Enrichment of English through globalization

The linguistic and cultural diversity among Homo sapiens is remarkable and difficult to fathom. Socio-linguistic identities are also very strong. At present there are thousands of languages and dialects spoken around the world. Languages are like biological species, they originate, evolve, and constantly change for a certain period and finally become extinct. We will never know how many languages existed in the past, how long they existed, how many people spoke to them, and in what part of the world where they used. Such questions fall under the realm of proto linguistics. The answers to these questions are investigated by anthropologists and archaeologists. Even though mankind had a quest for a universal language, unfortunately they never had one. Traditionally people have lived in communities that were spread over limited geographical boundaries and had their own language for communication. The problem of inter-communal communication must have been quite severe in the past due to lack of a common language, and most probably was the source of misunderstandings, mistrust, and conflicts.

During the past few decades, we have learnt a lot about the history of languages. We have a good knowledge of how languages evolved during the past five thousand years. The English language, which had a modest beginning, has gradually become the most widely used language in the world. Due to widespread use of the Internet in the past couple of decades, English has grown very fast as a common language of communication and is still growing rapidly. This globalization process has made English an international language. This fact has several historical reasons, but attention is paid here to the process of globalization rather than to other reasons.

English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages (Crystal, 1997; Fromkin et al. 2001) and its origin goes back to over three thousand years in the Elbe River region of Europe (Wilton, 2004 in wordorigins website). Wilton (2004) divides the history of English into several distinct stages such as Old English (500-1100 AD), The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500 AD), Early Modern English (1500-1800 AD), and Late-Modern English (1800-Present). He also gives an interesting chronology of the historical development of this language. The process of English globalization began in 1500 AD when the British began to explore and travel to the far corners of the globe with the primary purpose of trade and commerce. Ultimately this led to the colonization of Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean region, and Oceania. This process continued till the middle of the twentieth century when most colonized countries gained freedom. The colonization period was a significant time for linguistic enrichment and geographical diversification of English. The process of linguistic “give and take” between English and the native languages was necessary for effective communication between the colonizers and the colonized. This absolute necessity gave birth to a large variety of English in different parts of the world. Even after the departure of the British, these forms of English continued to grow and gained acceptance by the native population.

During the past five centuries English has grown to become the most widespread and effective tool of communication in the world. Now it has become the virtual lingua franca of a large proportion of the present world population and is growing by leaps and bounds due to the spread of the Internet. At present, about 1.5 billion people speak English around the world (Jenkins, 2004). In this process English developed several unique varieties in different parts of the world displaying complex variations of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary making it a most multicultural language. Globalization of English has been a “reciprocal process”, i.e., the world received English as a common language and English became richer and more diverse than any other language in the world. At present, English has almost become a universal language, and this has been achieved for the first time in human history. In this process English also became a very rich language by assimilating thousands of words, phrases, and expressions from other languages. Many books and papers have been published on this subject in the past two decades. An extensive bibliography on this topic, “English as a Global Language”, was compiled by Mari (2003).

The term “world Englishes” was introduced by Kachru (1985) and further discussed by Kachru and Smith (1988) to represent the spread of English in terms of three concentric circles. The inner circle includes USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The outer circle includes former British colonies in Asia and Africa. Finally, the expanding circle includes China, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, former Soviet Republics and Zimbabwe. There are 402 million native speakers of English and the number of people who use English as a second or foreign language varies from 350 to 1,000 million (Wikipedia website). English is listed as the official or co-official language in over 45 countries and is spoken extensively in other countries where it has no official status (Krysstal website).

According to Kachru (1994), world Englishes “symbolizes the functional and formal variations, divergent socio-linguistic contexts, ranges and varieties of English in creativity, and various types of acculturations in parts of the Western and non-Western world”. Different Englishes serve various functions and have their own distinct identities. These Englishes are not only restricted to spoken mode but are also used in new English literature that characterizes various types of social classes, group identities and provide local cultural flavor. He (Kachru, 1996) further elaborated this concept as “demographic distribution of English and its range and depth where range refers to fast-expanding functional domains of English across cultures and languages, and depth refers to societal penetration of English”. During the past decade, “World Englishes” have attracted a lot of interest from linguists all over the world. The focus of research has been in areas such as the identification of the main characteristics of English for international communication at various linguistic levels e.g., syntactic, phonological, morphological, lexical, stylistic, and discoursal. Another important area includes the study of local grammatical, linguistic, and literary traditions, and their applications to the analysis and description of World Englishes. Finally, the initiation and co-ordination of research in lexicographical studies in English is also a significant area of study.

