Inglese II: world englishes

LANGUAGES IN SINGAPORE

We have 4 official languages:

→

1) Mandarin Chinese majority of the population

→

2) English it went from an ethnically neutral language to the language in which the country

is run and is increasingly becoming the country’s first and most important language

(political and economic contexts + lingua franca in inter-ethnic contexts). English represents

a continuum, divided into: →used

- Standard Singaporean English by educated speakers in formal situation.

→

- Colloquial Singapore English (Singlish) informal indigenous variety, symbol of

national identity, indicator of social proximity and relaxed atmosphere but strongly

discouraged by the government (and teachers).

3) Singapore English → contact language formed by English (superstrate language) + Chinese,

Malay and Tamil (substrate languages).

We then have loanwords from indigenous languages such as: Malay, Hokkien and Tamil for:

- food →durian

- culture and religion → kampong

- daily life → kiasu

LEZIONE DEL 16/12/2022 OUTHER CIRCLE ENGLISHES

ENGLISH IN THE PACIFIC th

An area also called “thousand island”. Most of them were founded and explored in the 18

century after cook’s explorations. Here, English is a strong SL.

PAPUA NUOVA GUINEA

There’s an interesting Creole in this area

th

called Tok Pisin, used in the 19 century as

a lingua franca in the plantation in Samoa.

The island is very near to Australia leading

to a strong English influence. The pidgin

was then accepted as a native language for

most speakers, but also:

1) Auxiliary code

2) Lingua franca

3) Real mother language

We have:

- simplification of consonant clusters

- lower number of vowels

- fricatives becoming affricates

- tense and aspects not expressed through auxiliaries but other ways

EXPANDING CIRCLE ENGLISHES

While outer circle countries refers to post-colonial countries, the expanding circle doesn’t since

English is used for external uses only such international communication. Generally, are countries

that are norm-dependent (BrE or AmE orientation→ they rely on external norms in their standard

version). Talking about this kind of topic, it’s difficult since we cannot understand whether they're

distinct varieties or not.

→ can we talk about expanding circle Englishes as real varieties? Usually a variety needs to be:

- stable

- distinguishable

- identified as such

- should have characteristics contexts of use

ex: Sweden is one of those countries in which english is becoming more and more important and

people are starting to talk about Sweden english.

ENGLISH IN EAST ASIA

English is an important SL for countries like:

- China

- Korea

- Japan

ENGLISH IN CHINA th

It entered China in the 18 century as a result of trades along the coast, also developing coastal

th

pidging. During the second half of the 20 century, English began to be perceived as a vehicle of

transmitting western ideas and on the other hand as a threat to Chinese values. In the 1960s with

the cultural revolution, English became the language of the enemy loosing relevance. It then

became important again in the 1970s when modernizing policies were introduced with economic

opening, teaching the importance of English. Another important event were the 2001’s Olympic

games.

CHINESE ENGLISH

However, Chinese English is still a non-stable variety but it presents some recurring characteristics:

- Transfer phenomena→ phenomena in which phonemes transfer some phonetic, lexical and

st

grammatical features of the Chinese 1 language.

Phonetic features:

- Omission of final consonants or introduction of /ə/

- Reduction of consonant clusters

- Replacements of voiced stops and fricative and dental fricatives (not used in Chinese that’s

why’s difficult)

- Aspiration of voiceless stops

- Nasalization of vowels

- Velarization of word final nasals

- L vocalization

- Vowel sound in the end, generally /ə/

- Aitch sound aspirations is emphasized and aspirations sometimes might be found were it

shouldn’t be.

Grammatical features:

- omission of inflectional suffixes because Chinese is a highly analytical language

- Subject omission

- Deletion of copula

- Omission of articles

Pragmatic features

regarding performance of politeness and portrayal of social status, connected to different social

and linguistic practices which are transferred in English.

ENGLISH IN EUROPE

Mainly used in:

- International domains

- Media

- Tourism

- Advertisement

- Education

Statistics from 2019 says that English is studied as a second language by 96% of people in upper

secondary studies.

Other important dates are:

- 1949, the council of Europe→ Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United

Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

- 1951, European coal and steal community→ European Coal and Steal Community = Germany,

France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

- 1957, cooperation expanded to other economic sectors → European Economic Community +

European Atomic Energy Community.

