Orbis Linguarum Vol. 3 (1995)
Legnica
A BRIEF LOOK AT MODERN ENGLISH - HOW IT IS EVOLVING TODAY
This
article is a product of my three week intensive research carried out at the Centre
for Applied Language Studies at Reading University in England. The focus was on
the state of the English language, how it is changing nowadays within the
south-east borders of England as well as what is happening to it outside the
United Kingdom.
I always
wanted to take a closer look at modern English, especially that I teach
practical English, which obviously envelops the four skills; this time,
however, I was specifically interested in spoken language. Before coming to G.
B. I knew vagely what I wanted to learn from the British. I was undoubtedly
curious about R. P. (Received Pronunciation), how it was perceived and
exercised in England. Then, after having read numerous articles, excerpts,
journals and a few books, the vision of my understanding and the scope of my
interests crystallised.
I am
extremely grateful to the lecturers of Reading University who kindly agreed to
be interviewed for the purposes of this article. Their insights and assessments
were invaluable to me in clarifying many of the issues I wanted to deal with.
They all agreed to let me tape their responses to the questions which has
permitted me to carry out the comparative study of the views and come up with
some conclusions and generalisations.
Above all,
I am greatly indebted to Don Porter who was my supervisor, guide, advisor,
helper, contact person and a good friend. Don Porter was the facilitator of the survey I conducted at
the University of Reading.
The survey,
the results of which I am going to present now, included a number of questions
which were commented on by the university academics as well as a few British
EFL teachers who were doing their MAs at the time at CALS. Altogether about
twenty interlocutors gave their opinions on the issues I wanted to investigate
and am describing in this article. In the following sections their opinions
will be mingling with the comments of other authors whose views come from a
copious number of articles I read at the CALS library.
R. P. is
alive and well - and changing.
What has
happened to R. P. in today` s English speech? Is it merely a model for
non-native speakers of English to copy? Would you like to witness a comeback of
R. P. into the English language?
Those were
the first questions to get answers to from my interviewees as well as the
renowned linguists whose articles are to be found in such journals as English Today, EFL Gazette, Wordpower,
Plain English, Modern English Teacher and World Englishes. It is an obvious
fact that R. P. in its hyper conservative, upper-class, posh form belongs to
the past.
That is to
say, its popularity and high esteem in the marked version belong to the past.
Yet, the Queen and some 3-5 per cent of the ` upper-crust` speakers still use
it and will never change their old-fashioned way of pronouncing the English
sounds. R. P. is losing its highly respected status due to the egalitarianism
which seems to be dawning in G. B. No one wants to emulate the marked accent of
R. P. because no one wants to be identified with the priviliged position, priviliged
education and priviliged status.
What is the
name of the new version that most educated people speak in G. B. today? Or,
simply, does R. P. need to be redefined to get a new label, and a positive one?
This seems to be the case with Received Pronunciation. The form of the educated
language is approximating towards the unmarked or acquired R. P. although it
has no name yet. Is it proper to call it spoken Standard English? Regional
accents modified through education have resulted in a new model of speech
which unfortunately has not been
defined yet. Is it a neutral accent or
is it a modified regional accent
that is
spoken by the educated elites in the U. K. nowadays? No matter how you name it,
it is a clear, intelligible, grammar-ruled speech that no one has difficulty
understanding.
None of the
interviewees would like to witness a comeback of R. P. in its traditional,
elevated version for the obvious reason that R. P. reinforces the social class
system which is still strong in G. B. and which bedevils the British society
and promotes the class-ridden society model contrary to John Major`s dream of a
classless one.
What kind
of English is now associated with education, high culture and aspiration
towards social advancement? The question seemed to be troublesome for my
interlocutors.
