Language

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Mandarin Chinese is spoken by about one billion people in these green parts of China. Only about 400 million people speak English as native speakers. Never mind. English is an important language, too! Photo. By Kanguole [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Language is useful. It is certainly one of the most useful tools we can use in intercultural communication. Study English hard! It will definitely help. English is an important language and you should try to make the best use of its powers. You should bear in mind, however, that there are only about 400 million native speakers of English in the world. That’s quite a lot less than half the number of native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Almost 15% of the world’s population are native speakers of Mandarin. Less than 6% of the global population are native speakers of English — that’s less than Spanish! So why is English so influential? Are native speakers of English so great? No, it’s basically, because of you! The main thing that makes English a global language is the number of non-native speakers. Non-native speakers of English outnumber native speakers by 3 to 1! You are the ones with the power. You should work hard to really get English and make it work for you.

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The dark blue bits are countries where most people are native speakers of English. The light blue bits are the places where many people speak English because of the influence of the British Empire. Photo. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Anglospeak.svg

To a large extent, the English language spread because of the power of the British Empire from the late sixteenth to the twentieth century. Britain had a lot of coal and the conditions were just right to allow the British to take advantage of economic and technological developments.

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Pirates like Henry Morgan helped to spread the power of the British Empire in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. Photo. By Alexandre Exquemelin ,an artist known for making book about pirates (http://www.pinterest.com/pin/137078382381276155/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Some people argue that the English-speaking world is still too powerful and influential, particularly with the development of the internet. For example, about 25% of internet users are Chinese speakers but only about 4% of internet content is in Chinese! About 27% of internet users are English speakers but about 55% of internet content is in English!

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Here’s a graph showing how internet content is represented by language. Do you think the English language is too powerful? Photo. By Jeff Ogden (W163) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The situation with regard to the English language is very complicated. People’s attitudes and values reflect their historical relationship to the language in some way. Nearly 100% of the population of Jamaica are English speakers. The same goes for many other countries in the Caribbean. By comparison, only about 85% of Canadians are English-speakers because French is spoken in many parts of Canada. Compare that to the Netherlands (about 90%), Sweden (about 85%), Singapore (about 80%), Germany (about 65%), and the Philippines (about 55%). Some of these people grew up speaking English and some had to learn it later in life.

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It’s not an accident that Usain Bolt is a fluent speaker of English — and the same goes for the rest of the Jamaican track and field athletes. Photo. By Augustas Didžgalvis (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

It’s a complicated situation. Even in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where just about everyone speaks English, people’s relationships to English are not always straightforward. People in England can say that their country is the home of the English language and they are rightfully proud of the global spread of English.

Welsh_speakers_in_the_2011_census
Just about everyone in Wales, in the United Kingdom, can speak English. However, not everyone wants to speak English all the time. About 20% of the population can speak the ancient Welsh language. In some parts of northern Wales, nearly everyone speaks Welsh and they probably don’t speak English much on a daily basis. Photo.

However, people in Wales, immediately to the west of England, have a much more complicated relationship to English. Forms of the ancient Welsh language were spoken all over Britain long before the English language developed and about 20% of Welsh people still speak Welsh. Welsh is a much older language than English and very different. I am from south Wales and, in my experience, people in northern Wales are perfectly happy to speak English to foreign tourists but not very happy about speaking English to English people or English-speakers from other parts of Wales. In fact, they can be very bad-tempered about it! The people of Ireland are generally happy to use English; indeed they are among the most creative users of the English language in the world. Even so, the Irish endured terrible hardship at the hands of English-speaking colonists for hundreds of years. They worked hard, very often employing the power of the English language, to kick the hated British out of Ireland.

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Standards of English are amazingly high in India. However, don’t forget that the spread of English is linked to the spread of the British Empire in India. Here are Nehru and Gandhi, two leaders of the anti-British independence movement in India. Photo. By Max Desfor (1913- ) for Associated Press (http://www.aicc.org.in/images/nehru-gandhi.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Think of the situation in India. India was part of the British Empire and leaders of the independence movement like Mahatma Ghandi used the power of the English language to get the British out of India. You should work hard to make the English language belong to you so you can make it work for you. It’s a complicated situation; people’s attitudes to the English language can be very complicated indeed. It’s impossible to separate language from our attitudes and values. Have fun figuring it all out!

Anyway, check out the PowerPoint slides here.