Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
It is common knowledge that English is an international language. Considering further, we observe Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English and so forth. However, most known to us (by saying us I mean mostly non-native speakers ) are US English and British English.
While taking an "American English" course at university, we were taught that RP (i.e. received pronunciation) is British English pronunciation. At our university all the academic subjects we took were delivered in British English.
By contrast, when we happen to communicate with foreigners, we observe that most of them speak US English. What's more, US English seems to dominate everywhere. A close look at the language in question reveals that "pure British English" can hardly be observed.
Furthermore, it is worth citing Peter Sutton (2006:86) in connection with our concerns:
"As globalisation is breaking many barriers and frontiers, it will not be long before the existing differences between British,US, Indian or South African English will disappear and merge into the creation of a "globalised" English language.
The troublesome point is whether such prediction will turn into reality in the nearest future. Won't that confront "cultural barriers". It is said that "language is culture and culture is language.
A number of studies have been carried out into the differences between US and British English, but solution to the so called "globalised English language" are yet to emerge.
There are issues among the English strains. But another great problem concerns the impacts to the non-English cultures, which can go beyond the benign and even enriching effects of pollination, to jarring mongrelization to outright supplantation. A most publicized clash of cultures is with France, whose people, in spite of being the inheritors of a most glorious language on earth, or because of it, felt alarmed enough by English's encroachments into their culture to mobilize defense in the form of national legislature. In some Oriental cultures, the adaptations of English words amount to mongrelized dictions that are more jarring and offending than the benefits are worth them, where there are any at all. As for the inheritors of ancient languages along with also small genetic pools, the spread of English along with industrialization spells extinctions, as well reported by researchers who recently broadcast on NPR.
But hopes for positive outcomes could be inspired from precedents such as by India - if at all possible against other considerations of colonialism- which is that English even achieves official status there, all the way without her traditional languages having to suffer for it.
Sutton's remark is balderdash. It is suitably vague -- "it will not be long" and "existing differences" -- to be difficult to prove wrong, but I'll bet him a fine dinner in the restaurant of his choice anywhere in the world that in 25 years, or even 50, he is proven utterly wrong. Where does that quote come from, anyway?
When you write "a number of studies," Asusena, to which studies are you referring?
And Robert, what NPR story are you referring to? Would you link to it?
I wouldn't have said it as boldly, but I concur with Grant about the Peter-Sutton quote. It's a very common mistake (but thoughtless, nonetheless) to look at a trend and make a prediction without pointing out, usually without even noticing, that the prediction depends upon the trend continuing.
For example: Say a rabbit has six fawns. At that rate, after another generation there would be 32 rabbits, then 128, then 512 and so on. If they're capable of reproducing every six weeks (I have no idea, I'm just making up an example) then "very soon", say in five years, there'd be almost 4x1078 of them—and they'd weigh 6x1053 times more than the Earth itself.
If you send this email to just ten of your friends, and they send it to ten of their friends, then Toyota (Disney World, Bill Gates, whoever) will send you $213 and within a month the email will have reached more people than could fill the solar system shoulder to shoulder.
I could adduce more examples but you get the idea. I think the same sort of operation is at work here; Sutton sees that English has spread, believes that its influence is still growing, and points out the logical result of that trend continuing indefinitely. But trends never continue indefinitely, partly because of saturation and also because of other factors not predicted. Global warming? Sure, I'll buy it's happening; but I have no idea (and neither does anyone else) whether it'll continue at the same rate, or accelerate sharply, or turn into something else. The same with the economy, political unrest and the globalization of English. Or, rather, we all have ideas, and some of them will turn out to be accurate, but our sciences cannot reliably tell us, even theoretically, what will happen to certain trends.
Grant Barrett said
And Robert, what NPR story are you referring to? Would you link to it?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14537549
in the broadcast:
SIEGEL: In northern Australia, more than 200 languages are being overtaken by English.
There are 3 NPR stories on the topic of vanishing languages, and true, they don't blame English explicitly. But if you grant that ancient languages are disappearing by great numbers, I will bet anything just based on how the world is going, that the chief cause of it (among such as that the last few speakers are dying away), is English's invasion and taking-over, because what other causes can there be?
Grant Barrett said
Sutton's remark is balderdash. It is suitably vague -- "it will not be long" and "existing differences" -- to be difficult to prove wrong, but I'll bet him a fine dinner in the restaurant of his choice anywhere in the world that in 25 years, or even 50, he is proven utterly wrong. Where does that quote come from, anyway?
Actually, the quote is taken from "ARMENIAN FOLIA ANGLISTICA, International Journal of English Studies", 1(2)/2006-Yerevan. Peter Sutton's article is entitled " The Place of English in an Expanding Europe" in the given journal, pages 82-89.
