The Role of English as a second language

The remarkable story of how English spread within predominantly English-speaking societies like the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is not unique. It is a process in language that is as old as Greek, or Chinese. The truly significant development, which has occurred only in the last one hundred years or so, is the use of English, talking the most conservative estimates, by three or four hundred million people for whom it is not a native language. English has become a second language in countries like India, Kenya, Nigeria, or Singapore, where it is used for administration, broadcasting and education. In these countries, now numbering more than fifty. English is a vital alternative language, often unifying huge territories and diverse population. When the late Rajiv Gandhi appealed for an end to the violence that broke out after the assassination of his mother, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, he went on television and spoke to his people in English. In Anglophone Africa, seizures of power are announced in English. Then there is English as a foreign language, used in countries (like Holland or Yugoslavia) where it is backed up by a tradition of English teaching,or where it has been more recently adopted – Senegal, for instance. Here it is used to have contact with people in other countries, usually to promote trade and scientific progress, but to the benefit of international communication generally.

Between 1870 and 1945, British English was scattered throughout the world by war, empire and broadcasting, fostering the beginnings of English as a global lingua franca. The decline of the British Empire after the Second World War should have spelled the slow decline of English as a world language, in the way that French has declined. Yet, the English language now entered a new phase not merely as an international tongue, as Spanish or French are, but as a world language. It was saved by the United States, the first superpower in history.

After 1945 the dominant voice in the English-speaking world was no longer British but American. For the next generation and more, the enormous strategic, economic and culture interests of the United States – expressed through international English-speaking institutions like UNESKO and NATO and corporations like Exxon, Ford and IBM – ensured that the English language would survive and Flourish long after its parent culture could no longer sustain it.

In due course, Japanese families would find their way of life infiltrated by a whole series of potent brand names: Lucky strike, Marlboro, Budweiser, Schlitz, Gillette, Kodak, Maxwell House, Japanese children learned to eat American breakfast cereals-Kellogg’s cornflakes, for instance-and to drink Coca-Cola. In the postwar Pacific, especially Japan, this process of commercial infiltration was christened Coca-colonialism. This dependence on American technology and finance has introduced some 20,000 English words into regular use in Japan.

After the Bomb, the Cold War, a phrase that entered the dictionaries in 1947, marked the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as two superpowers. For the first time in the history of the language, English – American English – was “the language of democracy.”It was Winston Churchill who championed this identification: “ We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man, which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which, through Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their expression in the Declaration of Independence.”

The influence of the movies on the spread of English was – and still is – incalculable, an influence now intensified by the worldwide distribution of American television programs and advertising. The images and phrases from Madison Avenue – “Try it, you’ll like it,” “Does she, or doesn’t she?”, “ Where’s the beef?” – have become, perhaps, one of the United States’ most successful and pervasive exports. Products like vacuum cleaners, tissues, and photocopiers are known worldwide as Hoovers, Kleenex, and Xeroxes. The advertiser John O’Toole describes the advertiser’ export of American English:

The depiction of life, or at least the popular myth of American life, the good life, a lot of free and easy laughter, and people hanging around in bars and cocktail parties, all looked very attractive and it was associated with American products. In so doing it made the American way of life attractive – and with the American language.

The late President of Sierra Leone, Siaka Stevens, explained the pragmatic reason for English-language education in his country. “If you want to earn your daily bread, the best thing to do is to learn English. That is the source from which most of the jobs come.”

Above all, the great quality of English is its teeming vocabulary, 80 percent of which is foreign-born. Precisely because its roots are so varied-Celtic, Germanic (German, Scandinavian and Dutch) and Romance (Latin, French and Spanish)- it has words in common with virtually every language in Europe: German, Yiddish, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. In addition, almost any page of the Oxford English Dictionary or Webster’s Third will turn up borrowings from Hebrew and Arabic, Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Malay, Chinese, the languages of Java: Australia, Tahiti, Polynesia, West Africa, and Even from one of the aboriginal languages of Brazil. It is the enormous range and varied source of this vocabulary, as much as the sheer numbers and geographical spread of its speakers, that makes English a language of such unique vitality.

