An examination of the nature, history and roles of classicisms in English and other European languages

ET is a forum for the discussion of ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘correct’, ‘incorrect’, ‘standard’, ‘non-standard’, ‘substandard’ and other kinds of usage. In this issue, DAVID CRYSTAL considers a bone of contention that has been with us for a long time.

A report on the past and present of the major variety in West Africa

An adapted and extended version of ‘The Big Three’, a paper presented to the Kongres Bahasa Utama Dunia (‘Congress of the World's Major Languages’), organized in October 2004 by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (‘Institute of Language and Literature’), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Dewan, established in 1956, is committed to both linguistic and literary planning with regard to Bahasa Malaysia (Malay as used in Malaysia) and the recognition of Malay as a major Asian and world language.

“Spa(R) … Could you tell me where I can find a spa(r)?” “Are you sure you want to find a spar?” A Chinese traveller, inquiring about the nearest spa while on a tour in South Africa, left the local hotel receptionist confused. This anecdote involved the overuse of the R-colouring sound and aroused my interest in rhoticity in China English. Rhoticity in English refers to ‘the production of historical or orthographic /r/ in the syllable coda of words such as father and card” (Becker, 2014: 141). However, since the R-colouring sound in English, a simple allophone feature, does not distinguish word meanings, its pronunciation features and phonological environments have seldom been taught in EFL classes in China.

The be fixing to structure not only has a long and fascinating history but also a highly contemporary presence in Internet communication. The rise of the futurate verbal periphrasis be fixing to + V shows an essentially textbook example of grammaticization, not so different in many ways from the development of be going to. However, there are some important differences too. While be going to has a wide distribution among speakers of Englishes in the world, having much to do with its sixteenth century development and subsequent global diffusion in the colonial period, be fixing to grammaticized in Southern US English in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a fact which resulted in a relatively small circumscribed geographical distribution in its earliest uses.

Across the world, in many places in which English is not widely spoken, English text often appears on posters, storefronts, billboards, street signs, warning signs, menus, and many other forms of publicly visible written texts. English is often featured alongside one or more additional languages. These signs are typically seen as unremarkable by passersby looking to buy goods, for information regarding prohibited activity, or even just for a comfortable coffee shop. An increasingly robust scholarly literature has examined these signs since the publication of Landry and Bourhis' (1997) foundational study which popularized the term linguistic landscape. Linguistic landscape scholarship now includes large-scale quantitative examinations of publicly visible signs in cities such as Tokyo (Backhaus, 2007), smaller-scale examinations of the written language within individual workplaces in a single building (Hanauer, 2010), studies on mobile linguistic landscapes such as shopping bags (Alomoush, 2019) and many other studies conducted in widely varying locations with widely varying foci (McKiernan, 2019; Yuan, 2019).

A reply from a Danish-born teacher of English in Japan to Sir Randolph Quirk's ‘Language varieties and standard language’ (ET 21)

English is an official language in Uganda and is said to be in its nativization phase when placed within Schneider's (2007) model of the trajectorial development of Englishes (Isingoma & Meierkord, 2019). In the present study, we delineate the general features of the Ugandan accent of English (i.e. those that cut across regional or ethnic boundaries) as well as features that evince variability among Ugandans due to regional or ethnic background. The first description of the phonological features of the variety of English spoken in Uganda is included in Fisher's (2000) seminal paper on this L2 (second language) variety of English. Another description of these features is found in Nassenstein (2016). Both Fisher (2000) and Nassenstein (2016) provide a short section, outlining the features which are similar to the general features of L2 Englishes, notably the restructuring of the phonemic system, e.g. /a/ replacing /ɜ:, ɑ:, ʌ, ə/ and the free variation of [l] and [r], although the latter occurs regionally (see similar findings on L2 varieties of English in Bailey & Görlach [eds.] 1984; Platt, Weber & Ho, 1984; Schmied, 1991; Simo-Bobda, 2000; Atechi, 2004; Schneider et al. [eds.], 2004; Tsilimos, 2018; among others). Additionally, Simo-Bobda (2001) and Schmied (2004) describe more or less the same features but in a more detailed way under the label ‘East African English’ (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania). Schmied (2004) posits three reasons that underlie the features in question: substrate influence, simplification and spelling pronunciation. To these studies, we add a more focused study on one particular aspect of the Ugandan accent(s) of English, namely by Meierkord (2016), who looks at diphthongs and how they are realized by speakers of different L1s. Her findings demonstrate variability but also convergence in the idiomorphic pronunciation of diphthongs by Ugandans.

