Facts About English: Global Use, Varieties, and Linguistics

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The English language and linguistics
1
Facts about English
1.1
English world-wide
English is spoken – in different forms or varieties – by people all over the
world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is the most important
language used in international communication. Estimates suggest that about
1.5 billion people have some command of English today. This does not
only include people who have English as their mother tongue (or first language L1), but it is more than likely that a Norwegian and an Italian or
someone from Japan and someone from Belgium will make use of English
as a lingua franca when communicating with one another. In fact, there are
considerable differences between the functions that English has for different people and the status the language has in different countries of the
world.1
− English as a native language (ENL): English is spoken as a native language by the majority of people living in North America, the British
Isles, Australia or New Zealand, for example.
− English as a second language (ESL): in some countries people whose
native language is not English use English (which they have acquired
after or at the same time as another language) as a second language in
some situations such as certain educational, commercial or governmental contexts. This may be the case in countries such as Canada, where
many French-speaking Canadians also speak English. It is also the case
1
This account is based on the approach taken in CGEL (I.4-5). For an account
of the distinction between ENL, ESL and EFL in terms of “social-linguistic
constellations in which English is used” see Mair (2008: 151–156). Cf. also
Trudgill and Hannah (52008: 4–8).
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Herbst; English Linguistics : A Coursebook for Students of English Account:eds.
2
The English language and linguistics
in countries such as India or Nigeria, in which several native languages
co-exist.2
− English as a foreign language (EFL): the group of speakers of English
as a foreign language (EFL) is very heterogeneous as far as the actual
command of the language is concerned.
Estimates of the number of speakers of different languages at the beginning
of the twenty-first century vary: Crystal (2006: 424) gives the following
figures:3
L1 speakers
L2 speakers
foreign language speakers
400 million
400 million
600 – 700 million
Although English neither has the largest number of L1 speakers in the
world (Chinese) nor in the European Union (German) the remarkably high
figures for foreign speakers of English are an indication of its status as a
world language. Another important aspect of the role of English in the
world is that countries in which English is at least the main language are
spread over four continents: Europe (Britain and Ireland), Australia, America (USA and parts of Canada), Africa (South Africa).4 House (2002: 246)
mentions four factors for English becoming a “truly global language”: “the
2
3
4
According to CGEL (1985: 1.4) English is the only official language in Nigeria, whereas in India several languages have that status. For the situation in
Nigeria compare, however, Gut (2008: 35), who points out that “currently
about 20% of the population have some command of English”. For the status
of English in East Africa or Ghana see Schmied (2008: esp. 154–155) and
Huber (2008: esp. 73) respectively, for India see Schneider (2007: 161). For
Africa see Schmied (1991: esp. 23-45).
Obviously, such figures have to be treated with great caution, see e.g. Crystal
(2003: 108–109), who gives an estimate of 329m L1 and 433m L2 speakers.
Compare the figures given by Viereck, Viereck, and Ramisch (2002: 242):
355m L1 speakers, 100m L2 speakers and 150m speakers of English as a foreign language. For other languages see Viereck, Viereck, and Ramisch (2002:
236): Chinese 1,110m, Spanish 305m, Arabic 220m, Portuguese over 160m,
Russian 160m, French 124m, German 121m, Italian 66m.
For details see Crystal (1988: 8–9). For factors contributing to the status of
English as international language – such as political and economic factors, its
use in advertising, as a means of communication in aviation etc. or academic
publications – see Crystal (2006: 426–431) and Viereck, Viereck and
Ramisch (2002: 238–245).
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1 Facts about English
3
worldwide extension of the British Empire; the political and economic rise
of the United States to world power status after the Second World War; the
unprecedented developments in information and communication technologies; and the recent economic developments towards globalisation and internationalisation”. It is important to realize that this kind of status a language or a variety has is entirely derived from external factors and has
nothing to do with particular qualities or characteristics of the language in
question. The present status of English is a reflection of historic and econmic developments but one must doubt whether it has very much to do with
the way plurals or the present perfect are formed in English.
1.2
Regional and social variation
When we say that the English language is spoken by 300 or 400 million
people as a mother tongue today, then this is not to say that the actual language they use is absolutely the same. Quite the opposite is true, of course.
Not only does language differ from one individual to another – in linguistics the language of an individual is termed their idiolect –, there are also
remarkable differences between the language of different groups of speakers, for which the term dialect – or the more neutral term variety (> 19.1) –
is used.
