English as a world Language

English as a World Language

       

English is spoken as a mother tongue in England, the USA, Canada, Australia, India. Today, when English is one of the major languages in the world, it requires an effort of the imagination to realize that this is a relatively recent thing – in Shakespeare’s time, for example, only a few million people spoke English.

English has become a world language because of its establishment¹ as a mother tongue outside England, in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English began in the seventeenth century, with the first settlements in North America. Above all, it is the great growth of population in the United States, assisted by massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has given English its present standing in the world. Geographically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Chinese in the number of people who speak it. It is the language of business, technology, sport, and aviation.

People who speak English fall into one of three groups: those who have learned it as their native language; those who have learned it as a second language in a society that is mainly bilingual; and those who are forced to use it for a practical purpose – administrative, professional or educational. One person in seven of the world’s entire population belongs to one of these three groups. Incredibly enough, 75 per cent of the world’s mail and 60 per cent of the world’s telephone calls are in English.

Basic characteristics of English are simplicity of form, flexibility and openness of vocabulary. Old English, like modern German, French, Russian and Greek, had many inflections to show singular and plural, tense, person, etc., but over the centuries words have been simplified. Verbs now have very few inflections, and adjectives do not change according to the noun.

As a result of the loss of inflections, English has become, over the past centuries, a very flexible language. Without inflections, the same word can operate as different parts of speech. Many nouns and verbs have the same form, for example,  walk, look, smile.

We can talk about water to drink and to water the flowers; a paper to read and to paper a bedroom. Adjectives can be used as verbs. We warm our hands in front of a fire; if clothes are dirtied they need to be cleaned and dried.

Sometimes even prepositions  can operate as verbs. A sixty-year old man is nearing retirement²; we can talk about a round of golf, cards, or drinks.

Openness of vocabulary involves the free admission of words³ from other languages and the easy creation of compounds and derivatives. Most world languages have contributed some words to English at some time, and the process is now being reversed. Purists of the French, Russian and Japanese languages are resisting the arrival of English in their vocabulary.

Notes:

1.because of its establishment... – потому, что он утвердился...

2.is nearing retirement – приближается к пенсионному возрасту

3.this involves the free admission of words - 

  это подразумевает свободное проникновение слов