ENGLISH

LANGUAG
E

CELTS

THE SAXONS
ANGLES
JUTES
Germanic invasions
of the 5th century

EARLY
LATE
MIDDLE
OLD
PRE ENGLISH
MODERN
ENGLISH
ENGLISH


English as lingua franca of communication,
science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio
and diplomacy.

IMPORTAN
CE OF
ENGLISH

lingua franca - language widely used beyond the population of its

native speakers

spoken by more than 370 million people as a

first language in the United Kingdom, the United
States and the former British Empire

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AROUND THE

WORLD

countries where English is the first and often only language of most people
(e.g. the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia)
countries where besides English as a native language there is at least one
other significant native tongue (e.g. Republic of South Africa, New Zealand)
countries where English is not native, only official language
(e.g. India, Canada and Nigeria)

Growth in a language is a matter of population.

So which populations of the world will increase most rapidly?
The answer is
the populations of Third World countries.

The future
of the
English
language

As a result of a sharp drop in mortality without a corresponding drop in the birth

rate in the Third World countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America the population
of these areas is younger and growing faster than the population of the
industrialized countries of Europe and North America
By estimate, India, Pakistan and other countries of southern Asia will acount for
43% of the increase in world population. Because of more than one billion
population, Chinas increase will also be very high.
Most of native speakers of English live in the developed countries. It can be
expected that this group will account for a smaller proportion for the worlds
population.
However, English is widely used as an official or second language throughout the
world (e.g. in India, Nigeria or Philippines). Thats why, the growth in English will
be most notable in those countries. Its likely that pidgin and creole varieties of
English will become widespread in those ares where English is not a first
language.

There have been many attempts to establish a universal language. Between

1880 and 1907 fifty three universal languages were proposed. Some of
these enjoyed temporary vogue. Today, they are forgotten.

English as a
world
language

Over a century ago French was the language that gained ascendancy.
However, during the nineteenth century its prestige gradually declined. The
prominence of Germany in all fields of scientific and scholarly activity made
German a serious competitor. However, nowadays more scientific research is
published in English than in any other languages and the prominence of English
in commercial use in undoubted
According to Kachru English has succeeded. Where over 650 artificial
languages have failed, English has succeeded; where many other natural
languages with political and economic power to back them up have failed,
English has succeeded. One reason for this dominance of English is its
propensity (skonno) for acquiring new identities, its power of assimilation,
its adaptability to decolonization as a language, its manifestation in a range
of varieties, and above all its suitability as a flexible medium for literary and
other types of creativity across languages and cultures

Cosmopolitan vocabulary

English has mixed character of its vocabulary. It shares similar

grammatical structure and many common words with Germanic
languages. On the other hand, English also shares a great
number of words with those languages of Europe that are
derived from Latin e.g. French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese.

Assets of
the English
language

English vocabulary contains borrowings from many languages. e.g

chipmunk, hominy, moose, raccoon, skunk

Native American
Dutch
brandy, landscape, measles, uproar, wagon
balcony, canto, duet, granite, opera, piano, umbrella, volcano Italian
alligator, cargo, contraband, cork, hammock, mosquito, sherry Spanish
catarrh, catastrophe, chronology, magic, elastic
Greek
paradise, check, chess, lemon, spinach Persian
steppe, vodka, ruble, troika, prestroika Russian

 Inflectional simplicity
While English vocabulary has expanded exponentially, the actual form of the
language from its many derivative roots has essentially been simplified. Inflections
in the noun as spoken have been reduced to a sign of the plural and a form for the
possessive case. The elaborate Germanic inflection of athe adjective has been
completely eliminated except for the simple indication of the comparative and the
superlative degrees. The verb has been simplified by the loss of practically all the
personal endings, the almost complete abandonment of any dinstinction between
the singular and the plural, and the gradual discard of the subjunctive mood.

Natural Gender
English enjoys an exceptional advantage over all other major European
languages in having adopted natural (rather than grammatical gender). Gender in
English is determined by meaning. All nouns naming living creatures are
masculine or feminine according to the sex of the individual, and all other nouns
are neuter. Attributive gender, as when we speak of a ship as feminine, sun and
moon as masculine or feminine, is personofication and a matter of rhetoric, not
grammar.

One of the difficulties that foreign students may encounter in learning English
language is the result of that very simplification of inflections which we have
considered among the assets of English. Its the difficulty, of which often
complain of expressing themselves not only logically, but also idiomatically.
The mastery of idioms depends on memory. The distinction between go fast
and stand fast seems to the foreigner to be withouth reasonable justification.
(to stand fast trwa przy swoim)

Liabilities of
the English
language

Another drawback of the English language is the chaotic character of its

spelling and the frequent lack of correlation between spelling and
pronunciation.
Sound /i:/ in believe, receive, leave, machine, be, see is in each case
represented by a different spelling.
Letter a in father, hate and hat has different pronunciation.

Dozen spellings for the sound of sh: shoe, sugar, issue, nation, suspicion,
ocean, nauseous, conscious, chaperon, schist, fuchsia