Spread of English in the WORLD
The movement of English around the world began with pioneering voyages to the Americas Asia, continued with the XIXth century colonial development in Africa and a South Pacific. It took a significant further step when it was adopted in the XXth century as an official or semi-official language by many mutually independent states. English now is a dominant or official language of over 60 counties and 75 territories and is represented in all the continents and oceans, mostly Atlantic, Indian and Pacific.
It is this – spread of the representations which makes the application of term “the world language ” a reality.
The present day world status of English is primarily the result of 2 factors :
1) The expansion of British colonial power which picked towards the eng of the XIXth century
2) The emergence of the US as the leading economic power of the XXth century.
It is the latter factor which continues to explain the position of the English language today. The USA contains nearly for times as many English as mother tongue speakers as the most important EMT nation – the UK; and these 2 countries comprise 70% of all speakers in the world. Such dominance with its political underpinnings gives the Americans a controlling interest in the way the language is likely to develop.
To have a special place in the world can mean various things. Sometimes English is an official or joint-official language of a state, its status being defined by law as in the case of India, Ireland or Canada.
Sometimes it may be the sole or dominant language fro historical reasons as in the case of the USA or the UK. In neither country it is defined legally as in official national language. In a few cases such as Kenya and Tanzania, English has lost the formal status it once had, though it pays an important role in the communities.
The 2 chief issues English has to cope with are internationalism on the one hand and identity on the other which raise an immediate problem because they conflict with each other. Internationalism iplies intelligibility and demands an agreed standard – in grammar, vocabulary spelling , pronunciation and usage whereas identity implies individuality which demands linguistic distinctiveness in all aspects of the language which is needful to preserve its uniqueness ir to establish its presence and to avoid being an anonymous ingredient in a cultural melting pot.
11. The English English varieties of pronunciation.
For certain political, geographical, economic and cultural reasons one of the dialects becomes the standard language of the nation and its accent – the received standard pronunciation.
This was the case with London dialect or, broader, the southern type of pronunciation variously known as the RP of Britain. In Britain RP stands in strong contrast to all the other ways of pronouncing put together. English people divided by the way they talk into 3 major groups
1. RP – speakers of standard English – those without the accent
2. non – RP speakers – with an accent
3. who speak dialects
The existence of RP gives accent judgments a peculiar importance in England, and makes the English more sensitive than most people to accent differences: it’s in England alone that standard English speakers are divided by accent, on 1 side of which is RP and on the other – all the other accents.
It is not easy to put into words how this accent bar works. There’s no doubt that RP is a privilege accent - one’s social life, career may be affected by whether the person possesses it or not, and in all occupations for which the person uses it, it is sooner the advantage to speak it rather than not to speak it.
Outside England though it seems to have no prestige and it appears just as regional as any other way of pronouncing English.
Nowadays it’s becoming a minority language and a kind of anachronism in the present day democratic society producing a harmful effect on standard English speech in England, because people who are well-educated but have not had an opportunity to learn RP are made nervous and anxious about speech sounds due to the special attention on the mechanism of talking which should be automatic.