English Present and Future PDF

English Present and Future PREPARED BY: JOHN JAY L. MORIDO, MA ELL, LPT (Wood, 2015) The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject The History of It was observed by that remarkable the English twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Language as a Huntin...

English Present and Future PREPARED BY: JOHN JAY L. MORIDO, MA ELL, LPT (Wood, 2015) The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject The History of It was observed by that remarkable the English twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Language as a Huntington that an interest in the Cultural past was one of the distinguishing Subject characteristics of humans as compared with the other animals.  It is reasonable to assume that a liberally educated person should know something of the structure of his or her language, its position The History of in the world and its relation to other tongues, the English the wealth of its vocabulary together with the Language as a sources from which that vocabulary has been Cultural and is being enriched, and the complex Subject relationships among the many different varieties of speech that are gathered under the single name of the English language. The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject History of English is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1,500 years. These forces shape the language in every aspect, most obviously in the number and spread of its speakers, and in what is called "the sociology of language," but also in the meanings of words, in the accents of the spoken language, and even in the structures of the grammar. Influences at Work on Language Influences at Work on Language The English language of today reflects many centuries of development. The political and social events that have in the course of English history so profoundly affected the English people in their national life have generally had a recognizable effect on their language.  Roman Christianizing of Britain in 597 brought England into contact with Latin civilization Influences at Scandinavian invasions of England resulted in a Work on considerable mixture of the two peoples and their Language languages The Norman Conquest of 1066 made English for two centuries the language mainly of the lower classes (nobles and those associated with them used French on almost all occasions) Influences at Work on Language When English once more regained supremacy as the language of all elements of the population, it was an English greatly changed in both form and vocabulary from what it had been.  Influences at Work on Language Contributed to the The rise of an The Hundred Development of the important the Renaissance Years' War Language: middle class the development The expansion The growth of Science and of England as a of the British commerce and literature maritime power Empire industry  References in scholarly and popular works to "Indian English," "Caribbean English," "West African English," and other regional Influences at varieties point to the fact that the political Work on and cultural history of the English language Language is not simply the history of the British Isles and of North America but also a truly international history of divergent societies, which have caused the language to change and become enriched as it responds to their own special needs. Growth and Decay of English Language  We rarely think of language as something that possesses life apart from the people who speak it, as we might Growth and think of plants or of animals, we can Decay of observe in speech something like the English process of change that characterizes the Language life of living things. When a language ceases to change, we call it a dead language.  Classical Latin is a dead language because it has not changed for nearly 2,000 years. The change that is constantly occurring in a living language can be most easily seen in Growth and the vocabulary. Old words die out, new Decay of words are added, and existing words English change their meaning. Language Much of the vocabulary of Old English has been lost, and the development of new words to meet new conditions is one of the most familiar phenomena of our language.  For example: ❑Nice in Shakespeare's day meant foolish; rheumatism signified a cold in the head. Growth and ❑Old English stem has become our stone; cu has Decay of become cow. English Note: Less familiar but no less real is the change Language of pronunciation. A slow but steady alteration, especially in the vowel sounds, has characterized English throughout its history. Most of these changes are so regular as to be capable of classification under what are called "sound laws."  Changes likewise occur in the grammatical forms of a language. These may be the result of gradual phonetic modification, or they may result from the desire for uniformity commonly felt where similarity of function or Growth and use is involved. Decay of English For example: Language The person who says I knowed is only trying to form the past tense of this verb after the pattern of the past tense of so many verbs in English. This process is known as the operation of analogy.  Thus, it will be part of our task to trace the influences that are constantly at work, tending to alter a language from Growth and Decay of age to age as it is spoken and written, English and that have brought about such an Language extensive alteration in English as to make the English language of the eighth century quite unintelligible to English speakers of the twenty-first century. The Importance of a Language The Importance of a Language It is natural for people to view their own first language as having intrinsic advantages over languages that are foreign to them. However, a scientific approach to linguistic study combined with a consideration of history reminds us that no language acquires importance because of what are assumed to be purely internal advantages. The Importance of a Language It is clear, however, that the language of a powerful nation will acquire importance as a direct reflection of political, economic, technological, and military strength; so also will the arts and sciences expressed in that language have advantages, including the opportunities for propagation. The Importance of a Language Itis normal for a language to acquire through various means, including borrowing from other languages, the words that it needs. Thus, any language among the 6,000 languages of the world could have attained the position of importance that the half-dozen or so most widely spoken languages have attained if the external conditions had been right. English, French, German, and Spanish are important languages because of the history and influence of their populations in modern times.  