Future of English

ВЕРЮТИНА АНЖЕЛА БОРИСОВНА

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Учитель английского языка

The Future of English

English has a fascinating history of development and change. If we open the books written by William Shakespeare or Jeffrey Chaucer, hardly could we recognize English that is used today. Similarly, if we speak to a person from Nigeria, India, or Australia nowadays, where English is an official language, we might be confused because of the varieties in pronunciation, lexis choice and grammar usage. What makes English change so rapidly? Also, is it becoming a lingua franca, the dominant global language?

Professor David Crystal, a British linguist, noticed that language becomes global for one reason only - the power of the people who speak it. As Crystal says, “Power always drives language. English will remain a global power if certain things happen to maintain the power of the nations who speak it.” If the power changes, then we may predict that languages other than English will become the future dominant global language such as Spanish, Arabic, Chinese. English remains the most used language of the internet, but it is already the case that the proportion of English used has remarkably been replaced by other languages.

How did English emerge as a global language? All started from the power of the British Empire; then the power of American Imperialism appeared. In the 17^th century the power of the Industrial Revolution made English the language of science and technology. In the 19^th century, the power of money influenced English that became the dominant language of the international banking: USA and Great Britain, two most productive countries, were English-speaking. In the 20^th century it was cultural power. In the 21^st century we might envisage various scenarios.

One of them is that English will become an amalgam, combination of different sorts of English from all around the world. This English is called a Lingua Franca; it cannot be culturally identifiable with any one country.

Another scenario is American English which replaces British more and more often. Some examples which already commonly occur:

pronunciation - ‘often’ pronounced with a ‘t’

grammar - ‘I just came’ rather than ‘I’ve just come’

vocabulary - ‘Can I get a tea?’ rather than ‘Can I have a tea?’

Local/regional Englishes may become more in trend. For example, Indian English, which is distinctive in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary (e.g ‘I am knowing’ , I am thinking rather than ‘I know’, ‘I think’) or Chinese English speakers of which tend to pronounce /s/ where a speaker of Standard English would use /θ/. The sentence structure is also different from Standard English. (e.g. ‘Mary yesterday bought a television.’ instead of ‘Mary bought a television yesterday.’

Since the development of new technologies paces with a great speed, in the nearest future we will observe what type of English will be mostly used.

http://china-english2012.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-is-china-english.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kvs8SxN8mc

www.futurelearn.com/courses/introduction-to-applied-linguistics

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