The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language
Page 2
English as a ‘foreign’ language
The second part of the language-learning iceberg relates to people who live in countries where English has no official status, but where it is learned as a foreign language in schools and institutes of higher education, and through the use of a wide range of ‘self-help’ materials. There are only hints as to what the numbers involved might be. Even in the statistically aware countries of Western Europe, there are no reliable figures available for the number of people who are learning English as a foreign language – or any other language, for that matter. In a continent such as South America, the total is pure guesswork.
English in the world
English is an official or semi-official language, or has some special status or function (such as being used as the language of choice for international communication) in over 70 of the world’s territories, listed below (with population estimates in most cases for 2000). Countries with a major mother-tongue English population are marked with an asterisk. Other official languages are indicated in parentheses. Note that there are several other countries where English has no special status, but where there are none the less substantial numbers of speakers, such as Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, Japan, and China.
1. American Samoa 66,000
2. Antigua and Barbuda* 65,000
3. Australia* 18,950,000
4. Bahamas* 288,000
5. Bangladesh (Bengali) 129,147,000
6. Barbados* 259,000
7. Belize* 242,000
8. Bermuda* 63,000
9. Bhutan (Dzongkha) 1,996,000
10. Botswana 1,479,000
11. British Virgin Islands 20,000
12. Brunei (Malay) 331,000
13. Cameroon (French) 15,892,000
14. Canada (French)* 31,330,000
15. Congo, Democratic Republic of (French) 51,988,000
16. Cayman Islands* 41,000
17. Cook Islands 20,000
18. Dominica* 64,000
19. Fiji 823,000
20. Gambia 1,381,000
21. Ghana 19,272,000
22. Gibraltar 29,000
23. Grenada* 98,000
24. Guam (Chamorro) 155,000
25. Guyana* 703,000
26. Hong Kong (Chinese) 6,967,000
27. India (Hindi, and several local languages) 1,027,000,000
28. Ireland (Irish)* 3,647,000
29. Jamaica* 2,669,000
30. Kenya (Swahili) 29,251,000
31. Kiribati 87,000
32. Lesotho (Sotho) 2,167,000
33. Liberia 3,090,000
34. Malawi (Chewa) 10,154,000
35. Malaysia (Malay) 21,820,000
36. Malta (Maltese) 383,000
37. Marshall Islands (Marshallese) 68,000
38. Mauritius 1,196,000
39. Micronesia, Federated States of 133,000
40. Montserrat* 4,000
41. Namibia (Afrikaans) 1,674,000
42. Nauru (Nauruan) 11,000
43. Nepal (Nepali) 24,920,000
44. New Zealand (Maori)* 3,698,000
45. Nigeria 17,171,000
46. Northern Mariana Islands 73,000
47. Pakistan (Urdu) 141,145,000
48. Palau (Palauan) 19,000
49. Papua New Guinea 4,812,000
50. Philippines (Pilipino) 80,961,000.
51. Puerto Rico (Spanish) 3,916,000
52. Rwanda (French, Kinyarwanda) 8,337,000
53. St Kitts and Nevis* 44,000
54. St Lucia* 156,000
55. St Vincent and the Grenadines* 120,000
56. Samoa (Samoan) 235,000
57. Seychelles (French) 80,000
58. Sierra Leone 5,509,000
59. Singapore (Chinese, Malay, Tamil) 3,572,000
60. Solomon Islands 470,000
61. South Africa (10 other languages)* 43,982,000
62. Suriname (Dutch) 434,000
63. Swaziland (Swazi) 1,004,000
64. Tanzania (Swahili) 31,963,000
65. Tonga (Tongan) 110,000
66. Trinidad and Tobago* 1,087,000
67. Tuvalu 11,000
68. Uganda 23,452,000
69. United Kingdom* 58,900,000
70. United States of America* 284,000,000
71. US Virgin Islands* 121,000
72. Vanuatu (French, Bislama) 193,000
73. Zambia 9,872,000
74. Zimbabwe 11,272,000
75. Other dependencies 40,000
Totals cited in the 1990s ranged from 300–400 million to over a billion, the latter (in a British Council estimate) based largely on the figures available from English-language examining boards, estimates of listeners to English-language radio programmes, sales of English-language newspapers, and the like. The figures are vague because it is notoriously difficult to decide the point at which an English learner has learned ‘enough’ English to be counted as a reasonably fluent speaker. Also, the published statistics are unable to keep up with the extraordinary growth in learning English in many countries. In particular, it is difficult to obtain a precise notion about what is currently happening in the country where data about anything have traditionally been very hard to come by: China.
