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THEME 52 EOI; ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. SPREAD

AND VARIETY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD: UNITY
AND DIVERSITY.

OUTLINE

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
1.2. THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH
2. THE SPREAD OF ENGLISH- ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA
2.1. REASONS FOR THE POPULARITY OF ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE
2.1.1. Colonial history
2.1.2. Economics
2.1.3. Travel
2.1.4. Information exchange
2.1.5. Popular culture

3. VARIETIES OF ENGLISH
4. THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH
5. CONCLUSION

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1. INTRODUCTION

More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes
seems, try to... Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue

English is an international language, spoken in many countries both as a native and as a

second or foreign language. It is taught in the schools in almost every country on this
earth. As Bill Bryson half-jokingly considers in the opening chapter of his book Mother
Tongue, English has become the undisputed global language. It is spoken by over 300
million people as their native tongue. We are going to begin by commenting on the
status of English as a world language, then we will review the origins and the evolution
of English. After that we will focus on the main reasons and factors involved in the
ascendancy of English as the most preferred language, and we will see the main varieties
existing. Finally, we will comment on the future of English before summing up.
English is spoken habitually in the United States, the British Isles, Ireland, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of South Africa, Liberia, and many territories
under the United Kingdom and the United States of America. It is estimated that 300
million people speak English as a first (or native) language, and an additional 100
million people use it fluently as a foreign language (L2). As a rough estimate, 1000
million or one billion people around the world have some knowledge of English, either
as a native language, as a second language, or as a foreign language.
English is the most widely spoken foreign language in 19 of the 25 EU Member States
where it is not an official language.

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In addition, English is the associate official language of India which has over 1000
million (over billion) people. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and many other nations which were
ruled by Britain continue to use English both as an optional medium of instruction in
their schools and as one of their official languages. The islands of the Philippines
continue to use English as an important tool for education, administration, and for mass
media purposes. English is the chief foreign language taught in the schools of Europe,
South America, Asia and Africa.
Even though some nations which were ruled by the French continue to teach French as
their most preferred second language, English is gaining ground even in these countries.
In the former Soviet Union, Russian was the dominant language. Since the break of the
Soviet Union, the Central Asian Republics have been rapidly introducing English in
their school system as a second or foreign language. In Russia itself, English is gaining
ground as the most popular second language. In Japan too, English is the most favored
second or foreign language.
Outside Europe, English is the predominant language of international commerce.
Although the United Nations and its various agencies have more than one language for
transaction, more often than not, English comes to be chosen as the preferred language
of communication between the participating member-nations.
This is so, even though more people in the world speak Chinese than English as their
native language. Spanish may claim a large number of native speakers, but neither
Spanish, nor French, nor Russian, nor Chinese can even come close to the level and
variety of uses to which English is put in the world .

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1.2. THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH

English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. Within this family, English
is a member of the Germanic branch. The Germanic brach may be divided into three
groups or subdivisions: East Germanic which consisted of Gothic (now an extinct
language); North Germanic under which we include the Scandinavian languages; and
West Germanic which consists of High German, Low German, Frisian and English.
The English that we speak today has gone through four main stages in its development:

1.2.1 Anglo-Saxon migration.

Here's how the English language got started: After Roman troops withdrew from
Britain in the early 5th century, three Germanic peoples the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes
moved in and established kingdoms. They brought with them the Anglo-Saxon
language, which combined with some Celtic and Latin words to create Old English. Old
English was first spoken in the 5th century, and it looks incomprehensible to today's
English-speakers. To give you an idea of just how different it was, the language the
Angles brought with them had three genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral). Still,
though the gender of nouns has fallen away in English, 4,500 Anglo-Saxon words
survive today. They make up only about 1 percent of the comprehensive Oxford English
Dictionary, but nearly all of the most commonly used words that are the backbone of
English. They include nouns like "day" and "year," body parts such as "chest," arm," and
"heart," and some of the most basic verbs: "eat," "kiss," "love," "think," "become."
Franklin D Roosevelts sentence "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" uses only

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words of Anglo-Saxon origin.
The following image ilustrates the Anglo-Saxon migration:

source: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/3/8053521/25-maps-that-explain-english
1.2.2. The Danelaw
The next source of English was Old Norse. Vikings from present-day Denmark, some led
by the wonderfully named Ivar the Boneless, raided the eastern coastline of the British
Isles in the 9th century. They eventually gained control of about half of the island. Their
language was probably understandable by speakers of English. But Old Norse words
were absorbed into English: legal terms such as "law" and "murder" and the pronouns
"they," "them," and "their" are of Norse origin. "Arm" is Anglo-Saxon, but "leg" is Old
Norse; "wife" is Anglo-Saxon," but "husband" is Old Norse.