Many
referred to R. P. in its new form or an approximation of R. P. corresponding to
spoken Standard English. All were of the same mind that one should promote
clarity of expression in speech and aim at international comprehensible form of
language. Both the academics and the authors of the articles seem to be in
favour of bidialectalism, consisting of regional accents and spoken Standard
English (or the approximation to R. P. ) Some used a definition like an
international R. P. English or something relatively close to it. There is more
and more tolerance of local accents in G. B. nowadays. One can hear on TV and
the radio voices uninhibited by their regional distinctions. University
lecturers also provide a broad range of variety of accents which, however,
sound more regional to a native ear than to a non-native listener. All in all,
there is a move towards a modern version of R. P. with a regional flavour. This
seems to be a compromise to Charlrs Barber`s comment that ‘ English is
diversified horizontally into regional dialects and vertically into class
dialects. ”
Estuary
English: Tomorrow’s R. P. ?
This is a
question posed by David Rosewarne in the article under the same title. It also corresponds
to one of the predictions made by Ch. Barber in his Linguistic Change in
Present-Day English where he is wondering about the development of Received
Standard, as he calls it, and hypothesizes that” Received Standard will assert
itself in a modified form” or ‘ one of the regional standards will come to be
recognized as a new national standard, perhaps coalescing with the present R.
S. in the process. ’ At this stage, Estuary English (EE) calls for explanation.
What is it
then? The term was first coined in 1984 by David Rosewarne, a linguist and now
a senior lecturer at a London college. In the 1990s Tom McArthur suggested the
term ‘New London Voice’ to describe it
but it never caught on. Estuary English is a mixture of Cockney and the
Queen’s English. It is the middle ground between two extremely different
accents: R. P. and popular London speech. It has been spreading since the 40s.
Estuary
English, as David Rosewarne predicts, ” may spread westwards into Wales and
northwards to the Scottish border” but he does not presume” it being adopted in
Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand”. Neither is EE
rated very highly internationally. Who does it belong to? Mostly to the young
generation living by the banks of the river Thames and its estuary but it is
also heard in the British MPs’ speech as well as radio and television
presenters, doctors, lawyers, in business circles and in advertising. EE is
very attractive to many Britishers who want to disguise their origin.
Especially the young who are most likely to become influential in the future
wish to fit into their environment and to increase their credibility. They want
to feel integrated into their peer groups. They know too well that to hold on
to conservative or even advanced R. P. , as D. Jones classifies it, means to
arouse hostility and ridicule. They envisage EE as a modern, progressive accent
projecting an approachable, informal and flexible image.
How does
Estuary English sound? Although it has not been fully described yet, some
characteristic features are discernible and interesting to present here.
Pronunciation.
An EE
speaker might use /w/ instead of /l/ in the final position or in a final
consonant cluster. So in the statement: Fowty
books have been supplied in error which need to be replaced, the listener
may be confused by the intended meaning which in this case is ‘faulty’, and not ‘forty’.
Princess
Diana is said to have caught this’ linguistic virus’, and her use of the /w/
like /l/ in words like miuwlk (milk) and fiuwlm (film) provides interesting
evidence of the influx of EE on R. P. speakers. John Major has been identified
to speak like this: „ Britain wiwll benefit from this latest fawll in the
pound”.
In the
tendency for the sound /l/ to be turned into /w/, St. Paul’s will come like St.
Paw’s and parcel like par-saw and Walter like water. (poor
Walter!) Paul Coggle, the author of Do You Speak Estuary? would sound Pauw Cogguw in ‘ Eshtry’ English. Estuarians do a lot of ‘ t-glottalling’. In the
sentence: There’s a lot of it about,
the t’s at the end are ‘ strangled’ so as to produce: There’s a lo’ of i’ abou’.
In general
the /t/ is dropped and replaced by a glottal stop, so characteristic for a
Cockney speaker. Therefore it has been acceptable to say: Ga’wick for Gatwick, wa’er for water, bu’er for butter ne’work
for network as well as ha’ for hat, can’ for can’t, Ken’ for Kent.
In EE /r/
is closer to the American realization than British.
An ‘
Eshtry’ speaker will also not bother to pronounce /th/ in the words like fink (think) and fahver (father) with /v/ instead of / /, which, in time, s/he is
likely to drop entirely. Estuary English speakers are a little less willing to
drop the -ink for the -ing feature.
So they can be often heard to say:
-Can you give me somethink for my headache?
-Sorry, nothink I have is strong enough.