In China, there has been an explosion of interest in the English language in recent years. One visitor returned to China in 1979, after an absence of twenty years, and wrote: ‘in 1959, everyone was carrying a book of the thoughts of Chairman Mao; today, everyone is carrying a book of elementary English’. In 1983, it is thought, around 100 million people watched the television series designed to teach the language, Follow Me. Considerable publicity was given in the Western media to the sight of groups of Chinese practising English-language exercises after work, or queuing to try out their English on a passing tourist. The presenter of Follow Me, Kathy Flower, became a national celebrity, recognized everywhere. And the interest continues, with new series of programmes being designed to meet the needs of scientific and business users. What level of fluency is being achieved by this massive influx of learners is unknown. But if only a fraction of China’s population is successful, this alone will be enough to make a significant impact on the total for world foreign-language use.
And why shouldn’t they be successful, in China, Japan, Brazil, Poland, Egypt, and elsewhere? There is enormous motivation, given the way that English has become the dominant language of world communication. Textbooks on English these days regularly rehearse the litany of its achievements. It is the main language of the world’s books, newspapers, and advertising. It is the official international language of airports and air traffic control. It is the chief maritime language. It is the language of international business and academic conferences, of diplomacy, of sport. Over two thirds of the world’s scientists write in English. Three quarters of the world’s mail is written in English. Eighty per cent of all the information stored in the electronic retrieval systems of the world is stored in English. And, at a local level, examples of the same theme can be found everywhere. A well-known Japanese company, wishing to negotiate with its Arabic customers, arranges all its meetings in English. A Colombian doctor reports that he spends almost as much time improving his English as practising medicine. A Copenhagen university student comments: ‘Nearly everyone in Denmark speaks English; if we didn’t, there wouldn’t be anyone to talk to.’
Statistics of this kind are truly impressive, and could continue for several paragraphs. They make the point that it is not the number of mother-tongue speakers which makes a language important in the eyes of the world (that crown is carried by Chinese), but the extent to which a language is found useful outside its original setting. In the course of history, other languages have achieved widespread use throughout educated society. During the Middle Ages, Latin remained undisputed as the European language of learning. In the eighteenth century, much of this prestige passed to French. Today, it is the turn of English. It is a
English in the world
development which
could be reversed only by a massive change in the economic fortunes of America, and in the overall balance of world power.
Consequences
If we take the total of first-language use (c.400 million), and combine it with fairly conservative estimates of second-language speakers (also c.400 million), and foreign-language speakers (c.700 million), we arrive at 1.5 billion – a figure quite widely cited in 2000 perhaps because it was, conveniently, a quarter of the world’s population (which had just passed 6 billion). Of course, if only [sic] one in four of the human race is competent in English, then three in four are not. The popular view that ‘everyone speaks English now’ is a gross overstatement. We only have to leave behind the airports, hotels, restaurants, and tourist spots of the world, and pay a visit to the provinces of a country, to discover the 75 per cent of the world who have little knowledge of English, or none at all.
But ‘one in four’ is an impressive proportion, none the less. No other language has ever been spoken by so many people in so many places. And when a language, like a nation, exercises a new-found influence in world affairs, several things happen. People begin to study it in unprecedented detail. Research projects flourish. Scholars write grammars, dictionaries, and manuals of its style. They plan surveys of educated usage, and surveys of dialects. Courses in the teaching of the language proliferate, in a rapidly increasing number of (not always respectable) institutions. There is a general raising of consciousness, with new language courses in schools, and popular programmes on radio and television. And there is a rapid growth in popular books and magazines about the language, to help people keep pace with developments – this book being an example.
People also become increasingly critical and concerned about language matters. It is, after all, their language which is the focus of attention; and while all mother-tongue speakers inevitably feel a modicum of pride (and relief) that it is their language which is succeeding, there is also an element of concern, as they see what happens to the language as it spreads around the world. Public anxiety is expressed. Changes are perceived as instances of deterioration in standards. Tension grows between those who wish simply to observe and explain the process of change, and those who wish to halt it. Such anxiety is most keenly felt in Britain, where, after centuries of dominance in the use of English, many people who take pride in their use of English find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that British English is now, numerically speaking, a minority dialect, compared with American, or even Indian, English.
These are matters which require careful and sympathetic discussion, as they relate to the biggest question of all hanging over the future of the English language at the end of the twentieth century. What will happen to the language, as it manifests its worldwide presence in the form of new varieties – not only in mother-tongue countries such as Australia and Canada, but also in second-language areas such as South Asia, West Africa, and the West Indies (see Chapter 13)? Each area presents a complex case, as speakers and writers struggle to find a way of communicating which they feel authentically expresses their identity. New authors in these areas may not wish to write in the vocabulary and grammar of British or American English. In many cases, such varieties symbolize an alien and alienating society, and they sense a need to find fresh language. The same point applies, even more dramatically, to new regional standards of pronunciation in everyday life, as in this case there are often real problems of mutual intelligibility between people who would all claim to be English-speaking.