The university-level poetry writing workshops in English taught in a Chinese context are characterized chiefly by bilingual creativity. Based on the practical task of creating ‘contact literature’ (Kachru, 1992: 317), to be more exact, ‘contact poetry’, they transcend the limits of any one single language and culture so as to make points of contact between Chinese and English languages and cultures in terms of verbal images, sound devices, and thematic concerns.

YAMUNA KACHRU published the article “Contrastive rhetoric in world Englishes” in ET41 (Jan 95), prompting a letter from Reinhard Hartmann that appeared in ET42 (Apr 95). The following is Kachru's reply to Hartmann.

The evolution and potential of linked aspects of the electronic revolution that could radically change perceptions of the printed word

A discussion of the nature and use of aids for writers currently available as computer software packages

Reflections on why English words are becoming increasingly widespread in Spain

China English (CE) is the fastest growing variety of English in the world. While some estimate that there are between 200–400 million learners of English in mainland China, other researchers put the numbers between 440–650 million (cf. Bolton & Graddol, 2012; He & Zhang, 2010). Although not all learners of English in China will become active users of English, the numbers above are staggering, especially if we consider that the population of the United States is currently 319 million (United States Census Bureau, 2014). As Kirkpatrick (2007: 151) notes, CE is ‘soon likely to be the most commonly spoken variety of English in Asia’. One could argue that, judging by the numbers given above, CE will become the most commonly spoken variety of English in the world.

English as the global (if not the universal) language reflects a hegemony of the past as well as of the present: both a continuation of the British Empire (and thus demonized as a former colonial language) and, as the preferred language of international business and capitalist development throughout the world, resented as a powerful neo-colonial language. Yet, as this study seeks to show, English is capable of acting against its own imperialisms, to undermine its own hegemony.

The newly renovated Seoul Express Bus Terminal, which reopened at the end of 2019, has caused an uproar among the South Korean public. The fact that its ticket booth sign is written only in English – ‘TICKETS’ – was pointed out by one Twitter user (see Figure 1), and the message went viral among internet users. It took only a week or so for the issue to make headlines in Yonhap News – one of the major news agencies in South Korea (hereafter ‘Korea’) that provides news articles and pictures for newspapers, TV networks, and online media. The news article criticised that not only the ticket booth sign but also the sign of a nearby drug store is written exclusively in English – ‘pharmacy’.

English is used as a lingua franca in most parts of the world (Ozaki, 2011). However, problems and issues related to learning English are country specific (Nagamine, 2011), because most of the difficulties in foreign language learning arise from L1 interference (Flege, 1995). Since this study focuses on acoustic analysis of a phonological feature of Pakistan English (PakE), we outline the historical background of the issue very briefly. Pakistan is a linguistically rich country. More than 70 languages are spoken in Pakistan (Rahman, 1996). Saraiki, Balochi, Sindhi, Punjabi and Pashto are the major indigenous languages of the country. More than 90% of the total population speaks these languages. Pakistan came into being in 1947. It inherited English as a language of education, law, the judiciary and media from the British colonial masters. The British rulers also used the English language in India for official correspondence. Therefore, English became a very effective tool and symbol of power in the subcontinent. As a result, people of the subcontinent feel pride in learning English. Although the colonial period has ended and the English rulers have departed to their homeland, English still remains the language of ruling elite in Pakistan and India.

The study of the paradigmatic traits of teenage slang has shown that a sense of togetherness is predominant (Eble, 1996; Allen, 1998; Mattiello, 2005, 2008; Smith, 2011). This cohesive linguistic device is not consciously intended to exclude unwished members from conversations or common understanding, but the idea of relying on a preserved sense of solidarity and acceptance is a human urge, especially among teenagers or young adults (cf. Mattiello, 2005: 13). These features are a necessary starting point to understand that the colloquial nature or social restriction of these words and phrases are precisely aimed to ‘establish or reinforce social identity within a group or with a trend or fashion in society at large’ (Eble, 1996: 11).