Of course,
one has to be aware that there are two ends of the spectrum in EE, with a
Cockney accent at one end and R. P. at the other. Some Cockney features are
adopted more readily to EE, other seem to be less attractive for the Estuarians
with social aspirations who may perceive some features as common or vulgar.
The Estuary
speakers in the intellectual professions tend towards the R. P. end of the
spectrum, those in the manual occupations tend to be nearer the Cockney end. In
EE there is a tendency to retain /y/, or Yod, as it is called, in some words;e.
g. Give the stshew to Stshewet, not to
that stshewdent, stshewpid! (Give the stew to Stuart, not to that student,
stupid!) and to drop it in other words, e. g. absolootly, loocid, noo, bootiful.
As far as
stress and intonation go, the Estuarians may make an impression as if their
speech were void of enthusiasm and spontaneity.
Vocabulary.
Estuary English
is open to Americanisms which are creeping into British English as well as
other kinds of Englishes today. ‘There you go’ for ‘ here you are’, ‘Hi!’ for
‘Hello!’, ’ excuse me’ for ‘ sorry’, ‘ busy’ for ‘engaged’, ‘ right’ for a
question tag -are typical adoptions. Among other curiosities worth mentioning
here are a popular tag ‘ inni’?’ standing for ‘ isn’t it?’ e. g. ’ Nice day,
inni?’, use of ‘ never’ to negate a sentence, e. g. ‘I never knew he was a
teacher. ’, use of an adjective instead of an adverb, e. g. ‘She sang real
nice’ or ‘She types really slow’ or
‘Didjuh
sleep good?’
‘Basically’
and ‘cheers’(thank you) are other examples of EE pet words.
Concluding,
let me quote two enthusiastic hypotheses concerning EE and R. P. , one by D.
Rosewarne: ‘Now and probably for the foreseeable future, it is(EE) the
strongest influence on R. P. Though it may eventually replace R. P. as the most
influential accent in the British Isles, it is harder to see it taking on an
international role with anything like the current prestige of R. P”. ; the
other by Paul Coggle: ‘As Estuary English spreads, both geographically and
socially, it may become the broad meeting place, the common ground for a coming
together of British society.’
What do my
interlocutors say to the same question? What is their reaction to this Newspeak
emerging in southern England? Do they consider the dominance of EE depressing
news or is it an optimistic direction? Do they like the accent? These were the
questions I bombarded them with. To my surprise, as if in conspiracy, they
sounded unanimous and very detached. Their reactions create a rather
interesting pattern.
First, they
are very cautious about hypothesizing and not as optimistic as D. Rosewarne seems
to be. They consider EE as a regional( and minor) accent, gaining popularity
and influence on R. P. but they do not think it will ever replace R. P. They’ d
rather not evaluate it; as linguists they observe and describe linguistic
phenomena, but most of them would rather their children did not pick it
up. Some of them consider it superior
to R. P. in its conservative version and find it an advantage in their kids’
mouths although, on the other hand, they fear, it may turn to be a handicap
when it comes to career prospects.
Very few
dared to express their disapproval of EE, calling it” ugly”, ”demotic”, ”fun
speech”, ”speech of wild boys on the fringes of criminal life”, and ‘transitory
phenomenon”. On the whole, they have no objections to EE but since they cannot
stop it, well, they don’t want to stop it, let it progress and they will watch
it evolve. In their opinion, language changes and things happen as they happen
and one cannot impose pronunciation upon people. EE is good news according to
one of the interviewees as ‘ it heralds democracy”. One of the Ma’s warmed to
the idea that EE would be a dominant accent in the nearest future, himself
being from the area of theThames estuary.
‘In the
period since the 1850s there has been a great levelling of dialect and accent
differences in Britain.” writes John Honey in Does Accent Matter? I have recently read two compulsive
books by Bill Bryson: Made in America-An Informal History of the English
Language in the United States and Mother Tongue-The English Language. The
author states that in America ‘they dropped the peculiarities of their several
provincial idioms, retaining what was fundamental and common to them all. ”
According to Bryson, the Americans continued to evince a more or less uniform
speech due to 1. social mobility 2. the desire for a common national identity
3. the intermingling of people from diverse backgrounds which favoured language
homogeneity.
