Топики по английскому языку

ТЕМА № 15   ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 

      Geographically, English is the most widespread language on earth, and it is second only to Chinese in the number of people who speak it. It is spoken in the British Isles, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and much of Canada and South Africa. That's about 400 million people.

      English is also a second language of 300 million people living in more than 60 countries. If you add to this the enormous number of people who learn to understand and speak English, you will realize that English is indeed a “world language”.

      In Shakespeare's time only a few million people spoke English. All of them lived in what is now Great Britain. Through the centuries, as a result of various historical events, English spread throughout the world. Today, English is represented in every continent and in the three main oceans -- the Atlantic, the Indian and the Pacific.

      English is mixing with and marrying other languages around the world. It is probably the most insatiable (жадный, ненасытный) borrower. There are words from 120 languages in its vocabulary, including Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.

      A century ago, some linguists predicted that one day England, America, Australia and Canada would be speaking different languages. However, with the coming of cinema, radio, and television, the two brands of English have even begun to draw back together again. Britons and Americans probably, speak more alike today than they did 50 or 60 years ago. In the 1930s and 1940s, for example, American films were dubbed in England. It's no longer the practice today.

      People have long been interested in having one language that could be spoken throughout the world. Such a language would help to increase cultural and economic ties and simplify communication between people. Through the years, at least 600 universal languages have been proposed, including Esperanto. About 10 million people have learned Esperanto since its creation in 1887, but English, according to specialists, has better chances to become a global language. So why not learn it?

        International English has its own peculiarities. Nowadays the majority of people who speak English around the world are non-native speakers of English - they have learnt it as a second or subsequent language, they use to speak it with each other and therefore, they're not really learning what's always been called English as a foreign language. They are learning it for more international communication, and that has all sorts of implications for the sorts of things that they need to be able to do. English as an International language has some peculiarities. The first one - phonetic. The worlds learners may pronounce th not like [θ] or [   ], but like s or z. Though pronunciation is very important because international learners should understand each other well. In Grammar  there are also some differences: in International English the ending 's' in the third person singular in the Present Simple tense may be dropped, uncountable nouns such as information or advice may become countable: for example, three advices or three informations. The English that is being spoken internationally will have no longer British-based or American-based idiomatic language so this is not useful for international communication so that will have gone. But if learners still want to learn to speak as closely as possible to a native speaker, say a British or American English, it's their choice, and the important thing is to give learners choices so that they can make up their own mind what it is they want to do.