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1. 2.3. The Norman Conquest
The real transformation of English which started the process of turning it into the
language we speak today came with the arrival of William the Conqueror from
Normandy, in today's France. The French that William and his nobles spoke eventually
developed into a separate dialect, Anglo-Norman. Anglo-Norman became the language
of the medieval elite. It contributed around 10,000 words, many still used today. In
some cases, Norman words ousted the Old English words. But in others, they lived side
by side as synonyms. Norman words can often sound more refined: "sweat" is AngloSaxon, but "perspire" is Norman. Military terms (battle, navy, march, enemy),
governmental terms (parliament, noble), legal terms (judge, justice, plaintiff, jury), and
church terms (miracle, sermon, virgin, saint) were almost all Norman in origin. The
combination of Anglo-Norman and Old English led to Middle English, the language of
Chaucer.

1.2.4. The Great Vowel Shift

If English spelling is confusing why "head" sounds nothing like "heat," or why "steak"
doesn't rhyme with "streak," and "some" doesn't rhyme with "home" it is due to The
Great Vowel Shift. Between roughly 1400 and 1700, the pronunciation of long vowels
changed. "Mice" stopped being pronounced "meese." "House" stopped being
prounounced like "hoose." Some words, particularly words with "ea," kept their old
pronounciation. (And Northern English dialects were less affected, one reason they still
have a distinctive accent.) This shift is how Middle English became modern English. No

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one is sure why this dramatic shift occurred. But it's a lot less dramatic when we
consider it took 300 years. Shakespeare was as distant from Chaucer as we are from
Thomas Jefferson.

2. THE SPREAD OF ENGLISH- ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA

In the next paragaphs we will examine how a language treated for centuries as the
inadequate and second-rate tongue of peasants (Bryson, Mother Tongue) has become
the undisputed global language.
Five hundred years ago, between five and seven million people spoke English, almost all
of them living in the British Isles. Now, anywhere up to 1.8 billion people speak English.
All of this has happened within the last one hundred years.
Although English is not the language with the largest number of native or first language
speakers, it has become a lingua franca. A lingua franca can be defined as a language
widely adopted for communication between two speakers whose native languages are
different from each otherss and where one one or both speakers are using it as a second
language. Many people living in the European Union, for example, frequently operate in
English as well as their own languages (where these are different), and the economic
and cultural influence of the United States has led to increased English use in many
areas of the globe.
Like Latin in Europe in the Middle Ages, English seems to be one of the main
languages of international communication, and even people who are not speakers of
English often know words such as bank, chocolate, computer, hamburguer, hospital,

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hot dog, taxi, telephone, university and chatroom.
There are a number of interlocking reasons for the popularity of English as a lingua
franca. Many of these are: historical (i.e. Imperialism), practical (i.e. traffic control,
emergency services, etc), intellectual (i.e.scientific, technological, academic
information, wilkipedia, etc.), entertainment (i.e. popular music, advertising,
computers, video games, etc.) and, above all, political reasons.
reasons. In fact, language is an
intensely political issue since it is bound up with identity and power.
Occasionally, the spread of English has been attributed to the wrong reasons. That is,
some people suggest that English has become ubiquitous because it is easy to learn or
especially flexible, but a glance backwards suggests that this is irrelevant. Despite a
highly complex case system, Latin was Europes most influential language for over a
thousand years. Yet people learned Latin in the Middle Ages for the same reasons they
learn English now: to have access to a better life and have access to knowledge. In fact,
English is learned everywhere because people have found out that knowledge of English
is a passport for better career, better pay, advanced knowledge, and for communication
with the entire world. English is also learned for the literature it possesses, and for the
variety and rich experience it provides. English has replaced French as the language of
diplomacy. In this computer age, English is bound to expand its domains of use
everywhere. Everyone wants to appropriate English as their own.
We will follow Jeremy Harmer (The Practice of English Language Teaching, 2007) in
order to offer a clearcut classification of the factors which have influenced and sustained
the spread of the language:

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2.1.1. Colonial history

After developing for almost a milennium on the British Isles, English was taken around
the world by the sailors, soldiers, pilgrims, traders and missionaries of the British
Empire. By the time anything ressembling a language policy was introduced, English
had reached all corners of the globe.

