First I want to express my gratitude for introducing such nice topic as 'Why does....English'?. Frankly speaking...
The expansion of demand for English to suit particular needs and the development of linguistics and educational psychology have given rise to the growth of English for Specific Purposes (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).
English is the most widely spoken language in our planet, used in some way by at least one out of every seven human beings around the globe. Half of the world's books are written in English, and the majority of international telephone calls are made in English. Sixty percent of the world's radio programs are beamed in English, and more than seventy percent of international mail is written and addressed in English. Eighty percent of all computer texts, including all web sites, are stored in English.
English has acquired the largest vocabulary of all the world's languages, perhaps as many as two million words, and has generated one of the noblest bodies of literature in the annals of the human race. Nonetheless, it is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language. I will give you two interesting examples.First, why do we call it newsprint when it contains no printing but when we put print on it, we call it a newspaper? Second, why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists?
Language is like the air we breathe. It's invisible, inescapable, indispensable, and we take it for granted. But, when we take the time to step back and listen to the sounds that escape from the holes in people's faces and to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours -- especially happy hours and rush hours - often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper, most telephones are dialed by being punched (or pushed?), and most bathrooms don't have any baths in them. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a tree - no bath, no room; it's still going to the bathroom. And doesn't it seem a little bizarre that we go to the bathroom in order to go to the bathroom?
Let, I am a student in the University of Pisa of Engineering faculty. When I arrived in Pisa, as well as in Italy, I did not know any words of Italian language. For one of my problems, I went to police box, but no person can speak other than Italian. I came back, and later I went all the spots by myself with the help of a map. Fortunately, the map was in English (I can't remember, as all the letters of English are same for Italian). If you want to go outside of Italy, then you will fell the reality.
At last, English for Academic Purposes has opened up a new world for us. Whether we attempt to design and teach EAP(English for academic purposes) courses or carry out research into this particular area. This topic is just an attempt to explore a small area of learning English and inspire new students to learn English as a foreign language.
At the end of our class, our English teacher (L. Panichi)says "Please feel free to write and don't hesitate to write your positive comments in this blog...". I have found the reason why she says that everyday.
I'm writing this in English hoping that not everybody will understand ...you know why? as I just have to say that I feel so stupid with the "blog technology"... I am bit confuse..maybe is better if I carry on writing on my secret diary!!!Then there is no possibility of making any error!!! As I can read everything what I write, and I can understand the meaning of my writing... But if I write in blog, specially in this blog, I think there are loads of mistakes.....but I don't have the English dictionary as sometimes I am too generous... anyway... Professor (L. Panichi) please forgive me for that!!!!
In this section, I want to say, everybody will write feeling free and you may have some mistakes as we are in the preliminary stage of writing in other language.. after some days, all will go in right direction. I can express everything what comes in my mind and I can explore my feeling... you try.. I think you will do better than me. And you must write in English, as the blog is not only for you, blog is for universe, everybody will read... so thats the reason why does the world demands for English.
N.B: Sorry professor, I have changed the words needs and wants.
I don't think that we can give the definitive response on why the world speaks (at least a very considerable part of it) English. This question can be extended to "why englishmen invent practically all the sports?" (and mastered none of it :D ). IMHO probably Englishmen have a very good ken eye that lead them to be the precursor of a lot of things including the "best" language.
Everybody knows our English course is almost over and I don't want to address this last issue before thanking Prof.Luisa and all mates for the nice time spent together. Well, let's start. I would like to answer to the last Laguna comment on the discussion "Why does the world want/need English?" I don't think that a reasonable answer could be really difficult to reach. At first, in my opinion globalization makes everybody to be citizen of the world and in this new global community English has the important role of being a common language that helps comunication and integration among cultures. Anyway English isn't the most wide spread language all over the world because it is the Spanish (please, somebody corrects me if I'm wrong!!) but English is the first language in economic and technological activities. So, that's the answer!! I mean, when you speak about money the currency taken as reference all over the world is dollar; when you measure how much oil or gas we buy from the meddle east you should do it in a British unit of measure that is the "barrel per day"; and so on... The Great Britain and the United States have won the run to the globalization. That's all! Great Britain started in the 19th century and the US followed its steps during the 20th century and continues up to now. I hope the European Community in the near future shall have a bigger influence in the international landscape, but I can assure you the role of English will be the same!
