Linguistica inglese

Lingua inglese III

Indice

• Why did English become the International language?
• The spread of English
• World Englishes
• Pidgin and Creole
• David Crystal: World Englishes
• McCrum: So, what’s this Globish revolution?
• What is the future of English?
• Terminology
• ELF: English as a Lingua Franca
• David Crystal: Reasons for the international status of English as a LF
• ELF: English as a Lingua Franca and EFL: English as a Foreign Language

Why did English become the International language?

In the 16th century, England started to establish overseas colonies, and by the end of the 18th century, the British Empire had grown quite extensive, with colonies located around the world in a few parts of India and Africa, in the Caribbean, Canada, and what was to become the United States. But the British were not the only ones establishing colonies: much of present-day Canada and the US was part of New France, a large area that had been colonized by the French; much of what is now the southern and western United States was colonized by the Spanish, and the Dutch had also colonized the area of New Netherland.

Through the 19th century, the global language was French, but English began to surpass it in the 20th century; as a matter of fact, the Treaty of Versailles was written in both French and English and this signalled the start of English as a language of diplomacy. The final obstacle to English turning into a global language was the USSR during the Cold War, since Russian was the lingua franca in most of the USSR's member states and scientific articles during that time were written mainly in either English or Russian.

The spread of English

As we said, the British Empire had several colonies around the world and that made possible the spread of English. Other major historical causes can be found in World War II, since the United States helped other countries after the war. And due to the largest percentage of native speakers of English and its cultural imperialism, which is reflected through McDonald's, the English language spread all over the world. This led to the birth of new varieties of English in territories where the language has taken root; these new Englishes are somewhat like the dialects we all recognize within our own country except that they are on an international scale.

World Englishes

World Englishes refer to the different varieties of English spoken worldwide. Frenglish is a combination of English and French, produced either by poor knowledge of one or the other language or for humorous effect. If one tries to speak French and fills in gaps in knowledge of French with English words or false cognates with their incorrect meaning, the result is Frenglish. A person who is said “to speak a perfect Frenglish” means he or she speaks an English riddled with common French expressions. Example: “This story doesn't have sense” instead of “This story doesn't make sense.”

Wenglish is a mixture of the Welsh language and English, it’s the dialect of English spoken in the valleys and townships of South Wales. Characteristics include bringing additional verbs to the beginning of a sentence, an excess of auxiliaries, strange emphatic repetitions, using unlikely parts of verbs, literal translation of idioms and uses of non-standard prepositions. An example of it would be adding the word “like” at the end of a sentence for emphasis.

The Black English is the set of English dialects primarily spoken by most black people in the United States, most commonly, it refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to a more standard English. This variety, the African American Standard English, exhibits standard English vocabulary and grammar but often retains certain elements of the unique AAVE accent, with intonational or rhythmic features maintained more than phonological ones.

Spanglish is a fusion of Spanish and English and is best described as a form of “code-switching” between the two languages. While it’s not a pidgin language, some people use it as a preferred form of spoken communication. It makes heavy use of calques, which are complete and correct translations of words and phrases from one language to the other with no alteration; unlike standard Spanish, Spanglish uses loan words, that is, words that are borrowed from English, though they may be pronounced as in Spanish: “Hacer click [to click]” and “stalkear [stalking, to stalk]” are examples.

Nigerian Pidgin is an English-based pidgin and creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria, this language is sometimes referred to as “Pijin” or Broken. It’s not a native language of any tribe in Nigeria but the only language everyone understands and regards as the easiest form of interaction amongst the population. The most important difference compared to other types of English is the limited repertoire of consonants, vowels and diphthongs used, which produces a lot of homophones, like thin, thing and tin which are all three pronounced like /tin/.

Hinglish refers to the combination of English and Hindi within conversations, individual sentences and even words. India is the country with the second largest population in the world and it is also the country with the second largest number of English speakers if we include those who speak it as a second and third language. Hinglish mixes English words or phrases in with predominantly Hindi-laden speech.

