Varieties of English: Exploring linguistic peculiarities and influences

What Does World Englishes Mean?

What does World English(es) mean? Why do we use the word ENGLISHES? We use the word "English-ES" (the plural form), because we can no longer talk about English as one monolithic entity, we talk about "Englishes" because by now there are many different, distinctive varieties of English spoken in the world, each with its own defining characteristics. They are still English, but they are different types of English-> that is why we talk about "World Englishes". It is no longer just British English, even though Standard British English is still used as a model/as the most prestigious variety, because we need to take into consideration the fact that, in the world, we have multiple varieties and forms of English -> each of these varieties/forms is acceptable and exists on itself, not just as a compared form to what is considered the standard.

Classifying English Varieties

English can be classified in many ways such as:

• L1: native language > English is the "native" (politically dangerous term and is spoken by everybody, not only by those who were born in UK) language of the majority of the people who live in these countries.
• L2: official second language > English is used as an official language in these countries, but many inhabitants speak different first languages (India) = the educational and law system is in English, but it has developed its own variety of English.
• EAL: English additional language > English is studied at school and used as a lingua franca for communication purposes (ELF: English as a lingua franca).

Being exposed to only one variety of English is no longer acceptable because there are many other varieties spoken that we will encounter in our personal and professional life and what is important is accommodation and adjustment: each of our international interactions will be different because of the backgrounds of the speakers, unless we communicate with the same people with a common background, and the key in making the interaction successful is being able to accommodate to all these differences, being able to train our brains to make sense of all these differences as fast as possible and this comes with exposure: the more exposed we are to different varieties of English, the more we learn about them and the more we'll be prepared to deal with what the world throws at us.

Singlish: A Singaporean English Variety

Is This English?

Is this English? SINGLISH = English with local elements "Passenger depen lah - good one also go(t) bad one also go(t). Some ah taxi driver they wan to go this tourist area like hotel ah" = "With passengers it depends - you get good ones and bad ones. Some of the taxi drivers want to go to the hotel areas because then they get to work with tourists" [there is a simplification in the autographic system]. Singlish is a variety of Singaporean English, it is typical. It is recognizable as English but it's different from the English that we've been exposed to so far; it has some elements that we're not used to, and it might take a while to understand what it means. So, if we see it written and we have some time to read and make sense of it, we might be able to understand, but if someone spoke to us like that we might be problematic to understand. This is one of the issues with world Englishes because we have some varieties that change in terms of vocabulary, grammar (slightly different) and accent but they're still intelligible to us, while others very geographically specific that might be hard to understand. This is one of the big discussions in the field of world Englishes: when do we stop considering something English and start calling it something different? where do we draw the line? We don't have an answer for this, but it is one of the discussions that people have in the field of world English.

Singlish Discourse Markers

• Lah: works as a sort of discourse marker, as "you know" or "you see";
• Oh, izzit ?: means "oh, is that true?" or "that's interesting"-> it's kind of encouraging the other person to elaborate more;
• Lai dat also can ?: "can we do that?" or "is that acceptable?";
• Dohwan: "no, thanks" or "I don't want it".

Nigerian Pidgin English

NIGERIAN PIDGIN "A bai shu giv* mai broda" = "I bought shoes that I gave to my brother" In certain varieties we don't mark the plural form and the past form* or we mark it in a different way. "Di pikin we de chop mango de go" = "the child that is eating a mango as he is walking away". The particle "de" is the grammatic element that shows the progressive (present continuous) form so it's telling us that the action is ongoing. It is an African variety of English. Nigerian pidgin English is different from Nigerian English; Nigerian English is a more standardized variety of English used on television, used in government, at the University ... "Water don pass gari" = "Things have gone from bad to worse" "Chicken wey run from Borno go Ibadan go still end up inside pot of soup" = "you can't run away from your destiny" > This shows us how the geographical and the cultural context can influence the way people speak English and even the vocabulary and the idiomatic expressions

Gullah Geechee Creole

GULLAH GEECHE Fohx kohl di Kro: "Mohnin titi, " i sey. A so gladi you tif da mit frohm di weytman, bikohs i bin foh trowey am to di dohg ... I meyk a vex foh si man du tin leke dat" > Fox called to the Crow: "Morning girl, "he said. "I am so glad I stole that meat from the white man, because he was going to throw it to the dog ... It makes me vexed (it bothers me) to see a man do such a thing as that". In this story there are different animals: a fox interacting with a crow, and there's also a dog. In this case the noun "thief" becomes a verb "tif". Gullah is a variety of English spoken by a very small African American community in the United States these days and it's spoken exactly on the coast in the area between Georgia and North Carolina. The structure may seem simplified but actually it is an enriched language because it is a mix of vocabulary and phonetics. Where does this Creole come from? The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of Africans who were enslaved on the rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic coast. Who used it historically? People who spoke many different languages including European slave traders, slave owners and diverse African ethnic groups. How is it used nowadays? Today's Gullah Geechee arts and crafts are the result of products designed by their ancestors out of necessity for daily living such as making cast nets for fishing, basket weaving for agriculture and textile arts for clothing and warmth. The influence and evolution of musical forms that arose out of Gullah music can be heard in many musical genres such as spirituals and gospel music, ragtime, rhythm and blues, soul, hip hop and jazz.

The Global Spread of English

We have seen with these three examples that English can take a series of very different forms not only in countries where English has been imported by the British as a result of colonization, but also in countries where English is spoken as a native language.

English as an International Language

The spread of English as an international language What brought English to spread so far and wide? What made English evolve, change and adapt to all these different forms that we've seen in our examples? When Queen Elizabeth I was raining over England (1558-1603), English was spoken basically only in Britain, and they estimated that the number of speakers might have been between 5 and 7 million speakers. Today English is spoken all across the world in its different varieties and as a foreign language and the estimates are much different: Sergeant and Swan say that up to 1 out of 3 people can communicate in English to a certain extent and here we are in a situation that is unprecedented because for the first time in the history of languages the ratio of native to non- native speakers of the language is in favor of non-native speakers: there are more non-native speakers of English in the world than native speakers. In all the different countries where English is spoken it can have different roles: it might be the only official language, it might be one official language among multiple official languages, it might be used only in certain aspects of life or of politics or of administration and law or it might simply be a very popular foreign language to study.

English in the World Today

English in the World

• Only 350-400 million of these are speakers of "Older Varieties "Varieties" (English as a Native Language)
• There are around 350-400 million L 2 speakers of English (for whom English serves some official purpose
• There are now 75 territories in which English is spoken as a first language (L 1 or used as an official second language (L 2)
• 1/4 - 1/3 of the world's population speaks English with some level of proficiency
• Only a minority are native speakers

Reasons for English Vocabulary Differences

Why do you think English vocabulary is often different in different parts of the world? (David Crystal)

1. Because of the influence of local languages. If we imagine we are some British people, we take a ship and we land in what is today Virginia, the first thing we see is its plants we don't know, its animals we have never seen and some people that we have never met before. What's the first thing that we want to do? Give them a name; so, they borrow names from the local languages and adapt their pronunciation to refer to these new elements. (robot in south African is a traffic light and skunk is a local fauna/wildlife)
2. Because of the creation of new names: you don't borrow the name from people, you just come up with it of your own.
3. Because of migration in history: another very good way of inserting words into vocabulary. If we think of American English, first we have the British people meeting the indigenous people and borrowing words to call all sorts of new elements (usually plants and animals); then as they settled in the United States and they started moving westward, there was a lot of opportunity so people came from Europe, from Ireland and Scotland, and also from other European countries in which English was not spoken as the native language, so those people also brought their own vocabulary to the United States.