More people today speak English as a second or foreign language than speak it as a native or ancestral language. This means that, for most English speakers, the language is not their first. It's one that they have acquired or are still acquiring. Over time, this fact alone will be responsible for massive changes in the language. Mindful of these developments, linguists today tend to speak of English in the plural – as ‘Englishes’. In general terms, the language's development reveals two competing pressures – to diverge (and be different) and to converge (and be the same). The local variety inevitably takes on its own colour and shape, resulting in massive dialectal differentiation. At the same time, globalisation and the internet mean that people increasingly are in contact, creating a need for a common standard English (English as an International Language) to which all speakers of English can relate. In fulfilling this need, English has quickly become the first truly global language or lingua franca. Each piece contained in this section addresses a particular implication of the fact that the world's Englishes have to satisfy the identity needs of their speakers as well as the pragmatic need for wider communication.

Migrant headache

The middle-aged student waited patiently for the teacher to catch his eye. He had a foreignness about him. Maybe it was his quiet patience, his willingness to wait for the moment to present itself.

Eventually it did. He apologised for leaving class before the day's lessons were over.