Chinglish is a blend of Chinese and English, in particular a variety of English used by speakers of Chinese, incorporating some Chinese vocabulary or constructions. There are many Chinglish expressions in English, but increasingly common are English words creeping into Chinese, often with a quite different meaning from English. So, if your Chinese friends say to you “Let’s go out and high together tonight!”, they probably aren’t suggesting that you go and take some illegal substance, they just want to go out and have a good time.

Singlish is an informal, colloquial version of Singaporean English. It first emerged when Singapore gained independence 50 years ago and decided that English should be the common language for all its different citizens. That was the plan, but as the various ethnic groups began infusing English with other words and grammar, Singlish became the language of the street.

Pidgin and Creole

Pidgin and Creole are both the result of what happens when you blend two or more languages, but they are not the same.

Pidgin is a language with no native speakers, it’s the product of a multilingual situation, in which those who wanted to communicate improvised a simple language system; historically this has often happened in areas where multiple groups were trading with each other. Pidgin often borrowed words, especially the ones used for commercial relations, from their source languages. It can be considered the first-generation version of a language that forms between native speakers of different languages, a communication bridge.

Creole is a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers. It’s often been passed down to a second-generation of speakers who will formalize it and fortify the bridge into a robot structure with a fully developed grammar and syntax. By the time a pidgin becomes a creole, the language has developed enough of its own characteristics to have a distinct grammar on its own. It’s important to clarify that pidgins don’t always become creoles. If a second generation of speakers picks up aspects of the pidgin as a second language, it’s still generally considered to be a pidgin.

David Crystal: World Englishes

The distinction between adapt and adopt means to take something and make it one’s own, while adopt means to change something, to shape it, to make it suitable for a particular use or situation. As a country takes up the English language and adopts it, it immediately adapts it to the local context and cultural background.

The story about the robot: When David Crystal visited for the first time South Africa, he saw a sign ahead that “robot ahead”, he turned to the driver and asked him what the sign meant and the driver said that anybody knew what a “robot” was. It turned out that “the robots” are the traffic lights in South African English.

The meaning of “accommodation” refers to the contact and the mutual influence between native speakers and non-native speakers. If I meet a group of people who doesn’t speak English as a first language and I, a native speaker, want to get on with them, they will start to be influenced by the way I speak but I also will start to be influenced by the way they speak. Therefore, it's inevitable that if there are certain features of language that all foreigners learn, because of the process of learning English as a foreign language, eventually some of those features may actually infiltrate into mother tongue English (e.g. noncountable nouns made countable, Information → InformationS).

Robert McCrum: So, what’s this Globish revolution?

In this article Robert McCrum reports on why Globish is becoming the universal language. He talks about how Jean-Paul Nerriere, a high-flying vice-president of IBM in America in the late 1980s, during his company trips to Tokyo and Seoul noted that his conversation with the Japanese and Koreans was much easier and more efficient than what could be observed between them and the British and American employees who went with him; and he also noted that this observation of non-Anglophone English communication applied to all non-English-speaking countries. He came to the conclusion that the language non-Anglophones spoke together was not English, but something vaguely like it. This language was the worldwide dialect of the third millennium and he named it Globish, which is not pidgin or broken English but is highly simplified and unidiomatic. His ambition for Globish is that it should be a tool for international communication. A typical conversation in Globish would be painful to a native speaker but might bridge the communication gap between, say, a Korean and a Greek trying to hammer out a business deal (chat becomes “speaking casually to each other” and kitchen is “the room in which you cook your food”).

What is the future of English?

In considering the future of English we have to consider the role of the British Empire: some sociolinguists expect a strong reaction against continuing the use of the English language as the language of the former colonial power and are in favour of promoting the indigenous languages. On the other hand, the North American influence may increase, the United States has the largest percentage of native speakers of English and the country has been influential in many ways: it is more involved in modern developments than any other nation, it is in control of the digital revolution, hence its dominance, and the dominance of American English may even increase.