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the Massachusetts coast in 1620 after their eventful
journey from Plymouth, England, they brought with them not just a set of religious
beliefs, nor only a pioneering spirit and a desire for colonisation, but also their language.
Although many years later the Americans broke away from their colonial masters, the
language of English remained and it is still the language of the worlds greatest economic
and political power.

It was the same in Australia, too. When Commander Philip planted the, British flag in
Sydney Cove on 26th January 1788, it was not just a bunch of British convicts and their
guardians who disembarked (to be rapidly followed by many free settlers of that land),
but also a language.
In other parts of the British Empire, English rapidly became a unifying/dominating
means of control. For example, it became a lingua franca in India, where a plethora of
indigenous languages made the use of any one of them as a whole-country system
problematic. The imposition of English as the one language of administration helped
maintain the colonizers power.

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In most of the British Empire, the main goal was trade so fewer Britons actually settled.
This explains why English did not come to dominate colonies in Asia and Africa, where
it was the language of business, administration and education, but not the language of
the people.
To this day, English has a key administrative role in these former colonies. For a long
time, access to English meant access to education, whether in the mission schools in
Africa or in the first universities in India. This created an English-speaking elite in some
of the worlds most populous countries, which still survive as a distinguised class.
In countries where large settler colonies were formed, such as Australia, Canada and
the USA, native language and cultures have been pushed to near-extinction by the
presence of English.
It was not the first language of European colonialism; Portuguese and Dutch left the
continent earlier.

2.1.2. Economics

A major factor in the spread of English has been the growth of commerce throughout the
world, and in particular, the emergence of the United States as a world economic power
after the two world wars. While Europe was rebuilding in the years after 1945, the USA
boomed. American businesses picked up where the British East India Company had left

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off centuries before, taking English around the world as a language of trade. The
influence of American business, combined with the tradition of English left around the
world by the British Empire, have made English the number one language of
international trade in the 21st Century. All over the worlds top business schools now
teach in English.
Of course other economic blocks are hugely powerful too, but the spread of international
commerce has taken English along with it. This is the twentieth-century phenomenon of
'globalization described by the journalist John Pilger as '...a term which journalists and
politicians, have made fashionable and which is often used in a positive sense to denote
a "global village" of "free trade", hi-tech marvels and all kinds of possibilities that
transcend class, historical experience and ideology' (Pilger 1998: 61).

2.1.3. Travel

Much travel and tourism is carried on, around the world, in English. Of course this is
not always the case, as the multilingualism of many tourism workers in different
countries demonstrates, but a visit to most airports on the globe will show signs not only
in the language of that country, but also in English, just as many-airline announcements
are made in English, too, whatever the language of the country the airport is situated in.
So far, English is also the preferred language of air traffic control in many countries and
is used widely in sea travel communication.

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2.1.4. Information exchange

A great deal of academic discourse around the world takes place in English. It is often a
lingua franca of conferences, for example, and many journal articles in fields as diverse
as astrophysics and zoology.
The first years of the Internet as a major channel for information exchange have also
seen a marked predominance of English (though such a situation may not continue).
This probably has something to do with the Internet's roots in the USA and the
predominance of its use mere in the early days of the World Wide Web.
English dominated in the early days of the Internet. But languages online are getting
more diverse. In 2010, English no longer made up the majority of the text written
online, as advancements in technology made it easier for non-Roman alphabets to be
displayed. Still, English is the dominant language of Wikipedia both when you consider
the language articles are written in, and the fact that people all over the world use the
English-language version.
Another subcategory, advertising, will be dealt with as part and parcel of the category
of information exchange. Many examples of English in advertising come from
multinational companies, who wish to keep their message consistent accross markets,
but some examples are local firms looking for that elusive element of glamour that
English can bring. Advertisers pride themselves on riding the cultural zeitgeist (spirit of
age in German); creating consumer desire through making products sexy. One of the
ways they do this is through using English words. Of course, this happens in English
too: haute couture and Eau de Toilette sound much sexier untranslated.