Enrichment of English through globalization has happened in several ways. One of the most significant ways is lexical enrichment. Thousands of words from various languages around the world have been incorporated into English. There is a list of hundreds of English words of international origin that come from forty languages ranging from Australian Aboriginal languages to Yiddish (Wikipedia website). Krysstal website has a much more comprehensive list of 146 languages, from Afrikaans to Zuni, from which many English words have been borrowed. The vast size of the English vocabulary makes it a very fluid and effective language that has the capacity to express even the most complex ideas in simple and comprehensible words.

According to Crystal (2004), “English has never been a stable language, change and variation are at the heart of the process. It has been a vacuum-cleaner of a language, sucking in words from wherever it can get them. Over 350 languages have loaned words into English now.” A computerized survey of 80,000 words estimated the origin of English words as: French (28.3 %), Latin (28.24 %), Old and Middle English including Old Norse and Dutch (25 %), Greek (5.32 %), no etymology given (4.03 %), derived from proper names (28 %), and all other languages (less than 1 %) (Wikipedia website).

Evolution of English as a global language has resulted in high linguistic diversity. This has led to the problem of “standard” pronunciation of English for easy international communication. Research shows that native speaker accents are not necessarily the most intelligible or appropriate accents to be used internationally (Jenkins, 2004). As a matter of fact, there is a high diversity of accents among the native speakers of English. For example, people in New Zealand, Australia, U.K., USA, and Canada have their own distinct accents. Even within the United Kingdom, accent varies among England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Within England people from the southern counties have different accents than people from Yorkshire and the Midlands. Thus, there is no “standard” pronunciation of English in the world.

Globalization of English has adversely affected many languages. It tends to erode local languages and fuel “Glocal” English (Goswami, 2003). “Glocal English” is a language that has international status but also expresses local identities.

The contact between English and native languages has created a large population of bilingual and multilingual people. This long-term contact results in nativisation and acculturation of language. Nativisation is a process that creates a localized linguistic identity, for example, Indian English, Malaysian English, or Nigerian English, whereas acculturation gives English a local cultural identity (Kachru, 1994). Eventually this leads to the creation of literature in English with distinct local linguistic characteristics. There is a considerable amount of superior quality English literature produced in non-native countries. The Indian poet Rabindra Nath Tagore, Indo-Trinidadian novelist V. S. Naipaul and Nigerian author Wole Soyinka have won the Noble Prize for Literature. There are several eminent writers, novelists, poets, scientists, journalists, educationists, academicians, engineers, artists, businesspeople, and film personalities who are non-native speakers of English and have enriched this language by their significant contributions. The list of such distinguished persons and their contribution to English is enormously large. Discussing their work is beyond the scope of this essay. As an example, eminent literary and film personalities from India will only be discussed here. Most of these Indians live and work in India but a few live and work outside India as well.

Indian writings in English are a colossal body of work written in the past one hundred and fifty years by Indians whose mother tongue is one of the many languages of India. Such personalities come from almost every conceivable field of knowledge and human endeavor. The most famous Indian contributors to English literature include M. K. Gandhi (My Experiments with Truth), J. L. Nehru (Glimpses of the World History), Raja Rao (Kanthapura), R. K. Narayan (Malgudi Days), Nirad C. Choudhary (The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian), M. R. Ananad (Untouchable), Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan), Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses), Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy), Shashi Tharoor (The Great Indian Novel), Rohinton Mistry (Such a Long Journey) and Allan Sealy (From Yukon to Yukatan). Among the accomplished women prose writers are Anita Desai (In Custody), Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things), Shobha De (Starry Nights), Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies), and Bharati Mukherjee (Jasmine), among several others. Varnamala is a web-anthology of Indian–English poetry. The Varnamala website features a comprehensive list of Indian poets and their poetry. Universal recognition of Indian litterateurs has won them almost every known international award for their outstanding contribution. Among the many Indian Film personalities who use English as a medium for their work are Ismail Merchant (Heat and Dust, Siddharta); Manoj Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, The Village); Shekhar Kapoor (Elizabeth, Four Feathers); Meera Nair (Earth, Fire); Deepa Mehta (Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding); Gurinder Chaddha (Bend It Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice), etc.

