11. English and English speaking countries - P

11. English and English-speaking countries

1) The importance of English

the Indo - European family/language -> the Germanic l., the Slavic l., the Celtic l., ... English is a West Germanic language originated in England and the first language for most people in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth, Ireland, New Zealand, the USA and of course the United Kingdom (= anglosphere).

It´s used also as a second language in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa.

3 groups of people speaking English - it is their:

native language

second language (bilingual society)

administrative, profesional or educational l.

Modern English is sometimes described as a lingua franca (= a common language spoken by two people who do not have the same home language).

English is the dominant international language in communications, science, buisness, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy. The reason for spread of the language is influence of British Empire and following World War II. English has the largest vocabulary of all the world´s languages (500 000 words in the Oxford English dictionary).

This figure dwarfs the French and German languages.

But in Shakespeare´s time, for example, only one milion people spoke English. It was unknown to the rest of the world. Exporting of E. began in the 17th century with the first settlements in the North America.

Above all, it is the great growth of population in the United States assisted by massive immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries. And that has given the English language its present standing in the world.

WHY ENGLISH?

historical reasons - Because of the legacy of British or American imperialism, the country´s main institutions may carry put their proceedings in English (parliament, civil service, the schools, ...) internal political reasons - E. may play role in providing a neutral means of communication between different ethnic groups in the country. A distinctive local variety of E. may also become a symbol of national unity or emerging nationhood.

external economic reasons - The USA´s dominant economic position acts as a magnet for intenational business and trade so organizations wishing to develop internaional makets are thus under pressure to work with English.

practical reasons - E. is developing its role in international maritime, policing, emergency services. Itellectual reasons - Over 80% of all informationsstored in eectronic form is in English. The only way to acces to such authors as Goethe or Dante is through English.

Entertainment reasons - E. is a language of popular music, popular culture and advertising, satellite broadcasting, home computers and video games.

2) Basic characteristic

SIMPLICITY OF FORM - Old English had many inflections = different forms of words in different situations (plural, tense, person,...) types of languages - synthetic l. = a lot of inflections (Old English, Germanic, Czech, ...) -analytic l. = we need to distinguish the meaning with word order (Modern English), (A dog is chasing a cat and a cat is chasing a dog.)