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2.1.5. Popular culture

In the western world, at least, English is a dominating language in popular culture. Pop
music in English saturates the planet's airwaves. Thus many people who are not English
speakers can sing words from their favourite English songs. It was not just American
music that brought English into the worlds discoteques and homes. British bands
including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Pink Floyd, The Police or Led Zeppelin
ensured that Britannia rules the airwaves. The hippy movement came from San
Francisco and London.
Many people who are regular cinemagoers (or TV viewers) frequently hear English in
subtitled films coming out of the USA. This tendency originated in the post-war
decades. As well as sending money accross the Atlantic, the USA provided the
soundtrack through rock and roll, jazz and, later, disco and hip hop. Holliwood movies
became global sensations and American television series became cultural reference
points. American culture was everywhere, radiating confidence and success; just the
things for a world that had been ravaged by war.
Bands release their work in English to reach the largest possible audience. Film-makers
too. This invisible pressure to produce creative works in English adds to the cultural
momentum the language developed in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

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3. VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

So far we have talked about English as one language. Yet English, much like other
languages such as Spanish, Portuguese or Arabic, for example, can take many forms.
Depending on who speaks or writes it and where they do this, there can be great
differences in pronuntiation, vocabulary and grammar. Professor Higgins boasted in
Pygmalion that he could place any man in London within two miles, sometimes within
two streets. There may be some exaggeration attached to that, but certainly Yorkshire
people can tell in an instant whether someone comes from Bradford or Leeds, even
though the two cities are contiguous. Certain features of British dialects can be
remarkably localized. As a matter of fact, no place in the English-speaking world is more
breathtakingly replete with dialects than Great Britain.
From a broader perspective, we are going to consider English as a World Language at
the macro- level whic will have to be taken into account when developing cross-cultural
capability in the context of English as an International Language.
Variously attributed to Wilde, Shaw and, most recently, Dylan Thomas (see Crystal
1997:131), the idea that native English speakers can be 'separated by the barrier of a
common language' draws attention to the long-standing recognition that simply being
speakers of English is no guarantee of mutual understanding. Given the global role of
English -- with a 'middle-of-the road' estimate of 1,200 to 1,500 million speakers
(Crystal op.cit. 61) -- it would be surprising if such a diversity of English users weren't
separated as well as united by their common language.

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Let us begin with Kachru's classification of English as a World Language as consisting of

three circles (Kachru, 1982, 1988).

source:http://host.uniroma3.it/docenti/boylan/text/white01.htm
source:http://host.uniroma3.it/docenti/boylan/text/white01.htm

1. The inner circle refers to the traditional bases of English, where it is the primary
language. Included in this circle are the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. The varieties of English used here are, in Kachru's scheme, 'norm providing'.
2. The outer or extended circle involves the earlier phases of the spread of English in
non-native settings, where the language has become part of a country's chief
institutions, and plays an important 'second language' role in a multilingual setting.
Singapore, India, Malawi and over fifty other territories are included in this circle. The
varieties used here are what Kachru calls 'norm-developing': in regions using these

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varieties there has been a conflict between lingusitic norm and linguistic behaviour.
Such varieties are both endo- and exonormative.
3. The expanding circle includes those nations which acknowledge the importance of
English as an International Language. Historically, they do not belong to that group of
countries which were colonised by members of the inner circle, and English doesn't have
any special intranational status or function. They constitute the context in which English
is taught as a 'foreign' language as the most useful vehicle of international
communication. These are 'norm-dependent' varieties, and are essentially exonormative
in Kachru's terms.
Crystal (1995), while warning that such data should be carefully interpreted, lists some
seventy-five territories in which English 'has held or continues to hold, a special place as
a member of either the inner or the outer circles'. What is more significant, though, is
the growth in the expanding circle, which has resulted in English being used by nonnative speakers among themselves at least as much as between native and non-native
English speakers.
In addition to geography, factors such as social class, ethnic grouping, and sex affect
the language being used_ and influence the way in which listeners judge speakers. Until
quite recently in Britain, it was customary for people to talk about BBC English to
describe an accent which derived from the received Pronuntiation (RP) recorded by
the phonetitian Daniel Jones in the first half of the twentieth century, and which was
considered a sign of status. However, such attitudes have diminished greatly in Britain,
and today more and more news presenters no longer fake their accents and present in

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their Scottish, Welsh, or regional accents of origin.
In a multiracial, milticultural and multilingual Britain it seems to be no longer the case
that people ascribe status, educational background, and social position to a person
largely on the basis of accent.

4. THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH

Although English currently appears to be in an unassailable position in the modern

world, its future as a global language is not necessarily assured. In the Middle Ages,
Latin seemed forever set as the language of education and culture, as did French in the
18th Century. But circumstances change, and there are several factors which might
precipitate such a change once again.
There are two competing drives to take into account: the pressure for international
intelligibility, and the pressure to preserve national identity.
The very dominance of an outside language or culture can lead to a backlash or reaction
against it. People do not take kindly to having a language imposed on them, whatever
advantage and value that language may bring to them. As long ago as 1908, Mahatma
Gandhi said, in the context of colonial India: To give millions a knowledge of English is
to enslave them. Although most former British colonies retained English as an official
language after independence, some (e.g. Tanzania, Kenya, Malaysia) later deliberately
rejected the old colonial language as a legacy of oppression and subjugation,
disestablishing English as even a joint official language. Even today, there is a certain

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amount of resentment in some countries towards the cultural dominance of English,
and particularly of the USA.
As has been discussed, there is a close link between language and power. The USA, with
its huge dominance in economic, technical and cultural terms, is the driving force
behind English in the world today. However, if the USA were to lose its position of
economic and technical dominance, then the language loyalties of other countries may
well shift to the new dominant power. Currently, perhaps the only possible candidate for
such a replacement would be China, but it is not that difficult to imagine circumstances
in which it could happen.
A change in population (and population growth) trends may prove to be an influential
factor. The increasing Hispanic population of the USA has, in the opinion of some
commentators, already begun a dilution of the Englishness of the country, which may
in turn have repercussions for the status of the English language abroad. Hispanic and
Latino Americans have accounted for almost half of Americas population growth in
recent years, and their share of the population is expected to increase from about 16%
today to around 30% by 2050. Some even see the future possibility of a credible
secessionist movement, similar to that for an independent Quebec in Canada.
In contrast, a 2006 report by the British Council suggests that the number of people
learning English is likely to continue to increase over the next 10-15 years, peaking at
around 2 billion, after which a decline is predicted. Various attempts have been made to
develop a simpler "controlled" English language suitable for international usage (e.g.
Basic English, Plain English, Globish, International English, Special English, Essential

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World English, etc). Increasingly, the long-term future of English as a global language
probably lies in the hands of Asia, and especially the huge populations of India and
China.
Having said that, though, there may now be a critical mass of English speakers
throughout the world which may make its continued growth impossible to stop or even
slow. There are no comparable historical precedents on which to base predictions, but it
well may be that the emergence of English as a global language is a unique, even an
irreversible, event.

5. CONCLUSION

At one point in the early twentieth century, the British Empire expanded accross
almost a quarter of the worlds surface, not including the USA. According to a popular
saying, the sun never set on the British Empire. Nowadays, the sun has set on the
empire, but English remains an important language in every single former colony and in
the whole world.
Under these circumstances, and according to the CEFR, in order to develop students
communicative competence, teachers should expose students to different language
varieties in listening (and reading) texts so that they do not only hear the teachers
voice. This will prepare students for the times when they come into contact with
different language varieties.
Another issue to be taken into account when teaching

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English at an EOI are false friends. Due to the spread of English, many speakers of
Spanish use a number of words borrowed from English. But there are many false
friends too, where similar sounding words actually mean something quite different, for
example, Spanish eventualmente (occasionaly) contrasts with English eventually (in the
end).
Plurilinguallism is on the increase in Europe and all around the world. That is why, as
teachers, we are devoted to developing plurilingual individuals, capable of functioning
in this global village the world has become.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harmer, Jeremy . The Practice of English Language Teaching. 2007. 4Th Edition.
Longman Handbooks for language Teachers. Chapter 1. The world of English.

Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.1995. Second

Edition. Cambridge University Press.

Bryson, Bill. Mother Tongue.1990. Penguin.

Hammond, Alex. How did English become the worlds most widely spoken

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language?.2014.

http://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/learn-languages/english/english-language-globalnumber-one/

http://host.uniroma3.it/docenti/boylan/text/white01.htm

http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/issues_global.html