June 2, 2007

"New Englishes" is a term for "recently emerging and increasingly autonomous varieties of English, especially in a non-Western setting, such as India, Nigeria, or Singapore."

All over the world, "New Englishes" is growing. We have heard of Hinglish (India), Chinglish (China), Singlish (Singapore), Engrish or Japlish (Japan), Taglish (Philippines) and Spanglish (Mexico) among others. Perhaps someday you would be amazed at Shanglish (Shanghai) as the English-speaking population grows faster in the city!

There are so many "Englishes" in the world! Various global Englishes are more and more widely acceptable and certainly more and more obviously being used than "standard" Englishes, i.e., those in use where English is not merely socio-economically dominant. The geographical spread of English is unique among the languages of the world, throughout history. Countries using English as either a first or a second language are located on all five continents, and the total population of these countries amounts to about 49% of the world's population.

Whereas the English-speaking world was formerly perceived as a hierarchy of parent (Britain) and children ("the colonies"), it is now seen rather as a family of varieties. The English of England, the original source of all the global Englishes, is now seen as one of the "family" of global English varieties, with its own peculiarities and its own distinctive vocabulary.

The center of gravity in the English language is shifting from first-language users (Brits, Americans…) to second-language users and consequently, the future of the language is largely bound up with what the latter do with it. There are some 400 million first-language users of English in the world today, around an equal number of second-language users, and around 600-700 million third-language users; and that the last two categories are growing at a faster rate than the first.

There were also some interesting perspectives on the combination of factors that has led to English becoming the global language today, never before in human history has one language been spoken by as much as one-fourth of the world's population - but then, countries are talking to each other today as they never did before.

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