of a
lingua
franca
in India, where there is an overabundance of indiginous languages which
makes using just one of them as the language of the whole country very difficult.
Economics
, The major factor is the dominance of the United Stated as a world economic
power.
Information exchange , A big part of academic discourse uses English. Also,
the
internet caused a predominance of the English language. This also has something to do
with the internet’s roots in the USA.
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