Chapter 1:

An English-Speaking World (9-45)

An
English-Speaking
World

19 1
The Story of English

By Don L. F. Nilsen

Based on The Story of English

By Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil
and William Cran (Penguin, 2003)

19 2
 English, ESL or EFL is Spoken by about ½ of the
People in the World ( about 2 Billion People) (McCrum
24/50)

19 3
English as a Global Language
• ¾ of the World’s Mail
• ½ of the World’s technical & scientific journals
• ½ of all newspapers
• 80 % of the information in computers
• All International Air Pilots
• All International Sea Captains
• Many movies, songs, and much business
• ½ of European business deals
• 7 of the Largest TV Broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC,
BBC, CBC, CNN, C-Span)
• TV Televangelism of Christianity (McCrum 10)

19 4
Varieties of Global English, each
with its Own Peculiar Flavor
• Deutschlish
• Franglish (la langue du Coca-Cola)
• Indian English
• Japlish (man-shon vs. mai-homu,
basaburo, aisu-kurimu, mai-com [my
computer])
• Russlish
• Spanglish (McNeal 10, 38-39)
19 5
 La Langue du Coca-Cola
• In France,
– hot money  capitaux fébariles
– Jumbo jet  gros porteur
– Fast food  prêt-à-manger
• In Canada, Loi 101 :
– English billboards, posters and storefronts
are banned. Many students are not
allowed to attend English-language
schools. (McCrum 39-40)

19 6
Competing Global Languages
• Arabic
• Russian (before the breakup of the
Soviet Union in Eastern Europe)
• Mandarin
• Spanish
• French

19 7
 Education Act of 1870: RP
• Cockney (Cock’s Egg)
• RP (Received Pronunciation)
• Posh (Portside Out Starboard Home)
• (McCrum 13-21)

19 8
 World War II (McCrum 23)
• GI Bases in Black Nylons
England, Italy, Market Pin-Up
France, Germany Blitz R&R
• GI Language was Flak Snafu
vivid, profane &
abbreviated: Yank

19 9
 Pin-Ups and Yank Magazine
• Every issue of Yank Magazine featured
a pin-up to remind soldiers of the girls
back home.
• A pin-up of Rita Hayworth is said to
have been taped to Fat Boy, the atomic
bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
• Compare this with the movie Dr.
Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb.
19 10
 Atomic-Bomb Words (McCrum
24)
Atomic Holocaust
Chain Reaction (cf. Mushroom Cloud
Vonnegut’s “Ice Nine”) Test Site
Fallout (NOTE: The possibility
Fireball of nuclear proliferation
Fission was one of the causes
Fusion of Postmodernism &
Deconstructionism)

19 11
 Coca-Colonialism (McCrum
24)
Budweiser Kodak
Coca Cola Maxwell House Coffee
Gillette Schlitz
Kellogg’s Cornflakes Lucky Strike
Kellogg’s Rice Marlboro
Krispies
(“Snap Crackle and
Pop” has to be
translated into various
languages)
19 12
 Korean and Vietnam Wars (McCrum 25-
26)

Korean: Vietnam: Vietnam:

Brainwashing Defoliate Moratorium
Chopper Domino Napalm
(Helicopter) Theory Pacification
Escalation Search and
Firefight Destroy
Friendly Fire The Silent
Hawks & Majority (ct.
Doves the Vocal
19 Minority) 13
 David Ofgor, Attaché to the US
Embassy in Phnom Penh:
• Talking to journalists:

• “You always write it’s bombing,

bombing, bombing. It’s not bombing.
It’s air support.” (McCrum 27)

19 14
 Regional Dialects (McCrum 27-
29)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt (Eastern Money)
• Harry Truman (Twangy Missouran)
• Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon & Gerald
Ford (American Midwest)
• Lyndon Johnson (Southern)
• Ronald Reagan & Dan Rather (Network
Standard)
• Kennedy Family (New England)
• George W. Bush (Texas)

19 15
Valley-Girl/Surfer- Gay Speech:
Dude: Gay
Bitchin Out of the closet
Dude Queer
For sure Queen
Goady
Rad Women’s Speech:
To the max Ms.
Totally Letter carrier
Tubular JOKE: Mannheim
Germany 
19 16
Personheim
 Silicon Valley Words (California) (McCrum 30)

Artificial Intelligence Interface

CD (Compact Disk) Jump Drive
DVD (Digital Video Modem
Disk) On-Line
Data Processing ROM (Read-Only
Disk(ette) Memory)
Flash Drive Software, Hardware,
Hacker Wetware
Input Word Processor
19 17
 British vs. American Global
English
• bird, bobby, bonnet, boot, drawing pins, flat,
lift, lorry, mate, nappy, petrol, pram, sweets,
torch, trunk call
• girl, cop, hood, trunk, thumb tacks,
apartment, elevator, truck, buddy, diaper,
gas, stroller, candy, flashlight, long-distance
call
• colour/color, theater/theatre, tyre/tire
• advertisement, laboratory, secretary
• (McCrum 32)
19 18
 !Disadvantages of English as a Global
Language

• /š/  shoe, sugar, issue, mansion, mission,

nation, suspicion, ocean, conscious,
chaperon, schist, fuchsia, pshaw (spelled 13
ways).
• <sh> <ch> <ph> <th> <gh>
• Full, reduced, zero grades of consonants
• Long, Short, -r, schwa, and zero grades of
vowels
• 15 different vowel phonemes
• <c> <g> <q> <s> (/s/ /š/ /z/ /ž/) <x>
19
• (McCrum 42)
19
 !!Advantages of English as a Global
Language
• Natural Gender, not Grammatical
Gender
• Simplified Word Endings resulting in
greater flexibility (N  V, etc.)
• Teeming Vocabulary (80 % is not
Anglo-Saxon) but rather: Arabic, Celtic,
Chinese, Dutch, French, German,
Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Latin,
Scandinavian, Spanish, etc.
(McCrum 43) 19 20
 !!!Nilsen PowerPoints
• “Foreign Words in English”

• “Global English”

• Romance and Germanic Words in

English”

19 21
References:

Kachru, Braj B. Models of English for the Third World: White Man’s
Linguistic Burden or Language Pragmatics?. New York, NY: Routledge,
Taylor and Francis Group, 1991.

Kachru, Braj B. The Other Tongue: The Spread of English and Issues of
Intelligibility. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story of English.
New York, NY: Penguin, 1986. (source of map citations)

McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story of English:
Third Revised Edition. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. (source of text
citations)

19 22