That
American ‘miracle’ prompted me to pose a question of a similar nature in
England. If there were a campaign in G. B. launched for the uniformity,
codification or standardisation of English accents in order to manage the
diversification of English varieties and dialects and to level out the
differences in speech, would they support and join it? Again, the interviewees
shouted ‘No!’ chorally. ‘That is an impossibility”, and they sounded determined
and absolutely negative towards it. Do they, like all pioneers fear a losing
battle? Maybe, but first and foremost they are for the diversity of the existing
varieties in the U. K. and they are willing to save them, otherwise the English
language will lose a grat deal of its character. Again, they stressed, they
assumed a ‘hands-off approach’ and let accents develop naturally.
The English
seem to value and respect the regional accents which, in their view, add colour
and richness to the language. And which primarily constitute their sense of
identity. They don’t want any revolutions which would be doomed to failure and
scorn. ”Baffling and bewildering as the diversity may be, it is nonetheless
fascinating. ”states F. Chevillet in the article Received Pronunciationand Standard English as systems of reference.
In Made
in America Bill Bryson quotes John Pickering, president of the American
Academy of Arts and Science, who contended: ”One could find a greater
difference in dialect between one county or another in Britain than there is
between one state and another in America. ”
As Paul
Kerswill’s and Ann Williams’ (linguists from the University of Reading) 4 year
research proves, due to the movements and intermingling of populations, the
south-east of England is subject to dialect levelling. Milton Keynes, the most
recent British new town, is the best evidence that”if the population continues
to be mobile, as is the case in Milton Keynes, a levelled variety is likely to
emerge that is difficult to distinguish from other varieties in the region. ”
Milton Keynes proves the existence of a new melting-pot of accentsin the United
Kingdom.
As for the
desire for a common national identity we can hardly hope that Britons wish for
that. Up till now they are very deeply aware of their separate Irish, Scottish,
Welsh and British identities and they would be very upset if you failed to
identify their roots. A Scotsman does not feel English, nor does an Irishman or
Welshman. They are English, Scots, Irish and Welsh respectively and any attempt
to melt them in one pot would arouse resentment and social differences which
Britain has been plagued by for a very long time.
The British
want to see a move in the opposite direction from that. They are
historically-minded and have a very strong sense of independence. And” identity
implies individuality” as D. Crystal contends in Which English-or English
Which? ‘It would be a very sad day if teachers were to iron out accents to
make us all clone-like. ” observed an English teacher at Highcliffe school.
‘For
generations American accents, spelling, grammar and vocabulary have been
disdained and ridiculed by large numbers of British English speakers” writes
Paul Coggle. On the subject of Americanisation of the English language within
the boudaries of the U. K. I was curious to know how American-proof modern
British English is and to what extent American English affects the British speech
in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
Again, the
speakers on the tape represent a homogeneous body of opinion. As the article
has already unfolded, Estuary English is an American-open Newspeak, especially
in terms of lexis.
The Reading
academics seem glad to welcome the American influx since it enriches the
language and simplifies grammar. The American imperialism is a natural and
inevitable process enveloping the whole world, let alone the British Isles.
Hence, any resistance towards it is ill-founded and poorly motivated in their
opinions. It is a service to the British speech that should be appreciated
rather than disdained. Bill Bryson in the article Stiff Upper Lip, Mac maintains that” The British unknowingly use
thousands of American words daily. One
of them is’ moron’. ” and adds ‘Because it has dominated technology and the
culture, America has also had the privilege of dominating the language. ”
Anyone
boycotting the American spread would be labelled an unrealistic loser.
The long-lasting
xenophobia against Americanisation of British English has eased with time
although until now one can hear voices attacking Americanisms creeping into
British speech and violating its purity.
American
English, regarded by many as a corrupted form of British speech, is not welcome
back by everybody in the British Isles and although British English is
accepting new American words, it appears to be resistant to American
pronunciation and major changes in grammar and spelling.
Political Correctness (PC)
Political
correctness movement, so popular in America these days, is not gaining that
kind of popularity in the U. K. PC does
not seem to be in the centre of public debate in G. B. and consequently I was
able to find very few articles on PC in recent publications. It appears that
the British are not obsessed or do not want to be bothered by the issue of
bias-free speech so alarming in the USA.
