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Global English

As English Spreads, Speakers Morph it into World Tongue.

Christian Science Monitor staff writerDavid Rohde  filed this report in 2003 from Sydney, Australia on the way English is spreading, changing other languages and being changed by them – in Internet time.

In India, people created the word “pre-pone” as the obvious opposite of postpone. On the Internet, a form of cyber-English has sprouted with such words as “net surfing.” On MTV Latino, the word coolismo defines hip for a continent.

 In Britain, meanwhile, editors of the Oxford English Dictionary are struggling to keep up with the “morphing” of the mother tongue.

What centuries of British colonialism and decades of Esperanto couldn’t do, a few years of free trade, MTV, and the Internet has. English dominates international business, politics, and culture more than any other language in human history, and new words are melding into English at a frenetic pace.

“English is probably changing faster than any other language,” says Alan Firth, a linguist at the University of Aalborg in Denmark, “because so many people are using it.”

More than 1 billion people are believed to speak some form of English. For every native speaker there are three nonnative speakers. Three-quarters of the world’s mail is in English and four-fifths of electronic information is stored in English.

Hundreds of impromptu Englishes are taking on a life of their own.

As more nonnative speakers converse with each other, hundreds of impromptu varieties of English are taking on a life of their own around the world.

But the uncontrolled, global germination of so many “Englishes” has some worried. English purists, led by Britain’s Prince Charles, bemoan the degradation of the language as they see it.

Multiculturalists, meanwhile, say the blitzkrieg-like spread of English effectively commits “linguistic genocide” by killing off dozens other languages.

These differing views lead to the question: Is the world taking English by storm or is English taking the world by storm?

Tom McArthur, editor of the Oxford Companion to the English Language, says that in 20 to 30 countries around the world, English is merging with native languages to create hybrid Englishes.

“The tensions between standard English and hybrid Englishes are going to become very, very great,” says Mr. McArthur, who calls the process neither good nor bad. “We are going to have to keep on our toes. Some standard form of English [should be maintained] … as a tool of communication.”

Linguists see three main “Englishes” forming along with dozens of offshoots.

One includes Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand where distinct dialects of English are already spoken by about 350 million people.

A second includes South Asia and such African countries as Kenya and Tanzania, where pidgin Englishes – in numerous forms – are dominant.

And a third is broken English use for basic communication in the rapidly industrializing regions of East Europe, East Asia, Latin America and the Mideast.

The spread of English has given rise to interaction between foreign peoples that would have been considered remarkable only a few years ago, according to linguists.

In a Sydney factory, Cambodian, Samoan, Maltese, Greek, and Latvian workers take orders, talk about their families, and complain about their bosses to each other in their own broken English.

In Thailand, Russians, Pakistanis, Japanese, and Germans make phone calls by shouting out mispronounced numbers in English to exasperated Thai operators.

One of the largest sources of new terms is computers, according to linguists. In more than 100 countries, Internet users jabber in English – or something like it.

To many nonnative English-speaking computer hackers, a computer term such as “hardware” has only one meaning – computer equipment.

“Hardware is one of those words. It means I don’t know,” laments Dinko Novoselee, database operator in Zagreb, Croatia,when asked for another definition. “Some kind of tools for digging the earth or something like that.”

The command “perk” that grants access to a computer memory on some systems, stumped him, “Oh, oh, yes, like a woodpecker,” Mr. Novoselee says after a hint. “Now I know what it means.”

To English purists, Novoselee’s quasi-English is a catastrophe.

Prince Charles recently warned of a creeping degradation of the English language, lashing out at Americans for cheapening it with bad grammar. And French-language purists have been trying to eliminate English slang from entering the world’s previous lingua franca, but with little success.

“People tend to invent all sorts of nouns and verbs and make words that shouldn’t be, ” said Prince Charles at the March launching of a five-year British effort to preserve “English English.”

“I think we have to be a bit careful, otherwise the whole thing can get rather a mess,” he added.

The prince’s concerns are both cultural and financial. The rapidly growing “English industry” – made up of English classes and tens of thousands of academics studying the language and its offshoots – currently produces more than $750 million in income for Britain annually.

But Britain faces competition from the United States and Australia in the crucial Asian market, where more than 200 million Chinese are studying English and where English is the main language of commerce.

As China continues to grow, meanwhile, some fear that a form of Chinese could replace English as the world’s global language within three generations.

Danish Professor Firth, who studies conversations between nonnative speakers when they conduct business, says businessmen tend to be blunt, humorless, use simplified grammar, and develop and use their own English terms to cut a deal.

He cites one example where a Hungarian used the phrase “It’s a little bit middle, middle power” to say things weren’t going well. His Danish counterpart began to also use the phrase.

“People develop their own ways of doing business with each other, of talking and even writing … that native speakers might not understand,” Firth says. “And native speakers join in and start to speak that way also.”

Many warn that English is taking more than it is giving

But those who seek to preserve native cultures warn that in many parts of the world, English is taking more than it is giving. Some linguists attending the 1995 Global Culture Diversity conference held in Sydney last month warned of accelerating global language “linguicide.”

Schools in former European colonies still use English or French to assimilate ethnic populations, eradicating dozens of native languages, they warn.

