“English is probably changing faste

“English is probably changing faster than any other language,” says Alan Firth, a linguist at the University of Aalborg in Denmark, “because so many people are using it.”

More than 1 billion people are believed to speak some form of English. For every native speaker there are three nonnative speakers. Three-quarters of the world’s mail is in English and four-fifths of electronic information is stored in English.

As more nonnative speakers converse with each other, hundreds of impromptu varieties of English are taking on a life of their own around the world.

But the uncontrolled, global germination of so many “Englishes” has some worried. English purists, led by Britain’s Prince Charles, bemoan the degradation of the language as they see it.

Multiculturalists, meanwhile, say the blitzkrieg-like spread of English effectively commits “linguistic genocide” by killing off dozens other languages.

These differing views lead to the question: Is the world taking English by storm or is English taking the world by storm?

Tom McArthur, editor of the Oxford Companion to the English Language, says that in 20 to 30 countries around the world, English is merging with native languages to create hybrid Englishes.

“The tensions between standard English and hybrid Englishes are going to become very, very great,” says Mr. McArthur, who calls the process neither good nor bad. “We are going to have to keep on our toes. Some standard form of English [should be maintained] … as a tool of communication.”

Prince Charles recently warned of a creeping degradation of the English language, lashing out at Americans for cheapening it with bad grammar.

“People tend to invent all sorts of nouns and verbs and make words that shouldn’t be, ” said Prince Charles at the March launching of a five-year British effort to preserve “English English.”

“I think we have to be a bit careful, otherwise the whole thing can get rather a mess,” he added.

“People tend to invent all sorts of nouns and verbs and make words that shouldn’t be, ” said Prince Charles at the March launching of a five-year British effort to preserve “English English.”

“I think we have to be a bit careful, otherwise the whole thing can get rather a mess,” he added.

“People develop their own ways of doing business with each other, of talking and even writing … that native speakers might not understand,” Firth says. “And native speakers join in and start to speak that way also.”

But those who seek to preserve native cultures warn that in many parts of the world, English is taking more than it is giving. Some linguists attending the 1995 Global Culture Diversity conference held in Sydney last month warned of accelerating global language “linguicide.”

Schools in former European colonies still use English or French to assimilate ethnic populations, eradicating dozens of native languages, they warn.

Oxford Companion editor McArthur says the spread of English can’t be halted. The globalization of the world, mostly driven by economics, is inevitable.
“It’s the [world’s] need for a unified language of trade, politics, and culture,” he says. “We’re going to lose a lot of languages around the world, but if it’s not English, it’s something else.”