I remember at school my English teacher telling us that English was so widespread not for it's simplicity but because it had been the language of commercial exchanges and dominating culture for a long time. She recalled us colonial age and the English domination all over the world. Also nowadays many predominant countries in the world are english speaking (the USA, Britain.. ). She often became a bit angry when hearing about the simplicity of the language she taught, and she mentioned modal verbs or phrasal expressions as an example of how complex English language can get, as any other spoken language. Many examples of the diffusion of english language can be reconnected to commercial reasons. I'm thinking about Holliwood, for example, and the market of pop music. MTV is one evidence of this process, since you cannot understand much of what they are saying even on the Italian version of this channel if you don't know a little bit of English. Most of these "products" come from America. In addiction, this is the age of informatics, and this factor helps English to become a common background for Internet and computer users. Probably, another reason for the huge and pervasive usage of English is it's adaptability to a myriad of different contexts. Adaptability is a different feature from simplicity, and this is the reason of why it's common to find many examples of english spoken at a low level, but it's more difficult to hear english spoken properly. Someone says that that probably badly spoken english is more undestandable than other badly spoken languages:)
Finally, there's probably a sort of "chain effect", which forces you too to express in English if you want to get in touch with a lot of people all around the world or simply enter the mainstream.
I think that the world doesn't want English. The world needs English. People need English to communicate each other. All people prefer to communicate by their own language but the only possibility to spread the own culture is to talk with more persons than the ones who live in same country. To this aim, is essential to have a common language for all the people in the world. The reason why English was chosen as common language is another issue. The reasons, in my opinion, are also easy to understand. In the years of the beginning of the globalization the part of the world leader in the technology was the United States. The first field that had have the necessity to share the ideas to accelerate progress is the technology. In those years (the beginning of eighties) most common communication media started to come to life. The most important one was Internet: It has allowed a quick growth of the knowledge all over the world. This technology was developed by United State army in 1970 and it is unsurprising that the language of Internet is English. Unfortunately in Italy learning English is very hard. Very often, teachers prefer to explain the hystory and British culture during the classes instead of let students talk modern English. Moreover, possilities to listen spoken English on radio or on television are completely absent. Commonly, Italian students graduate from school and think to have learnt English at school, but when they have to talk with an American or an English guy, they sadly realize that their English is really poor. This is unaccettable thing for a developed countries like Italy. But our polititian continue to talk about Rete4 and its authorization to broadcast instead of deal with these real problems. Possibility to learn English should be more accessible to all people. Otherwise Italians will be excluded from the world in the next future.
About the spread of english language probably we have to consider either historical and economic reasons. British empire had played a great role in the creation of a great number of english spoken people. Since world war two the growing economy and culture participate in spreading of english language.Also the increasing power of the U.S. during the last century had made that country a point of reference for many categories of people like scientists. now adays most of the well known scientific institute, journals, industries communicate in english.So if you want to be a part of it it's better for you to learn english as fast as possible otherwise you'll be isolated!!!!
English the language of POWER, that how we describe it. Even if Chinese mandarin is the most spoken language (as first language), English still remains the most widespread language in the Globe. If you had a look on wikipedia, it could give you an idea of how much English is the language of kNOWLEDGE. In fact,English articles dominates more than half of the total of the other languages articles. ENGLISH RULES.
In our opininon the world wants to speak English to globalize all nations to one and because in science field and culture in general the most used language is English. Most of the international business is done in english at multinational companies in different countries and they share all their scientific knowledge in English. To know cultures of other nations with different language english is helpful. Maybe the choice of English as this international language is due to the fact that the most powerful and developed countries are US and UK. England colnized much part of the world, for example American continent, Australia and India. The spread of English and not other languages (like French) in American colonies might be due to the fact that English is grammatically easier than other languages like. But this is also one of many reasons. Many countries introduced English as a second language in schools and we think that in future the spread of English becomes more and more important. Emanuele and Chaitanya
Now thanks to ex-IBM professional Jean Paul Nerrihre advised us to try “Globish” instead of tough English. His famous book “Don’t Speak English” already became famous and advises us to learn language called Globish meaning global English. This involves a vocabulary limited to 1500 words, short sentences, basic syntax and extensive hand gestures to get the point across. What a different way to become global. Try it!
So there are plenty of opportunities. No society can prosper on old traditions, ethos and even languages. Government which is busy in opening schools based on religion and region to ensure discriminations to fulfill its desire to rule on deprived people will find difficult to accept the recommendation.
