English will fragment into 'global dialects'

English will fragment into 'global dialects'


By Laura Clout
06/03/2008
The telegraph



Traditional English is set to fragment into a multitude of dialects as it spreads around the world, a language expert claims.

Professor David Crystal, one of the world's foremost experts on English, said people will effectively have to learn two varieties of the language - one spoken in their home country, and a new kind of Standard English which can be internationally understood.

The English spoken in countries with rapidly-booming economies, such as India and China, will increasingly influence this global standard, he said.

In future, users of global Standard English might replace the British English: "I think it's going to rain", with the Indian English: "I am thinking it's going to rain", Prof Crystal argues.

This could spell the end of the dominance of American English as the prevailing language of international affairs.

Prof Crystal said: "In language, numbers count. There are more people speaking English in India than in the rest of the native English-speaking world.

"Even now, if you ring a call centre, often it's an Indian voice you hear at the end of the phone. As the Indian economy grows, so might the influence of Indian English.

advertisement"There, people tend to use the present continuous where we would use the present simple. For example, where we would say: "I think, I feel, I see" a speaker of Indian English might say: "I am thinking, I am feeling, I am seeing". This way of speaking could easily become sexy and part of global Standard English."

Prof Crystal was speaking in advance of a lecture last night at the University of Winchester, on the growth and evolution of the English language.

He predicts English will become a family of languages, just as Latin did a thousand years ago.

"In much the same way as regional dialects developed, as English grows around the world it is immediately adapted to suit the local circumstances," he said.

"There are older varieties of English such as American, South African, Australian, and emerging varieties like Nigerian, Ghanaian and Singaporean."

However, some of the new dialects are so individual that speakers of British English would be at a loss to understand them, he said.

"In Singapore for example, 'Singlish' is used on the streets but it involves so much Chinese that you and I wouldn't understand it."

The language is in effect developing along two parallel tracks, Prof Crystal said, a phenomenon called diaglossia.

"These new dialects are expressing local attitudes which people feel very strongly about as a way of expressing who they are.

"But at the same time it is very important that there is full international intelligibility. That is fostering the development of what once upon a time we would have called Standard English - which is used in newspapers, textbooks and the like."

The lecture was held to launch the campaign for The English Project, which hopes to be the world's first living museum dedicated to the history and evolution of the English language.

The attraction, based in Winchester, Hants is set to open in Spring 2012, telling the story of the language from Anglo-Saxon times to the present.
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Varieties of standard spoken English (and each is compared to what it is in British English)


Indian: He’s a real enthu guy.

British: That guy is really enthusiastic.
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South African: Jislaaik, china, I was in a bit of a dwaal.

British: Gosh, my friend, I was in a bit of a daze.
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Australian: Bring your bathers, chuck some stubbies in the esky and we’ll have a barbie this arvo.

British: Bring your swimming costume, put some beers in the cool box and we’ll have a barbecue this afternoon.
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Singaporean/Singlish: Dis guy Singlish damn powerful one leh.

British: This person’s Singlish is very good.
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Nigerian Pidgin: I no know wetin u dey yarn.

British: I don’t know what you are talking about.
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Islander Creole (from Colombian islands of San Andrés and Providencia): Da wan gud ting se di pikniny dem laan fi riid an rait.

British: It is a good thing that the children learn to read and write.
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Cockney rhyming slang: She has such long bacons and lovely minces.

British: She has such long legs and lovely eyes.
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Txt speak: "D gr8st booty of r heritage S d en lgn, n itz r gr8st gft 2 d wrld"

British: "The greatest treasure of our heritage is the English language, and it is our greatest gift to the world."

telegraph.co.uk

More likely since English doesn't have an academy that regulates the language, also every country can come up with their own spelling, and pronunciation, therefore it is likely to evolve into unrecognizable dialects.

Tiens, Adam ! Ça faisait longtemps... Toujours aussi original.

Just like every other language that has ever existed... What's the term for this? Self-fulfilling prophecy?

For example, French not only has North and South, but Acadian and Quebecois.... German not only has Plaatdeutsch and Hochdeutsch but Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German... Etc.

Whoever wrote this article really does not know a whole lot about linguistics... <shakes head>

That said, I would have to say that overall, dialect divergence is definitely taking place in English as a whole, even though some dialect groups have definitely lost overall diversity internally (such as in the case of English English or English dialects along the eastern seaboard of the US).

It sounded reasonably plausible until i saw the examples, which are so regional it is obvious they are contrived.

"There are more people speaking English in India than in the rest of the native English-speaking world."

Most Indians are NOT native speakers. I actually do aerospace tech support in the US, and ironically they call us for support and the overwhelming majority of them can hardly speak or understand the language.

I doubt whether Chinglish can influence "English" at all. You find Singapore English, but nothing like that in the ex-British colony on Chinese soil, because the British didn't expel the native Hongkongers or invite millions of English speakers to live there, and the Chinglish we have is often frowned upon among the population. To put it simply, we consider that WRONG, improper and unacceptable.

What about Chinglish in.. Guangzhou? The bad thing is that, well, I can of course read roadsigns and ??the signs warning you not to tread the lawns?? with no difficulty, but the translations are so badly put that you can only guess their meanings. They would call the second type of signs as "Please not step the grass lands" or something like that.

There are seven countries in the world that speak English *natively*. All others speak some type of pidgin whether they like it or not.

Xie's post is a perfect example of where the language may be heading. His(her) post has quite obviously been written by someone with a broad knowledge of the English language,however it is quite obvious that s/he is not a native speaker. To me the only way I could understand the context was to imagine that some angry elderly Chinaman were screaming at me.

There seems to be some idea in the world that English is "Easy" and to speak it fluently all you have to do it slap a subject verb and object together.

I could go on, but I will stop for now.

The idea that English will fragment in such ways is a ploy from the prescriptivists/standardists to, once again, control the use of English, to create fear of light-diversity and slight variation and to make us all into lazy asses who cannot be bothered to learn a little about the variants we come in contact with.

"More likely since English doesn't have an academy that regulates the language, also every country can come up with their own spelling, and pronunciation, therefore it is likely to evolve into unrecognizable dialects."

>Yes.

"Just like every other language that has ever existed... What's the term for this? Self-fulfilling prophecy?"

>That would never happen with Spanish, if you don't pronounce it or write it the way it is supposed to be, then you're pronouncing it wrong, that stops everyone from creating their own "variety", sure accents are different but that's it.

In reality, though, the thing is that aside from some minor orthographic and morphological/syntactic details, formal literary English is effectively uniform throughout the entire English-speaking world. There is little likelihood that it itself would break up any time soon, and that is even without any Academy in the first place.

The matter is, though, that what is actually *spoken* is not closely tied to the literary language, and hence can change relatively easily without there being any change in how things are being written. The matter is that people generally do not write like they speak, and there is nothing stopping what people speak from changing even if what is written remains the same.

>>>To me the only way I could understand the context was to imagine that some angry elderly Chinaman were screaming at me.

I'm puzzled.

"To me the only way I could understand the context was to imagine that some angry elderly Chinaman were screaming at me."

Where do people use the word "Chinaman"?

Chinaman is a common term for a cricketer who bowleth left-arm unorthodox spin.