Language in Motion
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11 พฤศจิกายน 2011
Like any living language, English is changing. Each year, new words enter the language, others become obsolete. English remains the second most spoken language worldwide. But do we all understand each other?
English is evolving. There are around 375 million people worldwide who speak English as a first language, and as many as 600 million who speak it as a second language.
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Many people speak English, but that doesn't mean we all speak it the same way.
Even so, native speakers may be surprised to learn that they will account for only 15 percent of the two billion people using the language by 2020. Even today, the majority of conversations held in English are between non-native speakers.
This is partially true because English has taken on the duty of a lingua franca, a language used by non-native speakers as a regular means of communication. For many, English is the language of choice or necessity at work even when it isn't spoken at home.
English is currently the lingua franca of international business, science, technology, aviation and diplomacy and is one of the six official languages of the UN. Historically, this 'world language' changes regularly, depending on who is the political, financial or technological top dog.
An estimated one billion people are currently learning English worldwide. But are they learning 'real' English? The answer depends on who you ask. What specialists might call textbook English is likely to be outpaced by locally inflected 'Englishes' (in both spoken and written form) in the years to come.
English has escaped its bonds and is busily adapting to its many new environments. It takes on attributes as it needs them, and discards others. Such changes go beyond taking over cultural references or words for local cuisine. Instead, millions of non-native English speakers are incorporating grammar, pronunciation and even word meanings that reflect their own languages and language needs into English.
It's important to keep in mind that English is no exception in language evolution, even if the process seems to be happening faster. As the Roman Empire declined, Latin transformed itself into many dialects and then later diverged into four distinct languages: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.
As for English, adaptability has always been one of its strengths. About half of the words in English are borrowed from other languages already, especially French and Latin, and another 20 percent are borrowed from languages all over the world. Such borrowings have kept the language vibrant for centuries.
Textbook English, meanwhile, continues to change with the times even as purists try to keep it the way it is. Desirable or not, in fifty years, English may sound increasingly like Chinese.
Educators also believe that the lax approach to teaching grammar to native speakers will also contribute to language evolution. Since the hard and fast rules of English are not being learned by the people most likely to have a stake in enforcing them, change is inevitable.