The contribution to literature, film and mass-media gets easily recognized by people. However, contributions from the academic world, though enormous and extremely significant, do not achieve the same popularity and are mostly recognized within their own field. In this category are many Indian scientists, engineers, technologists, artists, philosophers, teachers, and other professionals whose contributions add to and enrich the pool of human knowledge through English. Several of them have been recognized by prestigious international awards such as the Nobel Prize. For example, Rabindra Nath Tagore (Literature), Sir C. V. Raman (Physics), Hargobind Khurana (Physiology/Medicine), S. Chandrashekhar (Physics), and Amartya Sen (Economics), Abhijit Banerjee (Economics), Mother Teresa (Peace), Kailash Satyarthi (Peace), and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Chemistry). The above list includes people who were born in India but later became U.S. citizen. In addition, three Indian residents but not citizens also won the Nobel Prize, they were Ronald Ross (Physiology/Medicine), Rudyard Kipling (Literature) and Tenzing Gyatso, the14th Dalai Lama (Peace). All of them wrote and published their work in English.

Enrichment and diversification of English has led to some concerns as well. The “Purists” among the English academics consider diversification as adulteration of English. They consider the standard British English to have lost its originality. At times, they do not even recognize native forms of English. However, a great majority of linguists around the world do not share this view. Such ideas lead to issues like “ownership of English” and “the English language in the global context” and eventually become intensely debatable (Stevens, P., 1972; Quirk and Widdowson, 1985). However, a genuine concern is that several local and regional languages, under the influence of English, are in the process of dying, and most have a real possibility of becoming extinct in the foreseeable future. This undeniably will be a curse of “English expansionism” on the human civilization because once we lose a language, we also lose its distinct culture, tradition, and its knowledge base. Overall, it is a loss of the heritage of mankind. It is sad, yet an unfortunate fact, that like everything else languages too suffer because of dominance of another language. Sometimes languages adapt and modify to survive, but if they fail, they become subjugated and ultimately become extinct.

English has traveled a long way for the past over three thousand years from a remote corner of Europe to cover every corner of the planet Earth and even beyond. The first message from the moon by Neil Armstrong to NASA’s headquarters in Houston on July 20, 1969, was “The Eagle has landed.” This was the first communication between the Earth and another celestial body. Subsequent communications mostly have been in English only. English gave us a common language for global communication, which on one hand has been a boon for mankind, but on the other hand has also been a serious cause for concern due to its domination over other languages. It has become a cause of the possible death for several local languages. This is indeed a great loss to our civilization. English has undeniably become the richest language ever, in terms of its vocabulary, literature and the number of people using it. No other language comes even close to English as far as its use in academics, science, arts, literature, business, industry, politics, and international relations are concerned. It can be safely concluded that globalization of English indeed enriched and diversified itself, and up to a great extent it has helped mankind but has also been a source of concern for other languages.

References

Crystal, D. (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, D. (2004). A chat with David Crystal. A Word A Day. (http://wordsmith.org/chat/dc.html)

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Hultin, N. & Logan, H. (2001). An Introduction to Language. Thomson. Second Canadian Edition.

Goswami, R. (2003). Globalization Erodes Local Languages, Fuels “Glocal” English. (http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/2003/0730glocal.htm)

Jenkins, J. (2004). Global English and the teaching of pronunciation. British Council. (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/pron/global_english.html)Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and socio-linguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge University Press for the British Council.

Kachru, B. B. (1994). World Englishes: approaches, issues and resources. In H.D.Brown and S. Gonzo (Eds), Readings on Second Language Acquisition. New York-Prentice Hall.

Kachru, B. B. (1996). Norms, Modes and Identities. The Language Teacher Online 20.10. (http://jaltpublications.org/tlt/files/96/oct/englishes.html).

Kachru, B. B. & Smith, L. E. (1988). World Englishes: an integrative and cross-cultural journal of WE-ness. In R. Maxwell (Ed.), 40 years’ service to science, technology and education. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Mari (2003). English as a Global Language: A Bibliography. Institute for English Education, Assumption University. (Note: Mari is the only name of the author) (http://iele.au.edu/resources/biblio/we.html)