A report on two prominent dialectal variables in England. Using rather informally collected data, The author looks here at two well-known variables in the English of England: first, whether there is a short or long vowel in words such as grass and bath; second, what regional words people know for streams. The treatment of these variables is consistent over time, and seems to have little to do with social status or carefulness of speech.

The various functions of a simple but complicated suffix. Present-day English has relatively few productive suffixes, but /-ij/, spelt both -y and -ie, as in bouncy and birdie, is one of the most striking. According to Quirk et al. in their Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, these affixes ‘can be used fairly freely’ and they are ‘freely used with largely concrete nouns to form gradable adjectives’ (1985:1553).

An account of consonantal ‘twinning’ in English and other languages.

THIS ESSAY concerns itself with gemination in English, but more specifically, it asks whether English has consonantal gemination (CG), as has been reported by some in the literature. Gemination is usually defined as a phonetic doubling (cf. Latin geminus ‘twin’); however, phonetic length (as opposed to a single or nongeminated segment) is a more accurate designation (see Matthews 1997:141, who cites Italian atto [at[Length mark]o] ‘act’, making reference only to ‘doubling’). It has long been known that English does not have contrastive CG as is recognized, say, from the phonemic difference between Classical and Modern Standard Arabic kasara (‘he broke’) and kassara (‘he smashed’) or darasa (‘he studied’) and darrasa (‘he taught’).

is the ultimate logical language still being used – somewhere out there? if you know what the title of this article means, what follows is probably not going to be news to you. if you don't, you might be curious about the language in question, which certainly isn't english, but isn't a foreign language either.

how the polysemous nature of the word quality can cause problems for readers of articles on quality assurance in higher education. scholarly literature on quality assurance in higher education will always run the risk of confusing or repelling non-specialist readers. that is inevitable since, by its nature, such literature often uses technical jargon in dealing with abstract concepts. yet, a further and more fundamental problem exists, one that may not always be recognized by writers in the field: namely, that the word quality itself has different senses, combines with other words, with unusual semantic effects, and can function both as a noun and an adjective. these factors combine to increase the possibility that general readers may misconstrue key points in texts about quality.

First describing the rapid growth of English as a lingua franca in Europe and East Asia, and having drawn attention to similarities and differences in the evolution of the varieties of English worldwide, the author focuses on China where, as in so many other domains, growth and change are currently very rapid. She reports in particular on an investigation into 586 Chinese English teachers' attitudes to both the standard varieties of the language around the world and a new variety, China English. A majority of the teachers surveyed considers that China English will eventually become a standard variety of the language in its own right, and at least stand alongside the current national favourite, American English. In addition, the teachers' views on both the cultural content of teaching materials and the use of native speakers of English in Chinese institutions of education reflect both China's openness to the world and a strong adherence to its own culture. The signs are, she argues, that China English is on its way to becoming another world variety, which will happen when it has been adequately described, codified and officially recognized.

The status of the English language as the lingua franca of the global information society is beyond dispute, but what is not so clear is whether it is capable of fulfilling that role efficiently. In the following article Ross Smith responds to the supporters of Global English by examining the qualities that an ideal international auxiliary language would possess and then discussing the extent to which those qualities are to be found in modern English.

Sameness and difference across two nations and languages. In order to begin the discussion regarding a sitcom from American television used in a Brazilian classroom, I believe it is necessary to discuss the situation of the world as we know it at the beginning of the 21st century. Using the theories of the Brazilian sociologist Renato Ortiz (1994) as the basis for this discussion, it is possible to differentiate between the terms global and world-systemic (or mundial). In this view, global refers to the economic and technological processes at work in the modern day world, while world-systemic refers to the domain of culture. The category world is linked to the global, but signifies a world-view, a symbolic universe which is specific to the historic moment in which we live.

An inquiry into undergraduates' preferences, with repercussions regarding the nature and use of a distinctive ‘China English’. For many years, the standard varieties of British and American English have been accepted and promoted as the only internationally acceptable forms of Standard English, a view that has however, in recent years, been challenged in studies associated with ‘World Englishes’ and ‘English as an International Language’ (EIL). Within such frameworks, some linguists in China have proposed that ‘China English’ as an actual or potential standard variety should stand alongside the standard varieties of British, American, and other Englishes. If so, it follows that Chinese teachers would be better able to teach this variety than imported native English speakers. In order to investigate Chinese students' views on such matters, a research project was undertaken with subjects from eight universities in the People's Republic of China. The data gathered from questionnaires, group discussion and interviews indicate that Chinese students are positive towards both EIL and China English and that this in turn influences their preference for a Chinese rather than a native-speaker teacher of English.

