12. English as a World Language
by Itzel Martine
1. problems in trying to put a figure to the number of English
1.1. No other language than English is spoken as an official language
1.1.1. in 44 countries
1.2. English is used as an official language
1.2.1. in countries with a population of about 1.6 billion.
2. English is the most important language in the world.
2.1. scientific papers
2.2. world’s mail
2.3. there are probably more than a billion speakers of English
3. According to U.S. News & World Report [February 18, 1985
3.1. even in Switzerland
3.2. one of the most polyglot of nations
3.2.1. no more than 10 percent of the people are capable of writing a simple letter in English.
4. The most relentless borrowers of English words have been the Japanese
4.1. estimated to be as high as 20,000.
4.1.1. erebata—elevator
4.1.2. nekutai—necktie
4.1.3. bata—butter
4.1.4. beikon—bacon
4.1.5. sarada—salad
5. Between 1880 and 1907 [Baugh and Cable, A History of the English Language, page 7], fiftythree universal languages were proposed.
5.1. One of the more improbable of these successes was Volapük
5.1.1. One of the more improbable of these successes was Volapük
5.1.2. . Schleyer claimed that the vocabulary was based largely on English roots
5.2. Esperanto
5.2.1. devised in 1887 by a Pole named Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhoff.
5.2.2. Esperanto is considerably more polished and accessible than Volapük
6. Professor C. K. Ogden of Cambridge University in England
6.1. devised Basic English,
6.2. which consisted of paring the English language down to just 850 essential words
7. Professor R. E. Zachrisson of the University of Uppsala
7.1. in Sweden
7.2. devised a form of English that he called Anglic.
8. meaningless phrases on clothing are invading the English-speaking world.
9. America alone has forty million people who don’t speak English
10. many English based creoles in the world
10.1. such as Krio, spoken in Sierra Leone
10.2. Neo-Melanesian (sometimes called Tok Pisin), spoken in Papua New Guinea.
11. The Economist assembled a list of English terms that had become more or less universal.
11.1. airport, passport, hotel, telephone, bar, soda, cigarette, sport, golf, tennis, stop, O.K., weekend, jeans, know-how, sex appeal, and no problem
12. English words are taken just as they are.
12.1. but sometimes they are adapted to local needs, often in quite striking ways.
13. In many places English
13.1. widely resented widely resented
13.1.1. as a symbol of colonialism.