Help me with my homework, please
I'm taking a class called English in the World and for an assignment, I have to ask some people a few questions (we're in the introduction stage). So, if you don't mind, please answer any or all of the following questions:
- what do you think about the spread of english in the world? how do you think it happened? --do you think english will be (or already is) a global language?
-how do you feel about the fact that soon those who speak english as a second language will overcome the number of those who speak english as a first language?
Thanks a lot! Take care.
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Probably english is already a global language. Capitalism spread it. Neo-colonialism spread it.
I'm not in the least bothered by the idea that there are or will be more english as second language speakers than english as first language speakers. but it was my second language (fairly quickly followed Spanish, but still)
Can I admit that I'd be happier if some other language became the "global" language?
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. -- Emily Dickinson
You want to do what you think is right and what matters to you, and if other people don't like it, as my father would have said, they can go fuck themselves. -- Amy Bloom
When I think about the english language and it being a growing global language (spread early on by the british invasion of most regions....canada, america, hawaii, india...) is that when we use a language we are really developing our way of thinking and being...
I think of in how some languages "there is no word for that" , or not having a defined pronoun between he and she. My thinking is that some ways of being may be lost. We need to have more than one way to think and therefore be.
**Breathe**
In fact, I believe that it does in most of the places where it goes.
I know that around here they want english to be the third official language, after catalan and spanish- They are working on that and I don't think that the education people like me are providing in english in anyway detracts from education in the two maternal languages.
It's important to respect the diversity of languages, but it's really handy to have one in common too. It really beats gestures and monkey sounds in terms of communicating complex ideas- although it's surprising what one can accomplish with gestures and monkey sounds.
Tigerfish Mama
- what do you think about the spread of english in the world? how do you think it happened?
I think it would be awesome if it were spread as a language equal to the native language of those to whom it is being spread. But because of economics, power, etc. it makes me sad, because it often threatens the native language. As far as how it happened, just a function of travel, economics, and globalization. It happened to be the winner, the language a bunch of powerful people with money have spoken. Linguistically, it is also an easy language to learn, albeit poorly. You can get to a low level of functionality in English pretty easily, regardless of your native language, because it takes vocabulary and sentence structure concepts from lots of different laguages. So it's not as foreign as, say, Russian speakers learning Mandarin Chinese.
--do you think english will be (or already is) a global language?
It is. It's hard to find something that you CAN NOT get in English.
-how do you feel about the fact that soon those who speak english as a second language will overcome the number of those who speak english as a first language?
It's a function of globalization. Unless we want to pop out more kids, that's how it's going to be: people learning the language for work or school versus being born into it.
25/MN and WA. Queer, veg, single, AP mama to DD2.5.
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Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses. I compiled them with some others and put them together for my class discussion. It was really interesting to see that most people have the same concepts about English in the world in terms of how it spread and what role it plays. Thanks so much for helping me out with this! Take care.