An account of a highly distinctive variety of English in India. When the British set up colonies worldwide they brought with them a legacy that included their language, which many of the natives accepted and acculturated: it would after all be unreasonable to expect an imperial language to function in a vacuum with no local nuances. Indeed, gradual acculturation produced a number of varieties of English used as second languages. In their almost 200 years of not-so-peaceful stay on the subcontinent, the British and many Indians used English, fulfilling in at least a linguistic sense Macaulay's dream of an ‘imperishable empire’. In these 200 years, English in India slowly went through a process now labelled Indianization, evolving into the variety (or group of varieties) called Indian English. One subvariety, generally referred to as Butler English, though by no means confined to butlers, is described and discussed here.

the eu recently forced microsoft to issue a second version of its windows xp operating system without a built-in windows media player, ruling that, by bundling its own media player, microsoft was effectively blocking competition from rivals (particularly real player and quicktime). microsoft's monopolistic approach in this case also landed it a fine of €497.2 million ($665m). the wrangling lasted well over a year, during which time windows xp with bundled media player had been sold so widely in europe as to partly invalidate the eu's attempts at stopping the us company monopolising and controlling the market. ‘the second version of windows will reflect what consumers want, and not what microsoft imposes on them,’ was the triumphant but belated comment of mario monti, the former eu commissioner in charge of competition.

THIS ARTICLE springs from my experiences when I submitted a piece to English Today that contained characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). I had used a font containing such characters that came with my word-processing program, and I submitted the article electronically as a file attachment. Unfortunately, the characters did not arrive in the same form as they had left, owing to incompatibility between the two computer systems, and so there were parts of the article that did not make much sense. The editor graciously reprinted it in its correct form in the following issue (ET80).

A discussion of the variety of labels given to the language in its worldwide role. In his article ‘Is it world or international or global English, and does it matter?’ (ET79, Jul 04), Tom McArthur welcomes further comment on the names of English in a ‘globalizing world’. He examines the histories and meanings of the three most popular labels for English: world, international and global. In addition to discussing his contribution, I would like to draw attention to other, perhaps less familiar names for English that have been proposed as alternatives. This paper seeks both to survey these labels and uncover why there is such a strong compulsion to rename the language. I suggest that these proposals have arisen in response to postcolonial ambiguity about the spread of English and a desire to shape a new ideology for English language teaching (ELT) which more accurately reflects the global nature of the language and its diverse uses and users.

IN ET81 Keith Davidson makes some criticisms of my article ‘Consonantal beginnings’ (ET80). His main points relate to the following: (1) the pronunciation of words such as tune and drink; (2) the difference between sph- and sf-; (3) consonant pairs in non-initial position. On all these, I think that Davidson has missed the point and has offered misleading criticism. Here, then, is my reply.

teaching a foreign language can sometimes be like doing linguistics the wrong way round. grammatical study should be based on sentences that have been produced and understood in actual contexts. we should expect to find some imprecise, changeable conventions, but not any rules. it can be difficult, though, to teach a language with that outlook. a learner will be dispirited if you suggest just taking language as it comes and learning from experience. learners want rules, as they seem to offer security and a starting-point. of course, once a teacher has been foolish enough to give a rule, any awkwardly enterprising student can easily find justifiable exceptions to it though, of course, they will not really be exceptions to anything.

Task-based classroom work in Taiwan that uses a mix of traditional teaching, multimedia, and online video. In this paper, I discuss how poetry can be used as a topic of discussion and the basis for a task-based project for university students who have had little exposure to American poetry. The use of multimedia and online video as tools in the course of this project is also discussed and attention is likewise given to student feedback on a questionnaire administered online. Students' critical reflections and subjective analyses of their performances and their feelings toward the project reveal positive results, allowing me to conclude that the integration of poetry into language-teaching work, if delivered effectively, can hone students' thinking, reading, listening, writing, speaking and analytical skills. It is not only the amount of hard work that matters, but how far the imagination is stretched.

more tales from a new york writing class. the axe split two ways: half of us against the death penalty, half for it. this i found out by asking the remedial writing-and-reading class to explain on paper how and when they arrived at their current opinion on capital punishment. with most of the students being from overseas, i thought it was important for each to explain his or her culture's or religion's or country's views on the death penalty. then we read – with those opinions and histories staring us in the face – claude gueux.

Creative wordplay in franglais: mixed messages in French publicity glimpsed from a bus.

a very personal story. [this ‘language biography’ is written by a younger academic who teaches in a well-known mainland chinese university, who grew up in a time of great difficulty and change, in which he often felt caught between ideologies, cultures, languages, and literatures, in the course of which however english became a deeply personal possession. in order to retain the authentic voice of the text, editorial ‘smoothing out’ has been kept to a minimum. – editor.]

This paper draws attention to some uses of the singular collective nouns congress, council, government, management, parliament, and senate in contemporary English. In particular, it demonstrates how in such uses, the singular collective nouns – like members of the main class of proper nouns – have unique reference, occur without any determiner, take singular pronoun substitutes, and as subject in the sentence have singular concord with the verb. It concludes by providing from contemporary English texts some examples illustrating the uses of the six singular collective nouns discussed.