“Every person has a fundamental right to his own culture and his own language,” says Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, a guest researcher at Roskilde University in Denmark. “Educational language rights are vital.”

Professor Skutnabb-Kangas says the “consciousness industry” – education, mass media, and religion – stigmatizes many nonwhite native languages, even if they are an offshoot of English,as “backward and primitive, tribal and traditional, as … dialects rather than languages.”

The problem, according to linguists at the conference, is the outmoded 19th century concept that a “nation-state” requires a single language to unify its people. Multiculturalists argue that multilingual states, such as Switzerland, can exist and thrive. Having several official languages can also reduce ethnic tension among people lumped together by colonial map-makers.

The spread of English can’t be halted

Oxford Companion editor McArthur says the spread of English can’t be halted. The globalization of the world, mostly driven by economics, is inevitable.

“It’s the [world’s] need for a unified language of trade, politics, and culture,” he says. “We’re going to lose a lot of languages around the world, but if it’s not English, it’s something else.”

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All you need to do a Brittish accent!

The Brittish accent...

The differences between American and Brittish

American English is the form of English used in the United States. It includes all English dialects used within the United States of America. British English is the form of English used in the United Kingdom. It includes all English dialects used within the United Kingdom. Differences between American and British English include pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary (lexis), spelling, punctuation, idioms, and formatting of dates and numbers.

History of British vs American English

The English language was introduced to the Americans through British colonization in the early 17th century and it spread to many parts of the world because of the strength of the British empire. Over the years, English spoken in the United States and in Britain started diverging from each other in various aspects. This led to two dialects in the form of the American English and the British English.

American vs British accent

Prior to the Revolutionary War and American independence from the British in 1776, American and British accents were similar. Both were rhotic i.e. speakers pronounced the letter R in hard. Since 1776, the accents diverged but English accent in America has changed less drastically than accents in Britain.

Towards the end of the 18th century, non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper class; this "prestige" non-rhotic speech was standardized, and has been spreading in Britain ever since.

Most American accents, however, remained rhotic.

There are a few fascinating exceptions: New York and New England accents became non-rhotic, perhaps because of the region's British connections. Irish and Scottish accents, however, remained rhotic.

To be fair, both American and British English have several types of accents and there is no one true American or British accent.

Differences in use of tenses

In British English the present perfect is used to express an action that has occurred in the recent past that has an effect on the present moment. For example: I've misplaced my pen. Can you help me find it? In American English, the use of the past tense is also permissible:I misplaced my pen. Can you help me find it? In British English, however, using the past tense in this example would be considered incorrect.

Other differences involving the use of the present perfect in British English and simple past in American English include the words already, just and yet.

British English: I've just had food. Have you finished your homework yet? American English: I just had food. OR I've just had food.
I've already seen that film. OR I already saw that film.

Differences in Vocabulary

While some words may mean something in British English, the same word might be something else in American english and vice versa. For example, Athlete in British English is one who participates in track and field events whereas Athlete in American English is one who participates in sports in general.

Rubber in British English: tool to erase pencil markings.
Rubber in American English: condom.

There are also some words like AC, Airplane, bro, catsup, cell phone etc. which are common in American English and not used very often in British English. Some words widely used in British English and seldom in American English are advert, anti clockwise, barrister, cat's eye.

Differences in Spelling

There are many words that are spelt differently in both forms of English. Some examples are:

American English spelling	British English spelling
color	colour
fulfill	fulfil
center	centre
analyze	analyse
aging	ageing
dialog	dialogue
anesthesia,	anaesthesia

A majority of the spelling differences between American and British English fall into the following categories:

• Latin-derived spellings
• -our (British) and -or (American). e.g. colour vs color
• -re (British) and -er (American). e.g. centre vs center
• -ce (British) and -se (American). e.g. defence vs defense
• Greek-derived spellings
• -ise (British) and -ize (American). e.g. centralise vs centralize
• -yse (British) and -yze (American). e.g. analyse vs analyze
• -ogue (British) and -og (American). e.g. dialogue vs dialog
• Simplification of ae and oe in American English. e.g. gynaecology vs gynecology

Differences in the use of Prepositions

There are also a few differences between British and American English in the use of prepositions. For example: While the British would play in a team, Americans would play on a team. Another example: While the British would go out at the weekend, Americans would go out on the weekend.

Differences in Verb usage

American and British English may also use a base verb in different manners. For example: For the verb " to dream", Americans would use the past tense dreamed while the British would use dreamt in past tense. The same applies to "learned" and "learnt". Another example of differing past tense spellings for verbs in American and British English is "forecast". Americans use forecast while the British would say forecasted in simple past tense.

Differences in Pronunciation

Some words that are pronounced differently in American vs British English are controversy, leisure, schedule etc. There are also some words like Ax (Axe in British) and Defense (Defence in British) which have the same pronunciation but different spellings in both languages.

Time telling in British vs American English

Both languages have a slightly different structure of telling the time. While the British would say quarter past ten to denote 10:15, it is not uncommon in America to say quarter after or even a quarter after ten.

Thirty minutes after the hour is commonly called half past in both languages. Americans always write digital times with a colon, thus 6:00, whereas Britons often use a point, 6.00.

Differences in Punctuation

While the British would write Mr, Mrs, Dr, the Americans would write Mr., Mrs., Dr.

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