One can make a distinction between
regional dialects, which are determined by the geographical distribution of certain linguistic forms,
social dialects (or sociolects), which are determined by the social group
to which their speakers typically belong.
It has to be borne in mind, however, that such varieties hardly ever exist in
a discrete and clearly distinguishable form.5 Furthermore, regional variation
can be described in different degrees of specificity: within the British Isles,
for example, we can describe dialects such as Scottish English, Irish English, Northern English English or South-Western English or Belfast Eng-
5
Furthermore, speakers are not necessarily very consistent in their speech, in
that people tend to modify the kind of language they are using depending on
who they are talking to, what they are talking about, whether they are speaking or writing etc. See Chapter 19.1.
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4
The English language and linguistics
lish, Birmingham English or Cockney (a dialect spoken in London) etc.6
Taking a world-wide perspective, one can identify varieties of English such
as Canadian English, Australian English, South African English, which are
sometimes called national varieties. Furthermore, the world-wide spread of
English has lead to language contact with other languages, which has resulted in the emergence of new varieties of English, sometimes called New
Englishes, which have become a very important area of study.7
It is one of the interesting facts about the English language that there is
no official institution – such as the Paris Académie Française for French –
that would take any decisions about how English should be used. Nevertheless there exists a type of Standard English, which differs from other dialects or varieties in terms of the functions it has because it is the variety that
is commonly used in printing and serves as a model of foreign language
teaching (> 19.1). It is possible to identify different national standards, of
which British English and American English are the most important internationally.
Standard English can be pronounced with a range of different accents
(the term accent referring to variation with respect to pronunciation). The
most neutral (in the sense of least regional) pronunciations of Standard
English are generally referred to as General American (or Network English) for American English and BBC English or Received Pronunciation
(RP) for British English. RP has a special status because it shows practically no regional variation within England and Wales, but is to a very high
degree associated with a particular social class (> 19.2).
1.3
Historical variation
Apart from variation according to region and social group, there is also
variation in time. The extent to which English has changed over the centuries is illustrated by the following examples:8
6
7
8
For the dialect areas and the Survey of English Dialects see Barnickel (1980:
145–151).
For different phases in the evolution of postcolonial Englishes see Schneider
(2007: 29–55).
Sources: P.G. Wodehouse: Blandings Castle, Harmondsworth: Penguin
(1935/1954: 1). – William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. OriginalSpelling Edition, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Oxford: Oxford
University Press (1986: 1108). – The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edition (edited
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1 Facts about English
(1)
5
‘Beach,’ said Lord Emsworth.
‘M’lord?’
‘I’ve been swindled. This dashed thing doesn’t work.’
‘Your lordship cannot see clearly?’
… ‘Perhaps if I were to remove the cap at the extremity of the instrument, m’lord, more satisfactory results might be obtained.’
… ‘Ah!’ There was satisfaction in Lord Emsworth’s voice. He twiddled
and adjusted, and the satisfaction deepened. ‘Yes, that’s better. That’s
capital.’...
P.G. Wodehouse: Blandings Castle
(2)
LADY MACBETH He has almost supt: why haue you left the chamber?
MACBETH Hath he ask’d for me?
LADY MACBETH Know you not, he ha’s?
William Shakespeare: Macbeth
(3)
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour ...
Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
(4)
þa gesette se munuc ealla þa gerecednesse an anre bec, and eft ða þa
seo boc com to us binnan feawum gearum, þa awende we hit on Englisc,
swa swa hit heræfter stent.
Ælfric: King Edmund
As one can see from these examples, like varieties of present-day English,
historical varieties differ in pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, grammar
etc. Even the Wodehouse text, which was first published in 1935, contains
a number of expressions that one would not expect to be used today or that
one would consider old-fashioned, and the changes between the earlier
periods and today are rather dramatic. The sample from Ælfric’s account of
the life of King Edmund, written more than 1000 years ago, cannot be understood by native speakers of English today. It reflects a stage of the language at which English was much closer in character to German in that, for
____________________________
by Larry D. Benson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987: 23). – Ælfric:
St. Edmund (taken from: Rolf Kaiser: Medieval English, Berlin, 5th impression 1961: 152).
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6
The English language and linguistics
instance, nouns, adjectives, pronouns inflected for case and number in a
way that they no longer do in modern English.
