The English language has been part of Malaysia for a long time, going back to the beginning of British colonial rule in the 18th century. The present attitudes towards English can be said to vary from conservative (e.g. referring to it as bahasa penjajah, literally ‘language of the coloniser’) to general acceptance (e.g. English is part of Malaysian history) and to a liberal/modern/Western outlook (e.g. calling for the return of English-medium schools). The conservative view stems from the history, or, for some, the memory, of the role English played in the colonial education system as the language of the elite which served to separate the urban and rural populations into the haves and the have-nots. Inevitably, the abolition of English-medium education became one of the key matters for debate during the campaign for independence from British rule in the 1950s. Malay nationalists considered English-medium education to be part of a British agenda to maintain control of the country after Independence. Replacing English with Malay as the medium of instruction as well as the national language in Malaya was, therefore, vital. In 1967, through the National Language Act, Malay became the sole official language in Malaysia a decade after Independence. Thus, from 1970 onwards, the phasing out of English as a medium of instruction from the Malaysian education system was carried out fervently, while at the same time Malay was zealously promoted, not only in education but in all spheres of public life.

The development of Hong Kong English (henceforth HKE) has triggered a number of concerns amongst the local population with respect to its status (Joseph, 1996; Luk, 1998; Bolton & Lim, 2000; Pang, 2003; Stibbard, 2004). However, despite the prominence of research into attitudes towards language variation within sociolinguistics, very few studies focus on Hong Kong English (Bolton & Kwok, 1990; Candler, 2001; S. Poon, 2007) or Mandarin-accented English (He & Li, 2009; Hu, 2004; F. Poon, 2006). The aim of this study is to uncover language attitudes towards HKE and Mandarin-accented English (henceforth ME) in the Hong Kong region through the application of the verbal-guise technique.

English nowadays plays an important role in the political, diplomatic, commercial, economic and cultural activities on the global stage (see, e.g., Graddol, 1997, 2006; Jenkins, 2000; Warschauer, 2000; Crystal, 2003). As a result of the widespread use of English around the globe, several scholars contend that English no longer exclusively represents the culture of native English-speaking countries, nor are they the exclusive ‘owners’ of English (see e.g. Widdowson, 1994).

Investigating the phonological patterns, especially the stress patterns, of verbs ending in -ize such as finalize, constitutionalize, etc, the word recognize has attracted my attention. One would not generally attach too much attention to this word for its phonology: it seems to be a run-of-the-mill case of stressing the third-last (antepenultimate) syllable of a non-transparent derivation by -ize. For instance, Nádasdy (2006: 222) treats -ize as a basically neutral (strong) suffix, that is one that is not supposed to interfere with stress-patterns and otherwise of the stem to which it is attached. Following established analyses, he divides -ize words into two categories, though: those that are derived from a free stem ('character > 'characterize, 'final > 'finalize), where stress (indicated by the ' mark) does not shift in the derived verb, and those whose stem is non-transparent ('recognize, 'categorize), and where stress tends to be furthest away from the suffix itself. The fact that recognize has a non-transparent derivation means that there is no free English word *recogn. Ginésy (2004: 126) analyzes recognize as morphologically having a double prefix, re- and co-, which reduces the stem to Latinate -gn-, which is always bound in English. Whether his etymological analysis is warranted for the contemporary morphology of recognize is at least disputable today, but he correctly claims that 'recognize, with stress on the initial syllable, behaves like a non-transparent derivation so it receives antepenultimate stressing. In other words, the most wide-spread pronunciation of recognize, with initial stress, is generally unproblematic in the literature: it is a case of non-transparent derivation by -ize with antepenultimate stressing.

English is a global language, and the fact has been reiterated by various studies conducted both in native and non-native countries. In India, English, since the British era, has dominated the domains of administration, business, higher education, science and technology and mass media. Post-Independence the visibility and functionality of English increased manifold. English is everywhere on the streets: from billboards to hoardings, from advertisements to road signs, English is omnipresent. Even for petty official works in places such as banks, post offices, hospitals, railway stations, bus depots, schools and colleges, English becomes indispensable.

