Will English always be the global language? - David Crystal!
Asking about the future of language is that way Madness lies. Who would have predicted A Thousand Years Ago that
Latin would no longer be used in 1000 years time by hardly anybody. In a thousand years time will English still be a
global language? We could all be speaking Martian by then, if they land and take over you. Who know what’s going to
happen. To ask about the future of languages, to really ask about the future of society. Futurologists are just as unclear
about what will happen eventually as I am about language. Because language is global for one reason only and that is
the power of people who speak it. Power always drives language. There is not other reason speak somebody else’s
language, other than you want to improve your quality of life or you want to influence them in some way. Of course
English became global for a variety of reason, first of all the power of British empire, later the power of America
imperialism, in the same, in the 17th century the power of industrial Revolution which meant that the language of
science and technology became English predominantly.!
In the 19th century the power of money, “money talks” and the two most productive nations of the world were Britain
and America both using English so the language of international banking became the pound and the dollar, English
once again. in the 20th century cultural power, every aspect of culture has some sort of history in the English language
like: pops song, international advertising, air traffic control, the development of radio and television, the development of
internet (100% of an English language medium when it started). Today only a fraction of the internet is English, internet
has become multilingual. so what’s gonna happens next?!
English will stay a global language as long as certain things happen, first of all the nations that are recognized as the
most powerful nations in the world continue to use English and all the other nations wants to be like them or want to
interact with them or want to sell things to them. So English will stay like that for as long as those nations retain that
kind of power we’re talking mainly America. !
On the other hand, it is a rocket science to think of scenarios we're, for whatever reason, America power diminishes,
the power of some other nations grows and you see other parts of the world becoming more dominant. At the moment
over 2 billion people speak English, there’s never been so many people speaking one language and there’s no sign of
any slackening off in that progress so the long term-future: no idea, the short-term future: no change.!
What will English be that will continue to be used as a global language?!
What English will it be indeed, there are so many answers to this question. If you look at what’s happening at the
moment, then you see certain trends. Remember that this whole business of global English is very recent, nobody was
talking about global English thirty years ago, the first books on global English were not written until the end of the
1990s. The world needs a global language, because countries want to talk to each other, so they have to be institutions
to enable that to happen, and the obvious institution is the United Nations (in 1940s in the UN were 50 or so nations,
and now there are nearly 200). The countries of the world are talking to each other.!
What kind of English will it be? !
Well, if you “join the club” as it were, the English-speaking club you will, as it joining any Club, you will look to the senior
members as it were the most established members and you look at the statistics, you’ll speak the English that you
most often encounter in the world, and that is American English, and so that is one scenario, that American English will
ultimately dominate all other varieties of English. But there is a different scenario, why is there American English in the
first place? Because the Americans wanted to identify themselves as American and not as British there was quite
conscious decision, when America became independence Noah Webster, writer, said we want an American English for
an American identity for the new nation and that’s were American spellings started. Now what happen in American is
now happening globally, so all over the English-speaking world, people are saying, well you can be British if you like,
you can be American if you like, but we want to be Indian or we want to be Nigerian and in the English that we use will
reflect that cultural identity. The English of the world will be a sort of amalgam of all the English of the world (bits of
Indian English, bits of American English, bits of Australian English). Everybody can put something into the melting pot of
English. When people meet from a whole variety of nations, as you get so often in business meetings and international
conferences or just in a hotel, in any part of the world. English is being used as a lingua Franca. Could a lingua Franca
English (term which is culturally not identifiable with anyone place because it's a mixture of everything) could that be the
norm, probably that's the way it's going to go.!
English as a Lingua Franca - Jocelyn Wyburd
I have mentioned that a major Lingua Franca in many parts of the world is English and in fact it is increasingly English
which is the major international Lingua Franca. We need to unpack some issues around English as a Lingua Franca,
many mother tongue anglophones believe that because English is increasingly being learned and spoken by people all
over the world that it reduces or even makes redundant the need for under phones to learn other languages. I don’t
think that’s true at all, I think the opposite is true, if we try and unpack some aspects about English as a LF it is a
language that many people are learning not because they are interested in Shakespeares, they’re not interested in
Britain or America they’re learning the language in order to communicate with other people who are not native speakers
of English (for example the English as a LF is being use for the Germans to speak to the Japanese, for the Russians to
speak to the Brazilians) it as nothing to do with British English, American English, Australian English. There have been a
number of observations by businesses that we have spoken to in the UK who work in a global environment with
multilingual groups of people, in the same room, at the same time, trading across borders, etc. Who observe that
actually some of the least effective communicators in a English LF environment other mother tongue anglophones. I
think we need to unpack why that might be, after all it’s our own language shouldn’t we be good at speaking it, but yea