So let us unlearn regional language and regional feeling. Let us get detached from regional attachments. Learn the language which keeps you ahead for the years to come. Select a book which talks about future rather than glorify the past. Read the blogs which keeps you ahead. Learn the language in which tomorrow’s wisdom will be typed and printed. Ref: kamekish.blogspot.com/2007
Yes, I do believe that in the long term we'll use "Globish" rather than "proper English" for international communications, but it's a long way to come. I mean: everybody sees that nowadays English is the most used language for international communications (not the most used in general: it's hard to deal with 1 billion of Chinese people!), for all the historical reasons you mentioned above: British commerce and colonization in the 19th century, American commerce and technology in the 20th one. In those days, however, only a little percentage of people were involved in speaking English, mainly what we may call "ruling classes".
But now, thanks to the proliferation of the use of the Internet, the use of English has spread to larger parts of populations (the richer the country, the larger the English speakers, of course). These people sail the Internet to read news and scientific articles (like we Ph.D. students do) or just to download movies and telefilms, 'cause they can't stand waiting for their local translation!!
History tells us that languages change by the use of common people, and only elites tend to use crystallized language. I think native English speakers are the elite, in this case, while we non-native English speakers are the common people, and we'll change English by the influence of OUR OWN native languages. We can see this is already happening in the U.S., where the influence of Spanish speaking immigrants is having some impact on the American English dictionary, and we can see it from the story of English, too: it has always been open to influences of other languages, and it's full, for example, of French words in the law and administration fields (O.K., you may say it's the effect of the long Norman domination) and even Italian ones, in arts field (and here no domination happened, at all!); the ancient English linguists did not feel the need to translate those foreign words in their own language (as French is doing, instead).
So, in conclusion: I see that the world will use a sort of english-based lingua franca in the future, while the "real English" will still be spoken in its homelands...but, since this is a forecast for the long period, in the present and short period we'll need to learn English!
Wow, I see I'm spending lots of bits to store my long thoughts ;), so I'm going to stop.
I have been working in tertiary education and foreign language teaching for over 16 years. My professional areas of interest are Language Awareness, Tandem learning, Learner Counselling, Cross Cultural communication and language learning in multimedia environnments including Second Life.
11 comments:
First I want to express my gratitude for introducing such nice topic as 'Why does....English'?. Frankly speaking...
The expansion of demand for English to suit particular needs and the development of linguistics and
educational psychology have given rise to the growth of English for Specific Purposes (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).
English is the most widely spoken language in our planet, used in some way by at least one out of every seven human beings around the globe. Half of the world's books are written in English, and the majority of international telephone calls are made in English. Sixty percent of the world's radio programs are beamed in English, and more than seventy percent of international mail is written and addressed in English. Eighty percent of all computer texts, including all web sites, are stored in English.
English has acquired the largest vocabulary of all the world's languages, perhaps as many as two million words, and has generated one of the noblest bodies of literature in the annals of the human race. Nonetheless, it is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language. I will give you two interesting examples.First, why do we call it newsprint when it contains no printing but when we put print on it, we call it a newspaper? Second, why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists?
Language is like the air we breathe. It's invisible, inescapable, indispensable, and we take it for granted. But, when we take the time to step back and listen to the sounds that escape from the holes in people's faces and to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours -- especially happy hours and rush hours - often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper, most telephones are dialed by being punched (or pushed?), and most bathrooms don't have any baths in them. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a tree - no bath, no room; it's still going to the bathroom. And doesn't it seem a little bizarre that we go to the bathroom in order to go to the bathroom?
Let, I am a student in the University of Pisa of Engineering faculty. When I arrived in Pisa, as well as in Italy, I did not know any words of Italian language. For one of my problems, I went to police box, but no person can speak other than Italian. I came back, and later I went all the spots by myself with the help of a map. Fortunately, the map was in English (I can't remember, as all the letters of English are same for Italian). If you want to go outside of Italy, then you will fell the reality.
At last, English for Academic Purposes has opened up a new world for us. Whether we attempt to design and teach EAP(English for academic purposes) courses or carry out research into this particular area. This topic is just an attempt to explore a small area of learning English and inspire new students to learn English as a foreign language.
At the end of our class, our English teacher (L. Panichi)says "Please feel free to write and don't hesitate to write your positive comments in this blog...". I have found the reason why she says that everyday.