In fact, when I came across Peter Sutton's article in the above-mentioned journal, it caught my eye at first sight. The article is really interesting and eye-catching. It makes you ponder on the issue. Unfortunately, I don't have the electronic form with the site link. The article as a whole provides a lot more information and is not focused on that one idea which is not his, as a matter of fact.
The point is that Peter Sutton himself had quoted the previously mentioned paragraph from Orietta Odoardi. Perhaps I should have started from this point. So P.Sutton had just quoted it in his article under the subheading "Future uses of English". I had only quoted the last paragraph under the given subheading. Let me present the previously quoted paragraph fully:
"But in the wider economic context, Orietta Odoardi (2004:91) argues that ' an increasing volume of translations into English could be outsourced to British and American professionals living, for example, in India, South Africa or Kenya. As globalisation is breaking many barriers and frontiers, it will not be long before the existing differences between British,US, Indian or South African English will disappear and merge into the creation of a “globalised†English language." page 86
I just wanted to get better understanding of the issue which seemed very actual .
Grant Barrett said
When you write "a number of studies," Asusena, to which studies are you referring?
As a matter of fact, by writing " A number of studies have been carried out into the differences between US and British English", I meant all the information indicating the differences between US/American and British English.
Let me present the site links I searched into:
Well, there is still a lot more, but I especially liked this youtube link information.
Robert, I think you may be overstating the influence of English in the world, but you are close to the mark. Languages disappear because the people who speak them — ethnically similar people — disappear or stop being one people. They disappear because of societal pressures, some intentional, some accidental. The presence of English alone is not enough to put out less common languages.
For example, you mention France and its governmental pushback against the tide of English. Well, the French themselves have been responsible over the centuries for the squashing of regional languages in France. English was not a part fo that.
Some of the real-world scenarios in which languages disappear:
• Jungles are clearcut, so a habitat disappears, and the tribes who live there move to the cities where they are no longer practicing their way of life as a group.
• In order to increase national unity, government requires the teaching of a major language (Russian, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) and discourages the teaching of local languages.
• Parents who speak less common languages insist their children speak only the major, prestige language of the country so that the children will not be marginalized by society.
• Valuable minerals are found in the land of occupied by a traditional people, who are either bought out or forced to move to live with other traditional, but different, people, where their differences are subsumed into a kind of generic "other" that is different from the mainstream culture but not what it once was.
• In order to overcome poverty and to increase opportunity, many of the able-bodied adults of isolated areas each make a personal decision to move to where jobs can be found. They send money back to family, and, because of the expense, rarely come back for a visit. Most never permanently return to marry and raise families, but instead stay in where the jobs are and marry into other groups who speak other languages. The children, if they learn it at all, speak only a fractured version of the language. The parents who speak the less common languages have enough to worry about with providing food and shelter; they do not have the luxury of time, money, or education to make sure their children learn the less common language fluently.
Here are books I'd recommend on the topic of disappearing languages:
When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge by David Harrison
Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages by Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing by Stephen Wurm
That the quote came from Orietta Odoardi, Asusena, is good to know but I still disagree with it.
What we see when we look at the different world Englishes is a relatively little amount of cross-pollination, where some words, concepts, and syntactic structures pass back and forth between the different Anglophone cultures and a whole lot of new culture-specific language that never crosses borders because it was created inside a culture and is specific to the needs and characterizations of that culture. This follows a pattern; most of the existing differences in the English varieties happened after major cultural separations, when an English-speaking culture began to reduce or remove the outward influence of another country or political power.
We see this when we examine very large bodies of text in a structured, systematic way.
Grant Barrett said
... differences in the English varieties happened after major cultural separations
Most if not all of the samples of word differences in the video are of modern words or results of evolutions in our time (hood-bonnet, cookie-biscuit, football-rugby, etc).
Are there other things that can be linked to major cultural separations such as no doubt accompanying the American revolution or India's separation from Britain? (vocabulary, grammar or otherwise)
Another question ( maybe more for asusina since he raised the point ) : why the importance of a 'solution' to globalization? What is at stake? When Americans and Englishmen raise the point of being 'separated by a common language' for instance, it never sounds more serious than witty banterings.
RobertB said
Another question ( maybe more for asusina since he raised the point ) : why the importance of a 'solution' to globalization? What is at stake? When Americans and Englishmen raise the point of being 'separated by a common language' for instance, it never sounds more serious than witty banterings.
Well, I did not mean "solution" to globalization but solution to the so called “globalised English language†I came across. By saying solution I meant the further studies, developments on the issue. What's more, globalization is out of the scope of my interests. But after reading on the possible impacts of globalization on English, that fact couldn't but worry me since English is my first foreign language at linguistic university.
As far as the differences between US and British English are concerned, it,nonetheless, really matters for me. In fact, it matters in teaching-learning process of English as a foreign language. As I previously mentioned, the language subjects that I took at university were delivered in British English, but we cannot do without US/American English in real life. My view is that good knowledge of both is needed for mastering English nowadays.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)