- 1958→ European Parliament (originally the European Parliamentary Assembly)

- In 1992, the Maastricht treaty

→the European Union became

the actual European Union we

know today.

LANGUAGES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Europe has a motto, which is :”united and diversity”, and can

be also found in the language policy connected to the principle

of multilinguism. Languages in Europe were very important for

the creation of nation-states. Language has significant role in

the development of nation-states, uniting territories and

strengthening communities. This is something that has a heavy ideological load as the language we

speak tells things about who we are and where we belong. In this context equality of languages is

mandatory and making language dominant would mean making also the nation it belongs to

dominant. Equality of languages is reflected in

→regulation N° 1: in the European Union all member states languages are official and may be

used by EU citizens to communicate with EU institutions.

We can find different languages in the European Union used for different functions:

- Working languages→ used to carry out work, these are:

a) Italian

b) French

c) English

d) German

e) Spanish

- Official languages institutions→ used for the communications between the EU government or

institutions and member states. These are 24 languages and some of them are used in more

than one nations state ( ex: French in France, Luxembourg, Belgium) and some nations have

more than one official language. Documents are produced in all the languages at once.

- National-official languages→ Some of them might not have an official status in the EU (ex:

Luxembourgish because it wasn’t requested by Luxembourg to make it an official one)

- Regional-official languages→ German in Belgium and Italy, Catalan, Basque and Galician in

Spain

- Indigenous minority languages→ under the protection of the European Charter of Regional or

Minority Languages and not

- Exogenous minority languages→ coming from the outside through immigrations to Europe

- Sign languages, classical languages, modern foreign languages.

WORKING LANGUAGES

- European Council, Brussels → the assembly of heads of government of EU member states,

guidelines of EU policy (all official languages)

- Council of Ministers, brussels → the assembly of ministers of EU member states, one of the two

legislative branches of the EU (all official languages)

- European Parliament, Brussels and Strasbourg → the second branch of the legislative power,

development of the public political sphere (all official languages)

- European Commission, Brussels → executive power of the EU (English, French and German)

- Court of Justice, Luxembourg → legal unification (French)

- European Central Bank, Frankfurt → monetary policy (English).

The general policy of the EU parliament is of multilingualism as it's a key of competence. The policy

is based on:

- boost language learning by the end of compulsory education by helping all young people to

acquire competence in at least one other European language in addition to the language(s) of

their schooling

- encourage the acquisition of an additional (third) language to a level which allows them to

interact with a degree of fluency measured against the Council or Europe’s Common European

Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)

- developing and adopting modern and more efficient teaching methods + favoring mobility within

the EU itself

What has been criticized about multilingualism is at odds with smooth communication. In the

European parliament lots of translators are needed since anyone can use any official language. The

translation through an intermediary costs a lot. What happens in actual situations is that people

move towards English as a lingua franca. While all member-states’ languages are officially

recognized as equal, only five languages ( English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) are used in

the different EU institutions as official “working languages”. English is gaining ground on all the

others and becoming the de facto but unacknowledged lingua franca of Europe.

The multilingualism at an academic level is based on promoting linguistic diversity and the mobility

of both students and academic staff (Erasmus+ and Horizon2020). However, there is a tendency to

move onwards English because it’s easier to do so. People use it for academic publishing and

scientific networking and there has been an implementation of English as a medium of instruction

and the need for academic institutions to make their administrative documents accessible to

international audiences requires translation into English. As a consequence, english is becoming a

lingua franca in Europe and some people talk about Euro english o EU speak, a pidgin language

where english is the superstratum language. This pidgin is defined as a common mistranslations +

technical jargon + native languages on the non-native English-speaking population. EU staff use

Euro english, but also young international travels, diplomats with lower proficiency in english,

expatriates and migrants.

EURO ENGLISH

The main features are:

- Reduction of the inflectional system→ understandable from the context, no -s, plurals, past

tense

- Syllable timing→ easier to understand

- Specific vocabulary → which usually derives from a misuse of English

Euro english is a good example of what it means for native speakers to lose proprietorship of their

native language. English people don’t like what’s happening, they feel like they are loosing grasps

to what is happening to their native language.<