Chapter 1: An English-Speaking World (9-45)

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Chapter 1 An English-Speaking World (9-45)

• An
• English-Speaking
• World

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The Story of English

• By Don L. F. Nilsen
• Based on The Story of English
• By Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil
• and William Cran (Penguin, 2003)

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English, ESL or EFL is Spoken by about ½ of the
People in the World ( about 2 Billion People)
(McCrum 24/50)
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English as a Global Language

• ¾ of the Worlds Mail
• ½ of the Worlds technical scientific journals
• ½ of all newspapers
• 80 of the information in computers
• All International Air Pilots
• All International Sea Captains
• Many movies, songs, and much business
• ½ of European business deals
• 7 of the Largest TV Broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC,
  BBC, CBC, CNN, C-Span)
• TV Televangelism of Christianity (McCrum 10)

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Varieties of Global English, each with its Own
Peculiar Flavor

• Deutschlish
• Franglish (la langue du Coca-Cola)
• Indian English
• Japlish (man-shon vs. mai-homu, basaburo,
  aisu-kurimu, mai-com my computer)
• Russlish
• Spanglish (McNeal 10, 38-39)

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La Langue du Coca-Cola

• In France,
• hot money ? capitaux fébariles
• Jumbo jet ? gros porteur
• Fast food ? prêt-à-manger
• In Canada, Loi 101
• English billboards, posters and storefronts are
  banned. Many students are not allowed to attend
  English-language schools. (McCrum 39-40)

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Competing Global Languages

• Arabic
• Russian (before the breakup of the Soviet Union
  in Eastern Europe)
• Mandarin
• Spanish
• French

8
Education Act of 1870 RP

• Cockney (Cocks Egg)
• RP (Received Pronunciation)
• Posh (Portside Out Starboard Home)
• (McCrum 13-21)

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World War II (McCrum 23)

• GI Bases in England, Italy, France, Germany
• GI Language was vivid, profane abbreviated

Black Market Blitz Flak Nylons Pin-Up R R Snafu Yank
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Pin-Ups and Yank Magazine

• Every issue of Yank Magazine featured a pin-up to
  remind soldiers of the girls back home.
• A pin-up of Rita Hayworth is said to have been
  taped to Fat Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on
  Hiroshima in 1945.
• Compare this with the movie Dr. Strangelove How
  I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

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Atomic-Bomb Words (McCrum 24)
Atomic Holocaust Chain Reaction (cf. Vonneguts Ice Nine) Fallout Fireball Fission Fusion Mushroom Cloud Test Site (NOTE The possibility of nuclear proliferation was one of the causes of Postmodernism Deconstructionism)
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Coca-Colonialism (McCrum 24)
Budweiser Coca Cola Gillette Kelloggs Cornflakes Kelloggs Rice Krispies (Snap Crackle and Pop has to be translated into various languages) Kodak Maxwell House Coffee Schlitz Lucky Strike Marlboro
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Korean and Vietnam Wars (McCrum 25-26)
Korean Brainwashing Chopper (Helicopter) Vietnam Defoliate Domino Theory Escalation Firefight Friendly Fire Hawks Doves Vietnam Moratorium Napalm Pacification Search and Destroy The Silent Majority (ct. the Vocal Minority)
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David Ofgor, Attaché to the US Embassy in Phnom
Penh

• Talking to journalists
• You always write its bombing, bombing, bombing.
  Its not bombing. Its air support. (McCrum 27)

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Regional Dialects (McCrum 27-29)

• Franklin D. Roosevelt (Eastern Money)
• Harry Truman (Twangy Missouran)
• Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon Gerald Ford
  (American Midwest)
• Lyndon Johnson (Southern)
• Ronald Reagan Dan Rather (Network Standard)
• Kennedy Family (New England)
• George W. Bush (Texas)

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Valley-Girl/Surfer-Dude Bitchin Dude For sure Goady Rad To the max Totally Tubular Gay Speech Gay Out of the closet Queer Queen Womens Speech Ms. Letter carrier JOKE Mannheim Germany ? Personheim Gerpersony
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Silicon Valley Words (California) (McCrum 30)
Artificial Intelligence CD (Compact Disk) DVD (Digital Video Disk) Data Processing Disk(ette) Flash Drive Hacker Input Interface Jump Drive Modem On-Line ROM (Read-Only Memory) Software, Hardware, Wetware Word Processor
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British vs. American Global English

• bird, bobby, bonnet, boot, drawing pins, flat,
  lift, lorry, mate, nappy, petrol, pram, sweets,
  torch, trunk call
• girl, cop, hood, trunk, thumb tacks, apartment,
  elevator, truck, buddy, diaper, gas, stroller,
  candy, flashlight, long-distance call
• colour/color, theater/theatre, tyre/tire
• advertisement, laboratory, secretary
• (McCrum 32)

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!Disadvantages of English as a Global Language

• /š/ ? shoe, sugar, issue, mansion, mission,
  nation, suspicion, ocean, conscious, chaperon,
  schist, fuchsia, pshaw (spelled 13 ways).
• ltshgt ltchgt ltphgt ltthgt ltghgt
• Full, reduced, zero grades of consonants
• Long, Short, -r, schwa, and zero grades of vowels
• 15 different vowel phonemes
• ltcgt ltggt ltqgt ltsgt (/s/ /š/ /z/ /ž/) ltxgt
• (McCrum 42)

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!!Advantages of English as a Global Language

• Natural Gender, not Grammatical Gender
• Simplified Word Endings resulting in greater
  flexibility (N ? V, etc.)
• Teeming Vocabulary (80 is not Anglo-Saxon) but
  rather Arabic, Celtic, Chinese, Dutch, French,
  German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Latin,
  Scandinavian, Spanish, etc. (McCrum 43)

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!!!Nilsen PowerPoints

• Foreign Words in English
• Global English
• Romance and Germanic Words in English

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• References
• Kachru, Braj B. Models of English for the Third
  World White Mans Linguistic Burden or Language
  Pragmatics?. New York, NY Routledge, Taylor and
  Francis Group, 1991.
• Kachru, Braj B. The Other Tongue The Spread of
  English and Issues of Intelligibility. Urbana,
  IL University of Illinois Press, 1982.
• McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil.
  The Story of English. New York, NY Penguin,
  1986. (source of map citations)
• McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil.
  The Story of English Third Revised Edition. New
  York, NY Penguin, 2003. (source of text
  citations)