I'm writing this in English hoping that not everybody will understand ...you know why? as I just have to say that I feel so stupid with the "blog technology"... I am bit confuse..maybe is better if I carry on writing on my secret diary!!!Then there is no possibility of making any error!!! As I can read everything what I write, and I can understand the meaning of my writing... But if I write in blog, specially in this blog, I think there are loads of mistakes.....but I don't have the English dictionary as sometimes I am too generous... anyway... Professor (L. Panichi) please forgive me for that!!!!
In this section, I want to say, everybody will write feeling free and you may have some mistakes as we are in the preliminary stage of writing in other language.. after some days, all will go in right direction. I can express everything what comes in my mind and I can explore my feeling... you try.. I think you will do better than me. And you must write in English, as the blog is not only for you, blog is for universe, everybody will read... so thats the reason why does the world demands for English.
N.B: Sorry professor, I have changed the words needs and wants.
-------M.A.H. Mithu------------
I don't think that we can give the definitive response on why the world speaks (at least a very considerable part of it) English. This question can be extended to "why englishmen invent practically all the sports?" (and mastered none of it :D ). IMHO probably Englishmen have a very good ken eye that lead them to be the precursor of a lot of things including the "best" language.
Everybody knows our English course is almost over and I don't want to address this last issue before thanking Prof.Luisa and all mates for the nice time spent together.
Well, let's start.
I would like to answer to the last Laguna comment on the discussion "Why does the world want/need English?"
I don't think that a reasonable answer could be really difficult to reach.
At first, in my opinion globalization makes everybody to be citizen of the world and in this new global community English has the important role of being a common language that helps comunication and integration among cultures.
Anyway English isn't the most wide spread language all over the world because it is the Spanish (please, somebody corrects me if I'm wrong!!) but English is the first language in economic and technological activities.
So, that's the answer!!
I mean, when you speak about money the currency taken as reference all over the world is dollar; when you measure how much oil or gas we buy from the meddle east you should do it in a British unit of measure that is the "barrel per day"; and so on...
The Great Britain and the United States have won the run to the globalization.
That's all!
Great Britain started in the 19th century and the US followed its steps during the 20th century and continues up to now.
I hope the European Community in the near future shall have a bigger influence in the international landscape, but I can assure you the role of English will be the same!
Barbara C.
@Mithu and laguna
I remember at school my English teacher telling us that English was so widespread not for it's simplicity but because it had been the language of commercial exchanges and dominating culture for a long time.
She recalled us colonial age and the English domination all over the world. Also nowadays many predominant countries in the world are english speaking (the USA, Britain.. ).
She often became a bit angry when hearing about the simplicity of the language she taught, and she mentioned modal verbs or phrasal expressions as an example of how complex English language can get, as any other spoken language.
Many examples of the diffusion of english language can be reconnected to commercial reasons. I'm thinking about Holliwood, for
example, and the market of pop music. MTV is one evidence of this process, since you cannot understand much of what they are saying even on the Italian version of this channel if you don't know a little bit of English. Most of these "products" come from America. In addiction, this is the age of informatics, and this factor helps English to become a common background for Internet and computer users.
Probably, another reason for the huge and pervasive usage of English is it's adaptability to a myriad of different contexts. Adaptability is a different feature from simplicity, and this is the reason of why it's common to find many examples of english spoken at a low level, but it's more difficult to hear english spoken properly.
Someone says that that probably badly spoken english is more undestandable than other badly spoken languages:)
Finally, there's probably a sort of "chain effect", which forces you too to express in English if you want to get in touch with a lot of people all around the world or simply enter the mainstream.
Hello,
I think that the world doesn't want English. The world needs English. People need English to communicate each other. All people prefer to communicate by their own language but the only possibility to spread the own culture is to talk with more persons than the ones who live in same country. To this aim, is essential to have a common language for all the people in the world. The reason why English was chosen as common language is another issue.
The reasons, in my opinion, are also easy to understand.
In the years of the beginning of the globalization the part of the world leader in the technology was the United States. The first field that had have the necessity to share the ideas to accelerate progress is the technology. In those years (the beginning of eighties) most common communication media started to come to life. The most important one was Internet: It has allowed a quick growth of the knowledge all over the world. This technology was developed by United State army in 1970 and it is unsurprising that the language of Internet is English.