At this
point I cannot resist the temptation to quote some of my pet grotesque
neologisms I came across in the reading materials. Among these are:
chemically inconvenienced for
intoxicated
alternative dentation for false teeth
involuntarily domiciled for homeless
terminological inexactitude for lie
personipulate
for manipulate
femhole
for manhole
femstruate
for menstruate
womenu
for menu
countryperson
for countryman
spouse for wife
My
respondents took the question of PC with a pinch of salt and appeared to be
more distanced and cool than I had expected. In their view, it had become a kind
of joke, a term of abuse very closely identified with minority interests and
extreme feminism. Britons, unlike Americans, are not extremists. They realize
that if they go too far about PC, they will devalue it; besides they do not
want to rush to superficial solutions and changes. They know too well that what
today is politically correct may become tomorrow’s insult and this they want to
evade.
PC has been
turned ‘inside out’ in Great Britain. One of the best exemplifications of this
phenomenon is ‘The Spastics Society’ which came into being as a
counter-protest, pinpointing the incorrect usage of the word ’spastic’ by those
who use it as sneering insults.
Another
nonsensical example refers to the term ’handicapped’. The controversy whether
the word is politically correct has led to the absurdity like this comment
which, of course, is a mockery of the whole debate: ”The word handicapped
should not be used because it carries connotations of cap in hand. ”
The booklet
Disability Etiquette gives a list of terms to use and not to use and
recommends that one should ‘say deafened or hard of hearing instead of
wheelchair bound, people with learning difficulties instead of mental handicap.
” One of the articles I was lucky to find abounds in numerous ’tear-jerking’
examples of terms which patronise or belittle women. Let me quote one of them
related to the argument over the usage of the words Woman/Lady:
A Lady is a
Woman
who was a
Lady
but now
prefers
to be a
Woman
in order to
distinguish her
from the
Lady
(who used
to be a woman)
who ‘does’
for her.
It is
interesting to note that in Britain some women have become ‘wimmin’ to avoid
the sexist use of the word ’men’. ‘Political correctness has to an extent,
despite worthy intentions, made a mockery of language with phrases such as
‘vertically challenged’ instead of short and ’consensual non monogamy’ for wife
swapping” we can read in the article Teen
Talk. Jeff Johnson concludes : „The most pernicious form of intolerance is
’political correctness’ because it comes disguised as tolerance. ” Finally, I
have come to a very sensitive issue that has been on my mind for years now:
The
Purity of the English Language.
First, I
will try to explore what factors have determined the change within the
boundaries of the U. K. and later I will discuss the purity of English in the
international context.
Who
controls the language inside and outside the country? What price is English
paying for being an international tool of communication nowadays? How do
emerging new Englishes affect British English? In short, what is being done to
the English language to preserve its correct usage, its precision, its
beauty-its purity? What role should a linguist play in the matters of a
language?
The
linguists interviewed refrained from the evaluative approach and did not think
anyone could exert any influence on how English was spoken and written. From
what I found in the journals and books, the majority of language ‘guardians’
are of the same opinion. Tom McArthur is one of them: ”Nobody can lay down
absolute laws about these things. No government. No council. No teacher. No
guru of grammar or style. ” His comment is quintessential.
However,
there are some organizations and single voices fighting for the purity of
English. A need to codify the language was seen from the 16th century and by
the 18th c. words in common use among the reformers were’ correct’, ’improve’,
’refine’, ’ascertain’, ’fix’. Jonathan Swift wanted to found an academy of
English and in 1712 published his plea under the title A Proposal for
Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue. G. B. Shaw
advocated a new alphabet to modernise English spelling and even left money in
his will for one to be designed.