One of the brightest examples of a country with English as a second language is India. The English have been interested in the Indian subcontinent since the early 1600s, when the newly formed East India Company established settlements in Madras, Calcutta and later Bombay. By the end of the eighteen century, the company controlled many aspects of Indian administration, reinforced, culturally, by the work of English missionaries. In 1813, the East India Company was dissolved and India became the keystone of an English-speaking empire stretching throughout South- East Asia. A flood of English-speaking administrators, army officers, educators, and missionaries scattered English throughout the subcontinent, and the English of the subject Indians (“Babu” or “Cheechee” English) became a widespread means of communication between master and servant. Almost from the first many prominent Indian leaders began to pester the East India Company with requests that its officials give instruction in English (not Sanskrit or Arabic) so that young Indians could have access to the science and technology of the West.

The real beginnings of bilingualism in India occurred in 1835, when it was proposed by the English to create “a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern- a class of persons, Indians in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect.” English became the language of government, education and advancement, at once a symbol of imperial rule and of self-improvement.

The results of this policy were dramatic. English-speaking universities were set up in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras in 1857. By the end of the century, with many more colleges and universities established, English had become the prestige language of India, completely supplanting Persian and Indian rivals. When the nationalist movement began to gather momentum during and after the First World War, the medium of nationalist opposition was not Hindi, or one of the many other Indian languages, but English.

The process was a street with a two-way traffic. It caused a substantial adoption of Indian words and phrases. Words of Indian origin have insinuated themselves into English since the days of Elizabeth I, words like brahmin, calico, curry and rajah. By the end of the seventeenth century, they had been joined by coolie, juggernaut, bungalow, cheroot, pundit and chintz; and at the end of the eighteenth century, by bandana, jungle, jute, toddy, and veranda. Throughout the nineteenth century, the English administrators added more and more local words to their basic vocabularies, words like chutney, guru, cummerbund and purdah.

English is a Germanic Language of the Indo-European Family. It is the second most spoken language in the world.
It is estimated that there are 300 million native speakers and 300 million who use English as a second language and a further 100 million use it as a foreign language. It is the language of science, aviation, computing, diplomacy, and tourism. It is listed as the official or co-official language of over 45 countries and is spoken extensively in other countries where it has no official status. English plays a part in the cultural, political or economic life of the followings countries. Majority English speaking populations are show in bold.

· Antigua · Australia · Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · Bermuda · Botswana · Brunei (with Malay) · Cameroon (with French) · Canada(with French) · Dominica · Fiji · Gambia · Ghana · Grenada · Guyana · India (with several Indian languages) · Ireland (with Irish Gaelic) · Jamaica · Kenya(with Swahili) · Kiribati · Lesotho (with Sotho) · Liberia · Malawi (with Chewa) · Malta (with Maltese) · Mauritius · Namibia (with Afrikaans) · Nauru (with Nauruan) · New Zealand

· Nigeria · Pakistan (with Urdu) · Papua New Guinea · Philippines (with Tagalog) · Puerto Rico (with Spanish) · St Christopher and Nevis · St Lucia · St Vincent · Senegal (with French) · Seychelles (with French) · Sierra Leone · Singapore (with Malay, Mandarin and Tamil) · South Africa(with Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu) · Surinam(with Dutch) · Swaziland (with Swazi) · Tanzania · Tonga (with Tongan) · Trinidad and Tobago · Tuvalu · Uganda · United Kingdom and its dependencies · United States of America and its dependencies · Vanuatu (with French) · Western Samoa (with Samoan) · Zambia · Zimbabwe

This compares to 27 for French, 20 for Spanish and 17 for Arabic. This spectacular domination is without parallel in history. Although speakers of French, Spanish and Arabic may disagree, English is well on its way to becoming the unofficial international language f the world. Mandarin (Chinese) is spoken by more people, but English is by far the most widespread of the world’s languages.

Half of all business deals are conducted in English. Two thirds of all scientific papers are written in English. Over 70% of all post / mail is written and addressed in English. Most international tourism and aviation is conducted in English.

The history of the language can be traced back to the arrival of three Germanic tribes to the British Isles during the 5th Century AD. Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the North Sea from what is the present day Denmark and northern Germany. The inhabitants of Britain previously spoke a Celtic language. This was quickly displaced. Most of the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. One group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic Language of Breton today. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin. Their language was called Englisc from which the word, English derives.