The texts given here represent the four phases into which the development of the English language is generally divided:
Old English, ca. 600 – ca. 1100, characterized by a complex system of
inflexions, by a relatively homogeneous vocabulary of predominantly
Germanic origin
Middle English, ca. 1100 – ca. 1500, characterized by an increasing
loss of inflexions and a tremendous change in vocabulary, with a large
number of words of French origin coming into English
Early Modern English, ca. 1500 – ca. 1750, a period in which English
was subject to the Great Vowel Shift and a standard language gradually
emerged
Modern English, ca. 1750 – today. Sometimes, the term Late Modern
English is used for the period between 1750 and 1900 and the English
after 1900 is referred to as Present-Day English.9
1.4
The character of English
1.4.1
English as a Germanic language
As far as its place within the world’s languages is concerned, English is a
Germanic language, i.e. a member of the Indo-European family of languages.10
9
10
For slightly different periodisations of English compare Brinton and Arnovick (2006: 10–11), Denison and Hogg (2006: 2–3) or Mair (2008: 189–195).
For a discussion of periodisation see Lutz (2002b).
Based on Denison and Hogg (2006: 5). Compare Brinton and Arnovick
(2006: 94–103) and Crystal (1997: 300), also with respect to Yiddish and
Flemish.
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1 Facts about English
7
Indo-European languages
North
East
English
Frisian
Low German
Dutch
Afrikaans
High German
Icelandic
Faeroese
Norwegian
Swedish
Danish
Gothic
Tocharian
IndoIranian
Armenian
Anatolian
Hellenic
Albanian
BaltoSlavic
Italic
Germanic
Celtic
West
Although as far as its historical origins are concerned English is quite
clearly to be regarded as a Germanic language, it has to be noted that the
vocabulary of present-day English can be seen as a mixture of words of
Germanic and Romance origin. The reasons for the development from a
language with an almost entirely Germanic vocabulary to the present situation lie, at least partly, in general historical developments in England and
the kind of language contact in which they resulted.
The first contact that must have taken place after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in England in the middle of the fifth century is that between
English and the language spoken by the Celts inhabiting the island at the
time. However, the Celts were driven by the Anglo-Saxons into the fringe
regions of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany, where in some
parts Celtic languages are still spoken today. Until recently, it was believed
that there had been very little contact between the English and the Celts,
partly because very few Celtic words can be found in English. More recent
research suggests, however, that the contacts may have been more intensive
and are reflected linguistically in certain peculiarities of the Old English
grammatical system compared with that of other Germanic languages (>
20.1).
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8
The English language and linguistics
As far as vocabulary is concerned, the languages to which English owes
most are Latin, French, Scandinavian languages and Greek.11
1. Latin: The Romans, who had occupied parts of Britain between 43 and
407, had already withdrawn from the island when the Anglo-Saxons arrived. There had been contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans on the Continent, however, which had indeed resulted in borrowings such as port or mile. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the
Celts living in Britain during the Roman occupation took over Latin
words, which were later taken over by the Anglo-Saxons. During the
Old English period, towards the end of the sixth century, the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons set in, starting in Canterbury. Christian
monasteries were established and became centres of learning. It is
through translations of religious and scientific texts from Latin into English that were carried out at the monasteries that Latin words were introduced into English on a large scale (disciple, decline).
Later, during the Renaissance, a great number of Latin and Greek
words were taken over on a large scale during the period of Neoclassicism.
2. Scandinavian languages: During the ninth and tenth centuries, the
North-Eastern part of England, the so-called Danelaw, was settled by
Scandinavians and was politically a part of Denmark. This, in the long
term, resulted in Scandinavian vocabulary being taken over by English.
Although the number of Scandinavian loan words is relatively small, the
Scandinavian influence is important because many highly frequent
words such as take (which replaced Old English niman) and the pronouns they, their, them were taken over from the Scandinavian languages.
3. French: By far the most dramatic change in the history of England and
the history of English is represented by the Norman Conquest in 1066,
which resulted in a situation in which practically the whole ruling class
of the country was replaced by French-speaking nobility. For three hundred years, French was an official language in England, it was the language of the courts and of government; it was as late as 1362 that the
London Parliament was opened in English for the first time. Thus the
11
For a short outline of British history in this context see e.g. Denison and
Hogg (2006: 8–29). For developments in vocabulary see also Chapter 20.3
and the sources given there, esp. Kastovsky (2006).
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1 Facts about English
9
vast intake of words from French (such as crown, government, accuse,
appetite, to give just a few examples) during that period is hardly surprising.
