English-Speaking World

culturegeography

historyliterature

teaching materialsEnglish as a world language

Teachers: J. Denman, J. Hoogendoorn, D. Yapp

Website: http://med.hro.nl/denjlE-mail: J.L.Denman@hro.nl

Warm up!Take a few minutes to see if you can determine

how these sentences would be in standard British or American English.

1. den yu go kaal fu boot an so yu a go a kriik (Guyanese Creole)  Then you will call for a boat and that’s how you go up the creek.

2. Give him a snot-klap if he gives you kak. (South African English)  Hit him in the nose if he gives you any crap.

3. I was scared a death after I done step on it. (Appalachian/Ozark) I was scared to death after I stepped on it.

4. Dun lai dat, lah! (Singapore English)  Don’t be like that, man, OK!

 

Why is English spoken around the globe?

These are some of the fundamental questions of this course!

Which countries have English as a main or official language?

What should English teachers know about these countries?

What should pupils learn? Why and how?

History: a brief overview

• USA: Walter Raleigh (1584), first settlement (1607), Mayflower + pilgrim fathers (1620), 25 000 immigrants by 1640

• Canada: John Cabot (1497), migration a century later, conflict with French until the 18th century (Queen Anne‘s War, French and Indian War)

History

• USA and Caribbean: Black English: importation of African slaves (1619), half a million by the time of the American Revolution (1776), 4 million by the time slavery was abolished at the end of the US Civil War (1865)

• 16th – 19th centuries: between 10 – 15 million Africans captured and brought as slaves to the Americas (Caribbean Islands; S. & N. America)

Different language backgrounds (but the need to communicate, plus the desire to plot rebellion) resulted in several pidgin forms of communication.

• What is a pidgin?

History

• Australia: James Cook (1770), 130 000 British prisoners during the 50 years after the arrival of the first fleet in 1788, free settlers increasingly arrived in the mid-19th century

1850: population of 400 000

1900: population of nearly 4 million

today: over 17 million

• New Zealand: Captain Cook (1769-70), first settlements in 1790s, official colony in 1840

History

• South Africa: British colony in 1795, British control in 1806, official language in 1822

• South Asia: formation of the British East India Company in 1600 with its first trading station in 1612, India Act in 1784 established a Board of Control

History

• Colonial Africa: West Africa in the 15th century, East Africa in the 16th century

• South-East Asia and the South Pacific: British influence since the 18th century, American influence since the Spanish-American War of 1898

English as a world language

• number of native speakers: NS ~ 400,000,000 • whole language community (official language,

mother tongue & foreign language L2):

~ 1,500,000,000• L1: USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand,

partly in Asia and Africa;

worldwide use of English as a second language• (Crystal, 1997)

“English [...] has gained the unprecedented status of a universal language.” (Braj B. Kachru)

Intercultural Anglophonism:Intercultural Anglophonism:

Inner circle, outer circle, expanding circle (Braj B. Kachru)

• historical reasons• internal political reasons• external economic reasons• practical reasons• intellectual reasons• entertainment reasons

English as a world language: how and why is it happening?

Standard English

One English or many Englishes?

• the drive for intelligibility

...for example...?

• the drive for identity

...for example...?

• compromise?

The future of English?

• Jakob Grimm, 1852 (optimist):Of all modern languages, not one has acquired such great strength and vigour as the English ... [it] may be called justly a LANGUAGE OF THE WORLD: and seems, like the English nation, to be destined to reign in future with still more extensive sway over all parts of the globe.

The future of English?

• Henry Sweet, 1877 (pessimist):by that time [a century hence] England, America, and Australia will be speaking mutually unintelligible languages, owing to their independent changes of pronunciation.

Threatening English?

• borrowings (e.g. French)• lexical invasion (e.g. Aboriginal languages)• controversy because of colonial history (e.g. Swahili)• spread of nonstandard varieties / code-mixing (e.g.

Wenglish: Welsh + English)• Regional variation in grammar (e.g the use of isn‘t it as

a generic tag question in Indian English)• growth of immigrant languages (e.g. Spanish in the

USA)• influence of pidgins/creoles

....positive or negative influences?

influence of pidgins/creoles

Literature/References

• Crystal D., 1996. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

• Crystal D., 1997. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

• english.ecu.edu/~wpbanks/eng2730/varieties_english.ppt

• www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~hansen/contact4_English.ppt

Aspects of the English-Speaking World: the course

• Block 1: background reading, theory, course books, poetry, short stories, cultural highlights, discussions• Essential material: ESW Reader, Things Fall Apart (novel), Stories from Around the World, BritLit website• Test after block 1

• Block 2: Country presentations in pairs• Essential material: Q & A (novel for week 1!), country short stories, ESW Reader (for presentation guidelines & dossier contents)• ESW dossier after Block 2

“You don’t need long arms to embrace the world; you need English.”

What do you think of this illustration?