attitudes toward English varieties

Dear all,

I was wondering what your attitudes toward different English varieties (the more traditional one such as British English as well as the more recently developing ones such as Chinese English) are. What are your associations with standards, norm-dependency, native speaker issues, and their status on an international level?

Additionally, what do you think of the concept of English as a lingua franca? Would you teach it (if you are an English teacher) or would you still stick to a standard variety?

I appreciate your comments!

English is playing an increasingly important role as lingua franca, and given increasing globalisation, is set to become the world's first truly global language. An inevitable part of this story will no doubt be a corresponding increase in variation, and with it new sets of standards.

My prediction (I'm no expert) is that the first of these changes will be phonological, particularly the way sounds are pronounced, (some sounds may well disappear altogether) as well as the ways in which intonation is used.

Vocabulary will no doubt continue to be highly dependent on regional and sociocultural determination, as it always has been, but there will I think continue to grow a core international lexicon used primarily in a written medium on the web.

As for grammar, I doubt there will be much change for many decades, perhaps with a few minor exceptions, such as the disappearance of third person s, (which appears in Jennifer Jenkins' Lingua Franca Core.)

The rise of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is an issue that is becoming harder and harder to ignore in the world of ELT, and is something I believe has wide-ranging implications for teachers.

One thing that some users of English would like to see flourish is Chinglish. Chinglish is English with Chinese grammar, e.g.no verb tenses, etc. Since you asked about attitude, my attitude to Chinglish is total opposition. But of course individual speakers cannot sway the development and spread of language change. Despite the opposition of people like me, Chinglish may develop and spread.

probus said:

Since you asked about attitude, my attitude to Chinglish is total opposition.

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How do you mean? For what reasons?

I don't think that Chinglish can really be considered a variety of English as China does not have a sufficiently large internal speech group. Hong Kong does, however, as does Singapore, whose variety is commonly called Singlish.

Other than knowing what Chinglish speakers may mean when they say certain things, I think we're probably still many years off seeing it recognised universally as a variant of English the way that Singlish is. Forms will seep into international English to build a common core for global communication, but I think some academics may be over-egging the impact this will have. Adjusting my speech to deal with business contacts in China does not mean, for now, that I will be speaking differently down the pub.

Tdol said:

Adjusting my speech to deal with business contacts in China does not mean, for now, that I will be speaking differently down the pub.

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I think it's feasible that we'll see something vaguely similar to what happened with Latin in the middle ages. Vernacular varieties develop from an official standard and people end up using both vulgar and standard forms. People were chatting in Vulgar Latin in the marketplaces and using standard Latin in administration and in church, for example.

Eventually of course, as variation between different forms increases, you end up with what can be considered different languages in their own right, as with what happened when Vulgar Latin developed into what we now know as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian.

Possibly, but we have a common goal. That may mean accepting certain changes, but the drive is to global communication, which means that the business person from Argentina can speak to their counterpart in India. This means that a closer approximation will succeed. It may not be the version that many native variant speakers would prefer, but it is unlikely to be that far away. Any British speaker who thinks that colour is a superior spelling to color is delusional. Any academic who thinks that the fact that many Chinese speakers know a bit of English will end tenses, equally so. I would welcome the end of the third person singular -s, but does anyone seriously see it happening?

I think the ostensibly Chinese (or of Chinese origin) "long time no see" beats "it's been a long time since I (last) saw you" any day of the week. ;-)

I often see on Facebook a post in a foreign language. In the middle of it, I will see an English word. Presumably the writer expects the intended reader to understand what is being said.

If English didn't exist it would have to be invented.

Tdol said:

I would welcome the end of the third person singular -s, but does anyone seriously see it happening?

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Me too. And yes, I seriously think this change will happen within a hundred years.

An interesting modern development has been EU English, in which the meanings of important conceptual words have been modified in ways unintelligible to native speakers of English.

It will be interesting to see how this develops in the wake of Brexit. I suspect that EU English will continue to diverge from standard English because they will still need English as their lingua franca, but there will be far fewer native speakers to combat the drift.

Piscean said:

If I thought you and I would still be around then, I'd take a big bet with you on that.

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You'd be on!

probus said:

I suspect that EU English will continue to diverge from standard English because they will still need English as their lingua franca, but there will be far fewer native speakers to combat the drift.

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Yes, it's interesting that English is set to be the lingua franca of the EU despite it not being a native language of any of the actual member states. There are some I gather within the EU pushing for the adoption of French, which now has a great opportunity to expand, but which will not I suspect replace English in any significant way. Time will tell.

jutfrank said:

Me too. And yes, I seriously think this change will happen within a hundred years.

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That's a realistic time frame. I remember when the Japanese economy boomed and Japanese was going to become the second language on earth and impact English. It did in that we borrowed hundreds of words from it to express concepts that we didn't have in our cultures. But other than being a particularly rich source of loan words, how much impact did it really have? A hundred years, however, is a long time in a language, so I see nothing wrong with the idea of jettisoning does/doesn't and the -s form, but I am biased because I would welcome its departure.

When I read the titles, I thought of English dialects like in Southern US, NY, Philly. I hardly thought of Chinglish as a variant of English. But English is always changing. We have new words, new spellings, and new grammar every so often. Dictionaries are usually slow to respond. To that point, I'm surprised that 'alot' is still not an official word despite so many people using it.

Some people and dictionaries are still sniffy about alright, so alot will have to get to the back of the long queue. ;-)