The result of these processes is the so-called mixed vocabulary of presentday English. There are word counts that suggest that more than 50%12 of
the vocabulary of English is Romance in character (taken over from
French, Latin or Italian), although one must not overlook the fact that many
(although by no means all) of these words have a considerably lower frequency than many Germanic words. More detailed research on this is certainly needed to obtain reliable data. This is one of the areas where modern
corpus linguistics provides a new and much more reliable empirical basis.
A first analysis of the 3600 words that according to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE4, 2003) make up the 3000 most
frequent words of the spoken language and the 3000 most frequent words
of the written language in the British National Corpus has revealed that of
these words about 34% are of Germanic origin and 54% of Romance origin.13
It is sometimes argued that the mixed character of its vocabulary makes
English particularly suitable for the status of a world language and lingua
franca which it occupies today. It must be said, however, that there is no
empirical evidence to support such a view and that any explanation for the
emergence of English as an international language in terms of cultural and
political dominance is probably more powerful.
1.4.2
Language typology
Languages cannot only be classified according to their historical origins,
but, in a typological way, according to certain features they show. The following types of languages are commonly distinguished:14
12
13
14
Cf. Scheler (1977: 72), where a much more differentiated account is given.
See also Lutz (2002a: 410).
The basis of these figures is provided by LDOCE4 (for frequency) and the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED2) (for the etymological source). Thanks to
Peter Uhrig for his help and particularly for designing a computer program to
work out these figures.
This kind of classification goes back to Wilhelm von Humboldt and August
Wilhelm Schlegel; cf. Crystal (1980: 367) and Bußmann (42008: 664–666).
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10
The English language and linguistics
agglutinating languages (such as Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian or
Basque), in which grammatical relations are expressed by unambiguous
endings, which are added to words.
inflecting languages (such as Latin, Arabic, French or German), in
which grammatical relations can be expressed by endings, which can,
however, have different meanings (Fahrzeug-e: nominative plural and
accusative plural), and by changes of the stem (singen – sang).
isolating languages (such as Chinese or Vietnamese), in which words
are invariable and grammatical relations are expressed by word order or
separate words, but not by grammatical endings.
Although these types present prototypical descriptions and further types
can be established, one can say that English has developed from a language
of predominantly inflecting character to a language which shows strong
characteristics of an isolating language.
1.5
The linguistic analysis of English
This short characterization of the English language opens up a large spectrum of topics which can be investigated in linguistics: questions of language typology are related to questions of language change, which in turn
is related to linguistic variation. Research on how a language developed can
go hand in hand with research on how speakers of different varieties or of
different languages behave when they communicate with one another, etc.
In principle, such questions arise in the study of any language. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the international status of English has affected
its linguistic analysis. Firstly, because the kind of language contact phenomena one encounters in the study of English are manifold in that they
include its status with respect to minority languages as in Wales, for example, the status of English in countries such as India or in worldwide communication and the influence that English has on other languages through
its present position. The mere power of this influence and the reactions
against, say, the use of anglicisms in Germany, or, perhaps in an even more
pronounced way in France, gives English a special status in this respect.
This also applies to other areas of linguistic description, of course. The
mere fact that English is a or the world language at present has resulted in
____________________________
See Crystal (1980) for short definitions of these and further distinctions made
in language typology. For analytic and synthetic see Bußmann (42008: 664).
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1 Facts about English
11
enormous research being carried out on it, especially where commercial
interests are involved. The amount of teaching materials, dictionaries or
grammar books on English available in Germany, for example, by far supercedes that for any other language and, as a result, fostered by large potential sales figures and by commercial competition, a very high standard
has been reached in many such publications.
English is probably the best described language in the world, partly because of the commercial aspects just mentioned, but also because a great
deal of linguistic research is carried out in the United States and Britain.
This has resulted in a situation in which many innovative ideas and research tools ranging from computational corpus linguistics to generative
language theory, which are relevant for the study of all languages, have
been developed in the context of English. In fact, many claims made about
universal characteristics of language as such are made on the basis of an
analysis of English so that one might argue that English has replaced Latin
not only as lingua franca but also in this respect. In any case, it is probably
fair to say that for these reasons English today is a particularly important
language to study. At the same time it is probably equally fair to say that
students of English with a different mother tongue have an important contribution to make in this enterprise because a different background of thinking and the experience of another language may make them see certain
aspects of the English language in a different way from native speakers and
provide insights which are equally valuable to work in applied and theoretical linguistics.
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