An Anglo-Saxon inscription dated between 450 and 480AD is the oldest sample of the English language.

During the next few centuries four dialects of English developed:

· Northumbrian in Northumbria, north of the Humber

· Mercian in the Kingdom of Mercia

· West Saxon in the Kingdom of Wessex

· Kentish in Kent

During the 7th and 8th Centuries, Northumbria's culture and language dominated Britain. The Viking invasions of the 9th Century brought this domination to an end (along with the destruction of Mercia). Only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom. By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect became the official language of Britain. Written Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an alphabet called Runic, derived from the Scandinavian languages. The Latin Alphabet was brought over from Ireland by Christian missionaries. This has remained the writing system of English.

At this time, the vocabulary of Old English consisted of an Anglo Saxon base with borrowed words from the Scandinavian languages (Danish and Norse) and Latin. Latin gave English words like street, kitchen, kettle, cup, cheese, wine, angel, bishop, martyr, candle. The Vikings added many Norse words: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind eye), husband, fellow, skill, anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them. Celtic words also survived mainly in place and river names (Devon, Dover, Kent, Trent, Severn, Avon, Thames).

Many pairs of English and Norse words coexisted giving us two words with the same or slightly differing meanings. Examples below.

Norse anger nay fro raise ill bask skill skin dike skirt scatter skip

English wrath no from rear sick bathe craft hide ditch shirt shatter shift

In 1066 the Normans conquered Britain. French became the language of the Norman aristocracy and added more vocabulary to English. More pairs of similar words arose.

French close reply odour annual comand chamber desire power ire

English shut answer smell yearly ask room wish might wrath/anger

Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for most domestic animals are English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon, venison).

The Germanic form of plurals (house, housen; shoe, shoen) was eventually displaced by the French method of making plurals: adding an s (house, houses; shoe, shoes). Only a few words have retained their Germanic plurals: men, oxen, feet, teeth, children.

French also affected spelling so that the cw sound came to be written as qu (eg. cween became queen).

It wasn't till the 14th Century that English became dominant in Britain again. In 1399, King Henry IV became the first king of England since the Norman Conquest whose mother tongue was English. By the end of the 14th Century, the dialect of London had emerged as the standard dialect of what we now call Middle English. Chaucer wrote in this language.

Modern English began around the 16th Century and, like all languages, is still changing. One change occurred when the th of some verb forms became s (loveth, loves: hath, has). Auxillary verbs also changed (he is risen, he has risen).

The historical influence of language in the British Isles can best be seen in place names and their derivations.

Examples include ac (as in Acton, Oakwood) which is Anglo-Saxon for oak; by (as in Whitby) is Old Norse for farm or village; pwll (as in Liverpool) is Welsh for anchorage; baile (as in Balmoral) is Gaelic for farm or village; ceaster (as in Lancaster) is Latin for fort.

Since the 16th Century, because of the contact that the British had with many peoples from around the world, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, many words have entered the language either directly or indirectly. New words were created at an increasing rate. Shakespare coined over 1600 words. This process has grown exponentially in the modern era.

Borrowed words include names of animals (giraffe, tiger, zebra), clothing (pyjama, turban, shawl), food (spinach, chocolate, orange), scientific and mathematical terms (algebra, geography, species), drinks (tea, coffee, cider), religious terms (Jesus, Islam, nirvana), sports (checkmate, golf, billiards), vehicles (chariot, car, coach), music and art (piano, theatre, easel), weapons (pistol, trigger, rifle), political and military terms (commando, admiral, parliament), and astronomical names (Saturn, Leo, Uranus).

Languages that have contributed words to English include Latin, Greek, French, German, Arabic, Hindi (from India), Italian, Malay, Dutch, Farsi (from Iran and Afganistan), Nahuatl (the Aztec language), Sanskrit (from ancient India), Portuguese, Spanish, Tupi (from South America) and Ewe (from Africa).

The list of borrowed words is enormous. The vocabulary of English is the largest of any language.

Even with all these borrowings the heart of the language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old English. Only about 5000 or so words from this period have remained unchanged but they include the basic building blocks of the language: household words, parts of the body, common animals, natural elements, most pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs. Grafted onto this basic stock was a wealth of contributions to produce, what many people believe, is the richest of the world's languages.

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