world englishes

• nearly 2 billion english speakers worldwide

• native english speakers are minority L1

• majority speak english as a second language L2

• 80% of international conversations in english are between L2 speakers

military and political power - english was distributed around the world through the rise of the british empire. britain colonised over a quarter of the world

scientific power - technological innovation and western sciences

technological power - we expect users to converse in english

lingua franca - to bridge people who speak different languages

david crystal - english is a language of science. economic power. you want an english that reflects your local area. as they adopt english, they adapt it to suit their circumstances. everywhere in the world there is a new variety of english growing which is cultural influence.

jennifer jenkins - functional, local varieties, context dependent, dialect varieties, low or high proficiency, different languages of communication

english language has become a global language because of colonisation, political power, and technological power so different variants of the language are spoken across the world.

kachru’s circle theory - inner circle = original english (new zealand, australia, usa) traditional, english is primary language, native language. outer circle = spreading through imperial expansion, not native tongue but used as lingua franca (hong kong, india, south africa) higher education, 150-300 million speakers. expanding circle = english used as global communication (russia, china, europe) historically haven’t spoken english.

platt, weber and ho - outer english serves a range of purposes, adopted some language features, developed through education system, localised or nativised.

schneider’s dynamic model:

1. foundation - english is brought to a new territory, leading to an emerging bilingualism

2. exonormative stabilisation - an ‘elite’ bilingualism spreads, led by the politically dominant country

3. nativisation - bilingual speakers forge a new variety of english as ties with settlers’ country of origin weaken

4. endonormative stabilisation - after independence and inspired by the need fir ‘nation-building’ a new linguistic norm is established and codified

5. differentiation - this may follow, with internal social group identities gaining importance and thus reflected in the growth of dialectal difference

ghanaian english - colonised until independence in 1957. rp was the prestigious accent under colonisation, mispronunciation would be corrected. they have been moving away from rp, now many speak their own form of english with their own unique style.

singlish - singlish derives from 146 years of british colonial rule which ended in 1965. singaporean government has encouraged rp and discourage singlish. prescriptive language policy. singlish has low prestige and has been seen as broken english. made up of other languages. verb duplication e.g. hot hot. some struggle with standard english.

britishisms - british tv shows may be a reason why british words are used in america more or british news.

americanisms - american tv and social media are very prominent so it is impossible to not hear the accents and dialects constantly. noah webster believed the spellings were too complicated and published his own dictionary in 1806.

lexical gap - when they don’t have a word for something so take one from another language

language death - when no one speaks a certain language anymore. could be when one language is used in favour of another.

96% of languages are spoken by just 4% of people

english is seen as powerful so people abandon their language in favour of english.

english is used most often on the internet and in politics so often take over others.

other languages lose prestige and die out.

french academy 1634 - tries to prevent anglicisation, avoids loanwords from modern english in favour of french neologisms, younger generations recognise english is important for future prospects.

language purity law - aimed to repel english words, fines for anyone using ‘demglish’, popular as 53% of germans are against the use of words in english.

david crystal:

• essential that english speakers know what is happening globally. it is difficult to teach as there are many variations

• it is important for learners to be aware of variations

• it is difficult to keep up with changes in the language

• in a thousand years the main language could be different and english could have died out

• the internet has become multilingual

• global language is important for communication

• american english started having its own language that is not british english

• “everyone can put into the melting pot of english”