For example: Greek is studied in its classical form because of the The Importance great civilization preserved and recorded in its of a Language literature; but in its modern form as spoken in Greece today, the Greek language does not serve as a language of wider communication. The Importance of English  In numbers of speakers as well as in its uses for international communication and in other less quantifiable measures, English is one of the most important languages of The Importance the world. Spoken by more than 400 of English million people as a first language in the United kingdom, the United States, and the former British Empire, it is the largest of the Western languages. The Importance of English English, however, is not the most widely used native language in the world. Chinese, in its eight spoken varieties, is known to 1.3 billion people in China alone. Spanish, next in size to English, is spoken by about 390 million people, Portuguese by 240 million, Russian by 1 75 million, German by 1 1 0 million, French by 80 million native speakers (and a large number of second-language speakers), and Italian by 65 million.  A language may be important as a lingua franca in a country or region whose diverse populations would otherwise be unable to communicate. French and English are both languages of wider communication, and yet the changing positions of the two languages in international affairs The Importance during the past century illustrate the extent to of English which the status of a language depends on extralinguistic factors. The ascendancy of English as measured by numbers of speakers in various activities does not depend on nostalgic attitudes toward the originally English-speaking people or toward the language itself. The Future of the English Language: Demography  According to a recent United Nations analysis, by 2050 the United States will be the only developed country among the world's twenty most populous nations, whereas in 1950 at least half of the top ten were industrial nations. The population of the developing countries is The Future of expected to grow from 4.9 billion in 2000 to 8.2 the English billion in 2050, while the more developed Language: countries will hold at 1.2 billion. India is Demography expected to replace China as the world's most populous nation in half a century, with a concomitant growth in Hindi and Bengali, already among the top five languages in the world.  The extent and importance of the English language today make it reasonable to ask whether we cannot speculate as to the probable position it will occupy in the future. The Future of The growing population of different countries in the English the world, i.e., India, Pakistan, Bangladesh (since the population of these areas is younger and growing Language: faster than the population of the industrialized Demography countries of Europe and North America), and most of the native speakers of English live in the developed countries can be expected that this group will account for a progressively smaller proportion of the world's population.  If the future of a language were merely a matter of the number of people who speak it as a first language, English would The Future of appear to be entering a period of decline the English after four centuries of unprecedented Language: expansion. What makes this prospect Demography unlikely is the fact that English is widely used as a second language and as a foreign language throughout the world.  The growth of Spanish, as of Portuguese, will come mainly from the rapidly increasing population of Latin America, The Future of while the growth in English will be most the English notable in its use throughout the world as Language: a second language. It is also likely that Demography pidgin and creole varieties of English will become increasingly widespread in areas where English is not a first language.  As the colonies gained independence, The Future of English continued to be used alongside the the English vernaculars. In many of these countries, Language: English is either the primary language or a Demography necessary second language in the schools, the courts, and business. Cosmopolitan Vocabulary Cosmopolitan Vocabulary English is classified as a Germanic language; that is to say, it belongs to the group of languages to which German, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian also belong. It shares with these languages similar grammatical structure and many common words. On the other hand, more than half of its vocabulary is derived from Latin. Some of these borrowings have been direct, a great many through French, some through the other Romance languages.  We do not feel that there is anything "foreign" about the words chipmunk, hominy, moose, raccoon, and skunk, all of which we have borrowed from the Native American. Cosmopolitan We are not conscious that the words brandy, Vocabulary cruller, landscape, measles, uproar, and wagon are from Dutch. And so it is with many other words in daily use. From Italian come balcony, canto, duet, granite, opera, piano, umbrella, and volcano  From Spanish, alligator, cargo, contraband, cork, hammock, mosquito, sherry, stampede, tornado, and vanilla From Greek, directly or indirectly, acme, Cosmopolitan acrobat, anthology, barometer, catarrh, Vocabulary catastrophe, chronology, elastic, magic, tactics, tantalize, and a host of others From Russian, steppe, vodka, ruble, troika, glasnost, and perestroika  From Persian, caravan, dervish, divan, khaki, mogul, shawl, and sherbet, and ultimately from Persian, jasmine, paradise, check, chess, lemon, lilac, turban, borax, and possibly spinach Cosmopolitan English has borrowed from Hebrew and Vocabulary Arabic, Hungarian, Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Malay, Chinese, the languages of Java, Australia, Tahiti, Polynesia, West Africa, and from one of the aboriginal languages of Brazil.  Despite problems with faux amis - those Cosmopolitan words that have different meanings in two Vocabulary different languages. Inflectional Simplicity  A second feature that English possesses to a preeminent degree is inflectional simplicity. In this process of simplifying inflections, Inflectional English has gone further than any other Simplicity language in Europe. Inflections in the noun as spoken have been reduced to a sign of the plural and a form for the possessive case. Natural Gender  English differs from all other major European languages in having adopted natural (rather than grammatical) gender. In Natural Gender studying other European languages, the student must learn both the meaning of every noun and also its gender.  In the Romance languages, for example, there are only two genders, and all nouns that would be neuter in English are either masculine or feminine. Some help in these languages is afforded by distinctive endings that at times characterize the two Natural Gender classes. Thus, in German, sonne (sun) is feminine and mond (moon) is masculine, but kind (child), madchen (maiden), and weib (wife) are neuter.  In the English language, all this was stripped away during the Middle English period, and today the gender of every noun in the dictionary is known instantly. Natural Gender Gender in English is determined by meaning. All nouns naming living creatures are masculine or feminine according to the gender of the individual, and all other nouns are neuter. Thank you for listening! References Baugh, A. & Cable, T. (2013). A History of English Language. Routledge. Wood, F. (2015). An Outline History of English Language. Laxmi Publication.