Most people are aware that English is a global language, but do you know why? Here’s an interesting article about how English came to be the most widely spoken language in the world.
To understand the essence of English, we have to understand its history. The English language is believed to have originated in the area between the Danube and the Elbe rivers, an area now known as Germany. Later on, it spread throughout Europe and parts of Asia. The history of English continues until today with a unique lingua franca called Anglic (or British) English.
How many people speak English as a second language?
The World English Database: I’m just not aware of any official, complete database similar. There are some courtesy lists that come close, though misses public sector registers (the big picture). Statistics for American Wikipedia talk is also really weak – as we documented in Writing Arabic Dictionaries.
My estimate from Ethnologue: 6% Worldwide; 7% African-American and “Hispanic Spanish”. To get these data, one must be very circumspect with the relationship between “native speakers” and Americans who have studied at least two languages after leaving the US. A few years ago Andrew Stokoe discussed matters of self-definition for Ethnologue: I am generally comfortable employing a relatively narrow definition of speaker (based on endower context) to enhance accuracy in language statistics, but this is not entirely practical given an enormous range of first or second languages that people seek to attribute in language surveys. I do believe that this approach is the best one for most languages; so long as some targets are defined properly, there will always be an error margin of 10-20% and probably more that cannot be overcome, even with the use of distinguished subcategories (which I advocate). And now Andrew has raised a very good point about statistics: The second reason why you need hard data on published material is that there are so many traps and uncertainties. Many studies report the “number of speakers” for a language in an article, but then provide no citation for those numbers. How do you determine where these figures come from? The third issue is that primary-language speakers who speak another (their mother tongue or second) have always maintained double identities: their self-identified first language user identity versus the non-native speaker’s other name/ identity. This is often ignored in language statistics (marked by the implicit assumption that “Native speakers are all ethnolinguistically similar to one another”), but it’s very important for many people who identify as languages of origin when selecting which classification label they’ll use, or indeed how they want others — including ourselves! — to portray them.
What is the difference between EFL and ESL?
In practice, the first is more restricted to the study of language learning and development in a school setting, while the second covers both formal and informal education settings. However it often seems like many people prefer ESL because it does not seem as “precious” or academic-sounding — this is partly due to overuse by business consultants! See also English study.
My best solution for differentiating between EFL and ESL (and/or ELF) was developed by Susan McIlvenny, a language teacher at the University of Alberta (courtesy of Lasha Bapty). The following are some examples:
ELF is most often used in TEFL contexts where teaching English to non-native speakers does not require formal credentials More importantly for anyone who teaches ESL courses, ELF has two distinct meanings:
1 – Used by professional linguists and sociolinguistics specialists to describe “language identity ” or “language of sociolinguistic group”. As you can see, the key idea is group membership (whether this is a small occupational social class, ethnic minorities, territories within states — including Aboriginal peoples who have their own languages), so that in practice ELF would tend to be used by linguists and sociologists.
2 – Used more widely for anyone learning an additional language as part of leisure activities such as travelling abroad.
How does a language become an international language?
In the 1960s, officials at UNESCO (the UN science agency) proposed that English should formally become an international language. This proposal was not accepted and I believe it simply became a status symbol for businesses in “developed” nations looking to establish themselves as having global interests of some kind.
The adoption process begins with:
1 – Determining whether there is any value being added by promoting English worldwide — this could be exploration/development or global competitiveness due to its commercial and scientific potential.
2 – Determining whether there is a demand for the language — if so, internationalizing English could help business sectors or individuals increase their status within “developed” nations (or internationally where globalisation has taken hold).
3 – Developing a plan that ensures that any benefits of adopting English widely are distributed in equal measure among linguistic communities affected by it which may have an interest in maintaining the status quo.
4 – Politically, it must be recognised that certain cultural groups may object to international English as a conscious strategy for domination or exploitation which will incur negative reactions from other institutions promoting regional linguistic identity/interests within “developed” nations (e.g.: minority languages) which could serve to undermine overseas government policy objectives of promoting language use at home in order to make them less dependent on foreign aid and state sponsorship.
5 – It would be ideal if the language concerned could retain its own status in pluralistic countries as a citizen/national “mother tongue”, but political considerations may make that impossible, especially where large numbers of migrants have adopted an English-language base to live and work in what are supposedly “multilingual” cultures (the majority within the country). See also countries that speak English.
Why is English important as a second language?
I will talk about some of the academic research into how English is processed by native speakers of other languages and also in learning, and conclude with a final consideration on why it might be considered useful for a second language. See also why is language important.
All in all, there is a wealth of information available to us, but as I have said, there are some limitations. The first is that much of the research has been conducted in Western Europe and North America, so we can’t assume that the findings will be applicable elsewhere. Another limitation is that most of the studies were conducted by native English speakers using non-native speakers who were not specifically asked about their language preferences, which means that it’s difficult to know how much of their responses is due to the language they were tested in and how much relates to social or demographic factors.
Lastly, there are a whole host of issues surrounding the English-speaking Asian community, ranging from questions regarding whether they should be considered as distinct minorities immediately speaking an “Asian” tongue (in fact many do not identify themselves so) up until your own ethnic counterparts abroad who spend most time at home with people only using Chinese or Japanese (“Asia”) languages and cultures, but who still call themselves British. You May Like learn English,