David Crystal - Will English Always Be the Global Language?

[Music] asking about the future of language is that way Madness lies who would have predicted a thousand years ago that Latin would no longer be used in a thousand years Time by hardly anybody you know I mean obviously Latin is still used in certain circumstances but it would not be the normal education to be fluent in Latin if you'd said that a thousand years ago people would have said you were mad so in a thousand years time will English still be a global language we could all be speaking Martian by then if they land and

take over you know who knows what's going to happen to ask about the future of language is to really ask about the future of society and futurologists are just as unclear about what will happen eventually as I am about language because language you see is global for one reason only and that is the power of the people who speak it power always drives language there is no other reason to speak somebody else's language other than you want to improve your quality of life or you want to influence them in some way or whatever it might

be I mean the tradition in English of course English became Global for a whole variety of reasons first of all the power of the British Empire later the power of American imperialism later the in the 17th century the power of the Industrial Revolution which meant that the language of Science and Technology became English predominantly in the 19th century the power of money money talks and the two most productive nations of the world were Britain and America both using English so the language of international banking became the pound and the dollar English once again and then

in the 20th century cultural power as you all know because every aspect of culture you've encountered has some sort of history in the English language like pop songs for example uh International advertising uh air traffic control the development of radio and television the development of the internet internet 100% an English language medium when it started though today only a fraction of the internet is English internet has become multilingual so what's going to happen next English will stay a global language as long as certain things happen first of all that the Nations that are recognized as

the most powerful nations in the world continue to use English and all the other nations want to be like them or want to interact with them or want to sell things to them and so on and so English will stay like that for as long as those Nations retain that kind of power and we're talking mainly America here aren't we predominantly on the other hand it doesn't take a uh it isn't rocket science to think of scenarios where for whatever reason American power diminishes the power of some other nations grow uh grows um and you

get other parts of the world becoming more dominant and you know people say well what about Chinese well one day maybe at the moment there's no sign of chin China wanting Chinese to be a global language because they're all learning English in China for the most part but you can imagine a scenario where it was the other way around you can imagine a scenario in Spanish the most Spanish is the fastest growing language in the world at the moment population wise because of South America and Central America and increasingly in North America Spanish is becoming

very widely used you can imagine a scenario where one day we might all end up speaking Spanish in another scenario you can imagine one day we might all end up speaking Arabic for reasons that are perfectly obvious to anybody who looks at the world so all of these things could happen at the moment there's no sign of a diminution in The Prestige of English the desire to learn English the figures are going up and up and up every year at the moment over two billion people speak English there's never been so many people speaking one

language before and there's no sign of any slack blackening off in that progress so the long-term future no idea the shortterm future no change and for people who asked that question implicit in it I think is the question what English will it be that continues for a while to be the global language what English will it be indeed there are so many answers to this question really if you look at what's happening at the moment then you see certain Trends remember that this whole business of Global English is very recent nobody was talking about global

English 30 years ago I only started giving lectures on global English in the 1980s the first books on global English were not written until the end of the 1990s and so we're talking about a very recent Trend here the world needs a global language because countries want to talk to each other so there have to be institutions to enable that to happen and the obvious institution is the United Nations so the UN is only you know 19 40s when there were 50 or so nations in it and now there are nearly 200 and so suddenly

the world is talking the countries of the world are talking to each other now what kind of English will it be well if you join the club as it were the English speaking Club you will as at joining any club you will look to the the senior members as it were the most established members and you look at the statistics you'll speak the English that you most of often encounter in the world and that of course is American English and so that is one scenario that American English will ultimately dominate all other varieties of English

and we already see this happening in small ways don't we in British English for instance you see the impact of American English in all sorts of ways on spelling for example you know once upon a time you'd spell the word encyclopedia with an AE in the middle in a traditional British way the American way is to spell it with an e in the middle and now in Britain virtually everybody spells it with an e in the middle and so you see American English coming in in pronunciation I say schedule all my kids say schedule that's

happened in a generation that's an American pronunciation that's taken over and similarly in grammar uh you get American English grammar influencing British English grammar a lot I've just eaten I'd use the present perfect I would uh but an awful lot of young people today say I just ate or I just at depending on your pronunciation you use the American you know they use the the predate form past tense form so there are differences there American vocabulary coming into British English as well only a little bit in the other direction you can go to New York

