Spotlight - 11.2019

(Nancy Kaufman) #1
LANGUAGE SPECIAL 11/2019 Spotlight 15

LANGUAGE SPECIAL


The state of


English today


Wenn über eine Milliarde Menschen eine Sprache sprechen,
verändert sich die Sprache unweigerlich, und das ständig. Was sind nun
die großen sprachlichen Entwicklungen, und was bedeuten sie für Sie als
Lernenden? JULIAN EARWAKER hat sich schlaugemacht.
Illustrationen von KATHARINA BOURJAU

ADVANCED AUDIO

T


exting, tweeting and trend-
ing into the 21st century,
the English language has
come a long way from its
Germanic origins more
than 1,500 years ago. Through trade, colo-
nization and technology, English has be-
come a global lingua franca and what the
Dutch sociologist Abram
de Swaan defines as the sin-
gle “hypercentral language
that holds the entire world
language system together”.
The British Council es-
timates that “English is
spoken at a useful level by
some 1.75 billion people
worldwide”. That is around
a quarter of the world’s
population. But where is English today?
What are the important trends and de-
velopments? And what does this mean
for you, the learner?

What’s trending?
It’s all about accents
Matthew Ellman, an English language
trainer with the Cambridge University
Press, reports on a number of trends. At
the top of his list are accents, such as the
growth of Estuary English and the de-
cline of received pronunciation.
Reporting on a presentation by lan-
guage expert Professor David Crystal
(see our interview on page 18) at the 2018
English UK conference, Ellman writes in
his blog: “Globalisation and the internet
mean we’re exposed to a wider range of
English accents than ever before, and

as a result, it’s international varieties of
English that are driving change in UK
accents.”
The main trend, he says, is in a levelling
of rhythm, rather than in changes to vow-
el or consonant sounds. Historically, Eng-
lish (and German) has been stress-timed,
with stressed syllables spoken at regular
intervals and unstressed
syllables shortened to fit
this rhythm. Today, Ellman
points out, it’s more com-
mon to hear British teen-
agers using syllable-timed
English, in which each
syllable takes roughly the
same amount of time.
Followers of the British
royal family will notice
a change in accents here, too: English
speech instructor Geoff Lindsey recently
blogged how Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,
has begun to adopt southern British “fall-
rise” intonation in her speech.
Beyond Britain, in global English, the
trend is for a non-prescriptive approach to
accent, says communication trainer and
author Chia Suan Chong. Writing for the
British Council, Chia says that accepting
English as a lingua franca means that sim-
ply being understood is important. She
can see an increase in “multi-literacies”
and “translanguaging”, in which elements
of English are mixed with those of other
native tongues and their pronunciations.
Here, English learning welcomes linguis-
tic diversity and uses the learner’s knowl-
edge of other languages as an advantage
rather than a barrier.

adopt [E(dQpt]
, hier: annehmen,
übernehmen
billion [(bIljEn]
, Milliarde(n)
Estuary English
[(estjUri )INglIS]
, Dialekt des Englischen
aus dem Mündungsbe-
reich der Themse
exposed [Ik(spEUzd]
, ausgesetzt; hier: in
Kontakt

non-prescriptive
[)nQn pri(skrIptIv]
, nicht normativ
received pronunciation
[ri)si:vd prE)nVnsi(eIS&n]
, britische Standardaus-
sprache
stress [stres]
, hier: betonen,
Betonung
vowel [(vaUEl]
, Vokal-
English
welcomes
linguistic
diversity
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