Terminology

• English as an International language (EIL): identifies a language used by the majority of people from different nationalities, Ethnical backgrounds or cultures as a global means of communication in different countries.
• English as a Foreign language (EFL): refers to the teaching of English to non-native students in a non-English speaking country.
• English as a Lingua franca (ELF): is a language used widely by non-native speakers in order to communicate. More specifically, a contact language between people who share neither a common native tongue nor a common national culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language for communication. Barbra Seidlhofer affirms that “English as a Lingua Franca is an additionally acquired language system that serves as a means of communication between speakers of different first languages.”
• English language teaching (ELT): refers to the activity and industry of teaching English to non-native speakers.
• English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI): refers to the use of English to teach subject contents in a country where the first language of the students and lecturers is not English, and by doing that the amount of exposure the learners get and the opportunities they have to communicate in it increase.
• English for Specific purposes (ESP): refers to the teaching of mainly scientific or technical English used in academic studies or for vocational or professional purposes.
• Global English (GE): is the language spoken worldwide in particular fields such as commerce, science and technology. According to David Crystal: “A language achieves a truly global status when it develops a special role that is recognised in every country.”
• World Englishes (WE): is a term to describe the many varieties of English emerging in the world, especially in countries influenced or colonised in the past by the UK or the USA.

ELF: English as a Lingua Franca

Original definition: A Lingua Franca is a language spoken between the different Mediterranean ports, a mix of French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Greek. Lingua franca comes from the group of people known as the Franks who in the Middle Ages traded throughout the Mediterranean from port to port, and as these people travelled from port to port, they needed a language that they could speak to everyone. Since everyone in all of these different ports spoke different languages, they developed a language they could use while trading that everyone would be able to speak.

Current definition: A Lingua Franca is a language that facilitates communication or trade between people who speak different native languages.

Today English is the worldwide lingua franca because of three factors:

• The British colonization: In the 15th century Great Britain began to colonize and create an empire that stretched over the entire globe. Many former colonies still use English as their official language today and that’s because of the influence of the British Empire: while Britain was ruling these places, English was the language of the British administration and so it remained even after the British Empire collapsed (two examples include Nigeria and Ghana, two linguistically diverse countries who adopted English as their official language after the British colonization ended).
• The role of the US Military: At the beginning of the 20th century the United States became a big player on the world stage in terms of their military power, the US has hundreds of military bases located all throughout the world and wherever a US army installation was located, English was used by local communities to communicate and do business with the troops on that base.
• The role of Globalisation: English has spread around the world through music and radio, through film, television and sports (through the wide distribution and popularity of American and British visual media like Hollywood films and Disney animation) and through the internet since the United States is home to some of the most important Internet companies. Another factor of how globalization has advanced English as the lingua franca is through aviation as the use of English in all international aviation operations for safety navigation is mandated, that means that pilots, regardless of where they are from, where they’re flying to or where they are flying from, are going to be communicating with each other and with the air traffic controllers in the English language. English is also becoming the language of the international tourism industry.

David Crystal: Reasons for the international status of English as a LF

• Historical reasons: English is still used institutionally because of the legacy of the British or American imperialism.
• Internal political reasons: English provides a neutral means of communication between the different ethnic groups of a country and may be seen as a symbol of national unity or emerging statehood.
• External economic reasons: The USA’s dominant economic position often acts as a magnet for international business and trade.
• Practical reasons: English is the language of international air traffic control, international tourism, international business and academic conferences.
• Intellectual reasons: Most of the scientific, technological, and academic information in the world is expressed in English; English is the gateway to Western culture.
• Entertainment reasons: English is the main language of popular music, satellite TV, computers and video games.
• Personal advantage/prestige: Proficiency in English is often perceived as conferring higher status on the speaker.

ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language)

ELF and EFL represent two perspectives on the use of English worldwide. While ELF is part of the Global Englishes paradigm and focuses on contact and evolution, EFL is part of the foreign languages paradigm, focusing on transfer and fossilisation.