now and see pubs everywhere um well that's a British term so there is a little bit of movement in both ways but it's large one way and now I've been to Australia and one of the complaints that people have in Australia is the American English that's coming into Australian English and I see this everywhere so that is one scenario but there is a different scenario as well and it is this why is their American English in the first place because the Americans wanted to identify themselves as American and not as British it was quite conscious

decision when America became independent Noah Webster among others said we want an American English for an American identity for the new nation and that's where American spellings started you see and how new American vocabulary got into dictionaries now what happened in America then is now happening globally so all over the english- speaking world people are saying well you can be British if you like you can be American if you like but we want to be Indian or we want to be Nigerian or we want to be Ghan or what have you and in and the

English that we use will reflect that cultural identity now we're not talking just a few people here you see in India nobody knows exactly how many but there must be at least 400 million people speaking English in India speaking Indian English not speaking British English or American English or anything like that quite distinctive English too both in pronunciation in vocabulary even in grammar so just to give you an example the typical Indian use of the present tense would be with verbs that I don't use in the continuous form for and I bet you don't either

very much although usage is changing so I would say I know something I think about it I remember this but in Indian English you will hear I am knowing I am knowing the answer to your question I am thinking about it yes I am remembering what you are saying you know I am knowing I am thinking I am remembering now this is not a traditional British or American usage but it's dominant in India and not just India but also Sri Lanka and the other countries around now because there is so much movement around the globe

now and there are so many people of ethnically South Asian origin in Britain now you hear that a lot of the time in Britain and it coincides with another Trend which you must have noticed a general increase in the use of the present continuous where one once upon a time you would have had the present simple and the best example I can think of is McDonald's slogan what is it you all know it I'm loving it I am loving it well think about that for a second you would never have said that 20 years ago

you know you'd have said I love it but now people are saying I'm loving it yeah I'm loving it and McDonald's is fostering that kind of switch so the Indian usage is coinciding with this General trend and therefore could the English of the future be some sort of amalgam of all sorts of English from around the world you know bits of Indian English bits of Australian English bits of American English bits of British English who knows bits of Serbian English you know everybody can put something into the Melting Pot of English so that when people

meet from a whole variety of Nations as you get so often in business meetings and international conferences or just in a hotel in any part of the world and English is being used as a lingua franka could a lingua franka English and that's the term that's often used these days which is culturally not identifiable with any one place because it's a mixture of everything could that be the norm and I think probably that's the way it's going to go and just to close off this section and very briefly how many bits of englishes would you

say you speak how many englishes well just a figure yeah random well I speak the English I'm using to you now is my sort of Posh British English uh that I would use uh which doesn't reflect my Origins if I go back home to where I live which is in Wales my second language is Welsh if I'm chatting with people in the locality lots of little Welsh words are going to slip into my conversation there's going to be a much stronger Welsh accent than perhaps I'm using to you now do you hear the difference if

I start speaking in a Welsh sort of way now to you um there'd be little bits of Welsh grammar coming in and so on uh so there's that but then when I was 10 I moved to Liverpool and this is the decade of the Beatles I was nearly a beetle once for reasons we can go into another day um and I therefore learned Liverpool English uh so that's another variety that I have at my disposal when I go back to Liverpool I can speak Liverpool English like anybody else oh I can speak like Paul McCarney

the others you know I can do this it's it's it's a natural accent for me though it sounds a bit artificial now out of context always takes you a little bit of time to get into the accent when you go into the new area and as I travel the world and I think everybody does this to some extent you do as well you accommodate Now by accommodate I mean you pick up some of the features of the accent and the dialect that you're part of that is if you're getting on well with the people if

you like the people you start slipping into their accent I bet it happens in Serbian you know one part of the country and another you meet and you suddenly start speaking a bit like the accent of the person from the other part of the country this happens all the time on a global scale in English you see so if I go to America suddenly before I realize it I'm you know the r comes into my voice and suddenly I start speaking like this and so on and so forth you know I mean if I go

to Ireland I start speaking in an Irish kind of way so there's no answer really to the number of varieties that are there there if you have an ear that Tunes in to these [Music] areas