Today, the
Simplified Spelling Society(SSS, founded in 1908) has been trying to stir
public awareness of the need for spelling modernisation and publishes proposals
for specific reforms to English spelling. C. Upward in the article The SSS and Its Mission writes in a
regretful tone ”Much of its work over the decades has been recognized as
important and interesting in many quarters, but its practical impact in
improving the way English is generally written has been negligible so far. ”
The Queen’s
English Society is an organization which campaigns to preserve standards of
excellence in English language use. Its members believe that the English
language is currently at risk from deteriorating standards of use, and that
only vigilance and informed awareness will correct matters. The society thus
arranges programmes of lectures and meetings, lobbies and organises petitions
on many aspects of English usage in the hope of promoting change in the right
direction. QUEST, the journal of the Queen’s English Society, is the forum for
the public dialogue for those concerned
about the evolving of English.
‘Plain
English’, another magazine of the Plain English Campaign against bureaucratic
jargon, provides one more example of concern about high standards of English.
In recent years
there has been heated debate in the British media on declining standards of
English. In 1993 the National Curriculum Council’s proposals on the teaching of
English stated that the curriculum must ensure that standards of spoken English
are raised, and the pupils become confident and articulate usersof standard
English, characterised by the correct use of vocabulary and grammar. To which
the National Association for the Teaching of English said that: ”It is still a
narrow and small-minded curriculum which will be likely to lower standards
rather than raise them. ” Braj B. Kachru concludes: ”The reasons for the
‘decay’ of the language are generally traced to indifferent teachers,
irrelevant media moguls, and permissive sociologists. ”
Some
purists are the direct descendants of the 18th century puristic passion. Among
these isolated voices calling for more
public concern about English is Michael Bulley who in the article Who Controls the Language says that he
cannot believe that all changes in a language are neutral: nor can he agree
that a language is unaffected by how much people care about it. He suggests
that schools and teachers should start to raise the standards and encourages
linguists to make linguistic judgements and decisions. He stresses that although
”there has been a belief among many educated people that languages develop
simply in automatic response to communicatory needs”. . . ”language cannot be
separated from the intellectual response to it. . . . Language is no more a
natural phenomenon than sculpture is; it is one of the shapes of our
imagination. ”
Michael
Dummett ’laments’ over the errors he reads and hears in the media. He is
perfectly aware of the inevitable process of language change but he disagrees
that linguistic change is an external force beyond people’s control: „All the
same, our language is in a desperate state. ” and ”what is needed is the
courage to resist linguistic pollution”.
What is
happening to English on the international arena? What price is it paying for
being a lingua franca now when non-native users outnumber native speakers of
English? Let’s ask our respondents first. On the whole they are in favour of
new Englishes coming into being all over the world as their own mother tongue
is being enriched at the same time. Foreign influences can contribute to the
wealth of English in their
homeland
just as they did in the past. The English language is the product of massive
corruption; it is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French. And it is that
mixing, that hybridisation that has given English its peculiar strength and
vigour. English is subject to change, it is not being corrupted. Any language
which is fearful of being corrupted is in danger of simply becoming a
linguistic backwater.
If the
corruption is to take place it will happen outside the U. K. and affect the
pidgins and creoles rather than the status of the main language. A few
interviewees, however, souned rather worried about the status of English and
its precision.
English
as a lingua franca-some facts.
1. The
English language today is spoken by several hundred people: about 350 million
native speakers and approx. 400 million non-native ones.
2. English
is used as a native language in 5 countries, and as a non-native second or
foreign language in about 60 countries.
3. English
is the richest in vocabulary, estimated at 750, 000 words, including 250, 000
technical and scientific terms.
4.
Three-quarters of the world’s mail, its telex and cables, are in English.
English is the medium for 80 percent of the information stored in the world’s
computers.
5. English
is a multiform medium- more and more countries are making English their lingua
franca to communicate with the rest of the world - not just the native English
speaking world.
6. English
has a few rivals, but no equals.
English,
its past, present and future - selection of quotations.
In the
final section let the eminent linguists, language guardians, writers and poets
speak for themselves on the issues of English, its past, present and future. I
am deeply convinced that any attempt to paraphrase their views and
pronuncements would deprive the reader of the utmost pleasure while reading.
Tom
McArthur: ”I like the idea of such a family of Englishes, and would quite enjoy
being a witness at the signing of a whole batch of new certificates for them. ”
Larry E.
Smith: ”When any language becomes international in character, it cannot be
bound to any one culture.”