The development of African varieties of English has been attributed to a variety of factors, and the emergent forms of English spoken in various African countries have been the subject of study for several decades now. Among the factors mentioned as leading to the ‘Africanness’ of African Englishes is the exposure to written language, which tends to lead to the observation of linkages between spelling and pronunciation in some of these varieties of English (Schmied, 1991a, 2006). The argument has been that due to exposure to the written word, second language learners reproduce elements of written language in speech, leading, for example, to the pronunciation of silent letters in words such as ‘heir’, ‘tomb’ etc. This phenomenon of ‘spelling pronunciation’ is more pronounced in some varieties than in others, and the practice may not be confined to non-native environments. In general, spelling pronunciation has been shown to lead to cross-cultural miscommunication and therefore has implications for English as a global language.

I still recall, with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment, the time I took a visiting Italian friend to lunch in a café along London's Holloway Road. After studying the menu, he ordered a mozzarella and tomato panino – ‘so that'll be one panini for you’, jotted down the young woman behind the counter. My friend confirmed his choice by repeating it in a way that signified he could speak only for himself. And to make his point, he leaned somewhat on the singular -o of the ending, keen, I imagined, to avoid the kind of mix-up that leads to extra portions being brought to one's restaurant table in error. But to no avail: before proceeding to take his order, our waitress told my companion firmly, in an unmistakeably eastern European accent, that he would be having a ‘mozzarella and tomato panini’, and that was that.

The production of content-appropriate discourse in academic English has proved a difficult task for learners in different disciplines in Colombian universities. There is plenty of blame to go around: among other problems, educators frequently point to the belief that language courses (isolated from university subjects) automatically promote linguistic skills transferable to a specific subject-language, the informal approach to subjects demanding high-skill communicative proficiency, the abuse of L1 informal register in both L1 and L2 academic writing and speaking; the idiosyncratic academic culture dominated by a blinkered return-of-investment thinking, and the lack of academic rigour leading to distinct increments in existing knowledge. In such a scenario, it becomes apparent that a practical, unambiguous approach is to be taken in order to facilitate the implementation of a more seamless integration of language and content in Colombian EAP classrooms.

In Japan, the ability to speak and understand English is widely regarded as essential for communication in a ‘globalized’ world. At the same time, however, many Japanese are reluctant to communicate in English because they perceive themselves (and are often perceived by others) to be poor speakers of English, despite the fact that they will have studied English for at least six years in junior and senior high school. In response to this, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has recently revised the national syllabus for English teaching. The revised syllabus places more emphasis on developing oral communication skills, and proposes a much greater use of communicative language teaching (CLT) methodology in order to bring this about. This paper describes the present situation of CLT in Japan based on questionnaire data obtained from 48 Japanese university students, and proposes that a more effective and practical approach to CLT and English teaching more generally may be obtained by adopting a ‘World Englishes’ point of view.

Macao, a former colony of Portugal, is located in the western side of the Pearl River estuary, adjoining the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone and facing the South China Sea. It is much smaller than its ‘big brother’ Hong Kong, having a total land area of 29.5 sq km and a population of around 540,000, of which 94.3% are ethnic Chinese (DSEC, 2011).

There is nothing innately funny or humorous about English spelling, though its vagaries have lent themselves to efforts in that way:

The combination of possibly with can't and couldn't seems to me on the increase. Or perhaps I just notice it more since I've been living in France. For in French there is no direct equivalent of possibly. You have probablement (= probably), but there is no French word *possiblement. What, then, is going on when you find in English, to take a recent example, ‘For all the malfunctions of the past few years, it's assumed the structure of British society can't possibly be refashioned’ (standfirst to an article by Marina Hyde, The Guardian, 7 July 2012)?