Since these trends were first noted, there has been a great deal of pessimism about the future of the language. So far, however, it has been unfounded. In the mid nineteenth century, people were predicting that within 100 years British and American English would be mutually unintelligible. It hasn’t happened. The same predictions continue to be made, but on a broader front, to include all the new major varieties, in India, West Africa, and elsewhere. So far, the problems are minor. Maybe one day, it is said, English will be transformed into a family of new languages – just as happened to Latin, over 1,000 years ago, with the resulting emergence of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and the other Romance languages. Some people think that the process has already begun.
The history of language shows us that any such development would be entirely natural, and it could easily happen to English. On the other hand, there are strong counter-pressures in modern society which did not exist in earlier times. There is an urgent need to communicate at world level, where everyone involved has a vested interest in keeping at least one channel open, in the form of standard written English. And patterns of speech are bound to be affected by the unprecedented opportunity to talk to each other over long distances, in the form of radio, television, telecommunications and the Internet (see Chapter 8). It may be that these factors will balance the language’s movement towards diversity. Or maybe they will not. What is going on in this area makes a fascinating topic of enquiry, but it is a complicated story that requires some linguistic background to be understood – which is what this book is about.
Pidgins and Creoles
Generations of children’s comics and films have promoted a weird picture of what a pidgin language is. People remember ‘Me Tarzan – you Jane’, or other examples of primitive people barely able to communicate with each other. It can come as something of a shock, therefore, to realize that in many parts of the world pidgin languages are used routinely in such daily matters as news broadcasts, safety instructions, newspapers, and commercial advertising. And the more developed pidgin languages have been used for translations of Shakespeare and the Bible (see p. 15).
All pidgin languages originally start when people who don’t have a common language try to communicate with each other. Most of the present-day pidgins grew up along the trade routes of the world – especially in those parts where the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch built up their empires. We talk of ‘pidgin English’, ‘pidgin French’, and so on, depending on which language the pidgin derived from.
Pidgin Englishes are mainly to be found in two big ‘families’ – one in the Atlantic, one in the Pacific. The Atlantic varieties developed in West Africa, and were transported to the West Indies and America during the years of the slave trade. In Africa, they are still widely used in the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, and Cameroon. The Pacific varieties are found in a wide sweep across the south-western part of the ocean, from the coast of China to the northern part of Australia, in such places as Hawaii, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea. In the Americas, they are found, in a developed form (see below), in most of the islands and on the mainland, spoken largely by the black population. Estimates vary, but probably about sixty million people speak or understand one or other of these forms of English.
Pidgins often have a very short life span. While the Americans were in Vietnam, a pidgin English grew up there, but it quickly disappeared when the troops left. In a similar way, many pidgins which grew up for trading purposes have ceased to exist, because the countries which were in contact stopped trading with each other. On the other hand, if a trading contact is very successful, and contact builds up over the years, the people will
A page adapted from the Papua New Guinea road safety handbook, Rot Sefti Long Niugini (1972), written in the local pidgin language, Tok Pisin, with English translation:
Sapos yu kisim bagarap kisim namba bilong narapela draiva; sapos yu ken, kisim naim bilong em na adres tu, na tokim polis long en.
Noken paitim em o tok nogut long em. If you have an accident, get the other driver’s number, if possible his name and address and report it to the police. Do not fight him, or abuse him.
Pidgin translations
The Gospel according to St Mark
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his pat
hs straight.
Tok Pisin
Dispela em i gutnius bilong Jisas Kraist, Pikinini bilong God. Dispela gutnius em I kamap pastaim olsem profet Aisaia I raitim: ‘Harim, mi salim man bilong bringim tok bilong mi, na em I go paslain long yu. Em bai i redim rot bilong yu. Long graun i no gat man, maus bilong wanpela man i singaut, i spik. ‘Redim rot bilong Bikpela. Stretim ol rot bilong en.’
Nupela Testamen Long Tok Pisin, British and Foreign Bible Society, Canberra,
1969
Hamlet III, i
To be, or not to be – that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them?
Cameroon Pidgin English
Foh di foh dis graun oh foh no bi sehf – dat na di ting wei i di bring plenti hambag.
Wenda na sohm behta sehns sei mek man i tai hat
Foh di shap ston an shap stik dehm foh bad lohk wei dehm di wohri man foh dis graun,
Oh foh kari wowo ting foh fait dis trohbul wei i big laik sohlwata so?
Translated by R. Awa
And a nursery rhyme…
Dis smol swain i bin go fo maket.
Dis smol swain i bin stei fo haus.
Dis smol swain i bin chop sup witi fufu.
Dis smol swain i no bin chop no noting.
An dis smol swain i bin go wi, wi sotei fo haus.
very likely learn each other’s language, and there will then be no reason for the continued use of the pidgin. Pidgin languages seem to be in a ‘no win’ situation, and it is rare to find one in existence for more than a century.