Nigerian English (NigE) is a second language (L2) variety of English which has been domesticated, acculturated, and indigenised (Taiwo, 2009: 7; Jowitt, 2019: 26), due to its co-existence with about five hundred indigenous Nigerian languages (see Eberhard, Simons & Fennig, 2019). It is the language of education, governance, law, the media, and formal financial transactions in Nigeria. Based on Schneider's (2003: 271) Dynamic Model of the evolution of the New Englishes, NigE can be located at the late stage of nativisation, while recent studies show that it is on the verge of entering endonormative stabilisation (Gut, 2012: 3; Unuabonah & Gut, 2018: 210). Although NigE is an L2, there is a growing number of young people who speak it as a first language (L1; see Jowitt, 2019: 16; Onabamiro & Oladipupo, 2019). NigE includes sub-varieties which are classified based on different factors such as region/ethnicity, and educational attainment (Banjo, 1971; Jibril, 1986; Udofot, 2003). Although Udofot (2003: 204) suggests that the sub-variety used by Nigerians who have been educated in tertiary institutions should be taken as the standard variety, Jowitt (1991: 47) opines ‘that the usage of every Nigerian user is a mixture of Standard forms’ and non-standard forms. The data used in this paper are a mix of both standard and non-standard forms.

Naming is a linguistic universal. Every known human society distinguishes and individuates its members by their names. In the context of Africa and beyond, names are not just ordinary labels for the identification of their bearers; they mirror the culture, tradition and worldview of the people. Essien (1986: 5) argues that ‘naming is not an arbitrary affair, it is at once a mental, an emotional, a linguistic and a cultural matter’. It is widely believed that names and naming can influence the personality development and behaviour of their bearers. This claim justifies Camden's (1984: 43) admonition that ‘names should be chosen with good and gracious significations to inspire the bearer to good action’. This implies that people are assumed to live according to the message contained in their names. Significantly, names also embed deep cultural insights that reflect their bearers’ social lives, philosophy, religion, emotions and worldview. African names, for instance, are important cultural and symbolic resources that reflect the peculiarities of the African people, and capture their beliefs, values, identity and personality.

English, in the course of its progressive evolution and global spread, has had contacts with different languages (Hogg & Denison, 2006) which have led to the emergence of native and non-native varieties spoken in different countries of the world. This, in part, has resulted in variable pronunciations of English lexical items, such as anti- pronounced as /ænti/ or /æntaɪ/ at the segmental level and adult as /'ædʌlt/ or /ə'dʌlt/ at the suprasegmental level of stress (Hogg & Denison, 2006). In addition to this, phonological free variation in English has been motivated by phonetic processes, phonological changes and sociolinguistic factors, among others (Shitara, 1993; Mompean, 2010).

Nigerian English (NigE) is a second language (L2) variety of English that has been domesticated, acculturated and indigenised within the Nigerian socio-cultural and linguistic contexts (Adegbija, 2004). Based on Schneider's (2007) Dynamic Model of the Development of New Englishes, scholars have shown that NigE is currently at the late stage of nativisation (stage 3) and is on the verge of entering the stage of endornormative stabilisation (stage 4) (see Gut, 2012; Collins, 2020). Nativisation, which typically begins with the declaration of independence, is a very active and important stage in which there are large-scale linguistic changes, especially during a time when English is usually the only official language (see Schneider, 2007). Although previous studies have investigated the historical development of English in Nigeria (see Taiwo, 2009), there are limited studies on the particular linguistic features that have changed over time, especially from the time Nigeria gained independence. It is very likely that the rapid increase in the number of universities and other educational institutions managed by Nigerians from independence, as opposed to previous management by Britons, would have affected the variety of English spoken in Nigeria and culminated in the development of NigE today.

The last decade has witnessed a significant increase of research on English as a lingua franca (ELF) as today's world becomes progressively more globalized (Lei & Liu, 2018). However, studies on ELF in the Chinese contexts remain sparse although linguistic research in China has kept pace with the development of international linguistic academia. Moreover, many researchers studying ELF-informed teaching in China are either non-Chinese scholars or researchers working in countries other than China (Si, 2019). In other words, this newly emerged field of research has not yet been widely embraced by Chinese scholars, nor its paradigm has been promoted in English education while traditional native-English-based teaching has been challenged and initiatives have been taken to promote English education within the ELF paradigm in many countries in the expanding circle (see e.g., Sifakis & Tsantila, 2019). In this paper, we address the issue through identifying various hindrances to teaching ELF in Chinese classroom and analyzing the factors leading to the difficulties and problems with implementing the ELF-informed teaching in Chinese context. Following this, we explore the prospects for taking advantage of the pedagogical value of ELF research in the foreseeable future.

One of the problems of English spelling is the dual representation of the so-called ‘eyes’-words, rendered in discourse as -ise and -ize, both with high-frequency verbs such as modernise/modernize and rare coinages, as in burglarise/burglarize, etc. Eyes-words have historically evolved from two different language systems as two different forms with the same meaning, which have eventually come to coincide in their use in English with competing orthographic forms. The present paper first assesses the origin and development of the competition of these forms in the history of English from their introduction into English to their current configuration in British and American English; and then analyses their distribution in 13 varieties of English worldwide from the perspective of diatopic and text type variation. The study concludes, on the one hand, that the adoption of -ize in American English was an early 19th-century phenomenon while -ise spread in British English in the late 20th century; and, on the other, that the dissemination of -ize is constantly on the rise in many varieties, and the growing Americanisation of English, among others, is taken to be the most decisive element factor.