Unfortunately in Italy learning English is very hard. Very often, teachers prefer to explain the hystory and British culture during the classes instead of let students talk modern English. Moreover, possilities to listen spoken English on radio or on television are completely absent. Commonly, Italian students graduate from school and think to have learnt English at school, but when they have to talk with an American or an English guy, they sadly realize that their English is really poor. This is unaccettable thing for a developed countries like Italy. But our polititian continue to talk about Rete4 and its authorization to broadcast instead of deal with these real problems. Possibility to learn English should be more accessible to all people. Otherwise Italians will be excluded from the world in the next future.
Filippo Costa
About the spread of english language probably we have to consider either historical and economic reasons. British empire had played a great role in the creation of a great number of english spoken people. Since world war two the growing economy and culture participate in spreading of english language.Also the increasing power of the U.S. during the last century had made that country a point of reference for many categories of people like scientists. now adays most of the well known scientific institute, journals, industries communicate in english.So if you want to be a part of it it's better for you to learn english as fast as possible otherwise you'll be isolated!!!!
English the language of POWER, that how we describe it. Even if Chinese mandarin is the most spoken language (as first language), English still remains the most widespread language in the Globe. If you had a look on wikipedia, it could give you an idea of how much English is the language of kNOWLEDGE. In fact,English articles dominates more than half of the total of the other languages articles. ENGLISH RULES.
In our opininon the world wants to speak English to globalize all nations to one and because in science field and culture in general the most used language is English. Most of the international business is done in english at multinational companies in different countries and they share all their scientific knowledge in
English. To know cultures of other nations with different language english is helpful. Maybe the choice of English as this international language is due to the fact that the most powerful and developed countries are US and UK. England colnized much part of the world, for example American continent, Australia and India. The spread of English and not other languages (like French) in American colonies might be due to the fact that English is grammatically easier than other languages like. But this is also one of many reasons. Many countries introduced English as a second language in schools and we think that in future the spread of English becomes more and more important. Emanuele and Chaitanya
@ Laguna & Manuel
Hello Dear,
Now thanks to ex-IBM professional Jean Paul Nerrihre advised us to try “Globish” instead of tough English. His famous book “Don’t Speak English” already became famous and advises us to learn language called Globish meaning global English. This involves a vocabulary limited to 1500 words, short sentences, basic syntax and extensive hand gestures to get the point across. What a different way to become global. Try it!
So there are plenty of opportunities. No society can prosper on old traditions, ethos and even languages. Government which is busy in opening schools based on religion and region to ensure discriminations to fulfill its desire to rule on deprived people will find difficult to accept the recommendation.
So let us unlearn regional language and regional feeling. Let us get detached from regional attachments. Learn the language which keeps you ahead for the years to come. Select a book which talks about future rather than glorify the past. Read the blogs which keeps you ahead. Learn the language in which tomorrow’s wisdom will be typed and printed.
Ref: kamekish.blogspot.com/2007
@ Mithu, laguna and Manuel
Yes, I do believe that in the long term we'll use "Globish" rather than "proper English" for international communications, but it's a long way to come.
I mean: everybody sees that nowadays English is the most used language for international communications (not the most used in general: it's hard to deal with 1 billion of Chinese people!), for all the historical reasons you mentioned above: British commerce and colonization in the 19th century, American commerce and technology in the 20th one. In those days, however, only a little percentage of people were involved in speaking English, mainly what we may call "ruling classes".
But now, thanks to the proliferation of the use of the Internet, the use of English has spread to larger parts of populations (the richer the country, the larger the English speakers, of course). These people sail the Internet to read news and scientific articles (like we Ph.D. students do) or just to download movies and telefilms, 'cause they can't stand waiting for their local translation!!
History tells us that languages change by the use of common people, and only elites tend to use crystallized language. I think native English speakers are the elite, in this case, while we non-native English speakers are the common people, and we'll change English by the influence of OUR OWN native languages. We can see this is already happening in the U.S., where the influence of Spanish speaking immigrants is having some impact on the American English dictionary, and we can see it from the story of English, too: it has always been open to influences of other languages, and it's full, for example, of French words in the law and administration fields (O.K., you may say it's the effect of the long Norman domination) and even Italian ones, in arts field (and here no domination happened, at all!); the ancient English linguists did not feel the need to translate those foreign words in their own language (as French is doing, instead).
So, in conclusion: I see that the world will use a sort of english-based lingua franca in the future, while the "real English" will still be spoken in its homelands...but, since this is a forecast for the long period, in the present and short period we'll need to learn English!
Wow, I see I'm spending lots of bits to store my long thoughts ;), so I'm going to stop.
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