‘English can and should be de-nationalized. ”
‘There is no room for linguistic chauvinism. ”
R. McCrum,
W. Cran, R. MacNeil: „The rise of English is a remarkable success story. ” „The
future, of course, is
unpredictable, but one thing is certain: the
present flux of English-multi-
national standard or international Babel? -is
part of a process that goes back
to Shakespeare and beyond. ” ‘Does change mean
revitalization, or does it
mean corruption and deterioration? English is
in a constant state of renewal. ”
‘English has its own momentum and its own laws.
Tourism, satellite television
and word
processors spread English faster and farther than ever before, and if
a particular usage or a particular
pronunciation finds favour or answers a need
there will be no controlling it. ”
„A language that was born of invasion itself became
an invader on a global
scale.
”
Peter
James, novelist: ”Churchill once famously described Britain and America as two
great nations divided by a common language. Were he alive today, he might well
have revised that statement to include the entire world as one great planet
becoming divided by a common language”.
David
Edgar, playwright: „Indeed, English is defeating Spanish, French and German not
so much via Hollywood
but precisely because it is already a hybrid,
it is already massively impure, and thus
lends itself effortlessly to the development of
those myriad dialects, creoles, pidgins
and patois into which it has mutated all over
the world. ”
‘In the real world, we have all been shaped by
those who have invaded us, and -
just as profoundly-by those we have invaded. ”
David
Crystal: „A World Standard English exists, but is still at a fairly primitive
stage of development. ”
However. a
totally uniform, regionally neutral, and unargueably prestigious variety does
not yet exist worldwide. ”
Bill Bryson:
„One of the most attractive things about English is its variety. I’d hate to
see any kind of
homogenized English prevail. . . . The threat is that
international culture is becoming much more
homogenized. ”
Will Self,
novelist and critic: „The notion of ‘correct English’ belongs to the 18th
century and the rise of British
imperialism, when it began to be believed
that English should aspire to the
regularity and(alleged) clarity of Latin.
But Latin was already, by this time, a dead
and codified language, no longer subject to
the ceaseless change and mutation
that marks a living language. ”
‘Looked at this way ’correct English’ is
dry, dead English; the language with which
one would converse with a computer, not a
lover. ”
Braj B.
Kachru: „One reason for the dominance of English is its propensity for
acquiring new identities, its power
of assimilation, its adaptability to ’decolonization’
as a language, its manifestation in a range of
varieties, and
above all, its suitability as a flexible medium for literacy and other types of
creativity across language and cultures”.
Robert
Phillipson: „English has been successfully promoted, and has been eagerly
adopted in the global
linguistic
marketplace. One symptom of the impact of English is linguistic borrowing.
English
intrudes on all
the languages that it comes into contact with. The terms’borrowing’and’loan
words’ are misleading
since it has had no intention of returning anything. ”
„Whereas once
Britannia ruled the waves, now it is English which rules them. The British
empire has given
way to the empire of English. Once we used to send gunboats and diplomats
abroad; now we
are sending English teachers. ”
„Globally, what
we are experiencing is both replacing other languages and displacing them. ”
R. McCrum,
W. Cran, R. MacNeil: „The emergence of these new Englishes has been compared to
the spread and
subsequent break-up of Latin throughout the Roman world. . . . .
Just as, with
the decline of the Roman Empire,
Latin broke up into mutually unintelligible
European languages like French,
Spanish and Italian, so over a period of
several centuries, global English
will similarly disintegrate into separate
languages. ”
‘There is no longer one standard
English but several, and they all seem to be
moving further apart from each
other at everincreasing speed, as if there had
been a linguistic ‘big bang’. ”
I would not forgive myself if this apocalyptic
vision of the future of English were not balanced by more optimistic overtones.
My own view, based on observation throughout the English speaking world and a
bit irrational feeling of love for the English language(that I have been teaching for 18 years), is that English will
probably continue to flourish as the great binding force, the glue among
nations. Let me repeat after R. W. Emerson: „Language is a city, to the
building of which every human being brought a stone. ”And we will go on
bringing still new stones to make sure that English is alive and well.
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