A report on the background and nature of the general English usage of the island nation of Singapore

A report on the distinctive ‘dialect’ of the British Royal family

Can we learn from what happened to Latin, in terms of its native speakers and foreign users? Comparisons are often made between the role of Latin during and after the Roman Empire and the role of English in the present. These can often be illuminating, particularly for the student of the sociolinguistics of the Late Latin-speaking world, where a generous application of the uniformitarian principle allows us to avoid now some of the misunderstandings that were common in the past: for example, the realization that linguistic change is inevitable and in itself neither good nor bad, and that language-internal variation is not pathological, and need not necessarily in itself lead to fragmentation, has been salutary. As a result, the modern view of the development of Latin into Romance, and of Romance into the separate Romance languages, is almost certainly more plausible now than it used to be. We have a more nuanced account to present, even though there is a great deal we do not and perhaps cannot know, including in particular an inability to be sure about the dating of developments which we can be sure occurred at some point.

Attitudes toward the global spread of English have been one of the major issues in research on the development of world Englishes. Because language attitudes construct an invisible language policy that influences the use of English in a local speech community (Curdt–Christiansen, 2009), many studies addressing the spread of English into non-English contexts have focused on the attitudes of diverse English users toward their local variety and other varieties of English (Ahn, 2014; He & Li, 2009; Wang & Gao, 2015). However, among the core components of language attitudes, that is, the cognitive component (i.e., belief system), affective component (i.e., attitudinal system), and behavioural component (i.e., behavioural intention), little research attention has been paid to the behavioural component other than by Ahn (2014), even though non-native speakers’ actual use of their local English is the process by which English spreads into non-English-speaking communities. Thus it is necessary to explore the factors influencing the speakers’ behaviours while using the local variety of English. In addition, previous research has not identified the mechanism by which the speakers’ beliefs and attitudes have influence their actual behavioural intentions in relation to their attitudes toward their own English. For example, Ahn (2014) reported that whereas Korean English teachers expressed positive attitudes toward Korean English, they were hesitant in their behavioural intentions to use it as a teaching model. However, this study did not deeply address associations among beliefs, attitudes, and actual behaviours in relation to the use of Korean English. In response to this gap, the present study provides an integrated framework for investigating the spread of English into local speech communities by modelling diverse factors of individual speakers’ decision-making processes in adopting the local variety of English.

The development and use of the Italian cousin of franglais.

Euphemisms have no doubt been used ever since the birth of languages, and surely constitute a linguistic universal. We are all aware of them and we all use them when it is desirable to avoid drawing attention to the less pleasant aspects of daily life such as the need to empty one's bladder or bowel. They are respectful in that they show concern for the feelings of our fellow human beings; the more delicate the social situation and the more unpleasant the subject matter we refer to, the more careful we must be in selecting a euphemism for the purpose. Perhaps the most painful fact to deal with socially is the death of someone known to the person we are addressing, and for this purpose the English language puts a copious word-hoard at our disposal.

The post-World War II emergence of the linguistic phenomenon called ‘World English’ has given rise to seemingly endless discussion and much speculation among scholars and the lay public alike. The topics of discussion range from horrified exclamations at the mysterious apparition (like Horatio's ‘Look my Lord it comes! It beckons you to go with it, as if it some impartment did desire’, in Shakespeare's Hamlet), to what exactly we should call it or how at all should we otherwise identify it or make it identify itself (as in ‘Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak!’) and, finally to an attitude of familiarity breeding – for a change – conviviality and comfort (as in the somewhat resigned ‘Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness’).

THIS STUDY investigates how speakers of Educated Yoruba English (EYE) produce the vowels in typically unstressed syllables of English words whose suffixes require a shift of stress and a consequent reduction of vowels, as in atómic from átom and dramátic from dráma. Twenty suffixed English words were read by one hundred Yoruba subjects, with a Briton who studied at the University of London serving as the control. The focus is on Yoruba English because of both its many speakers and the need for a ‘geo-tribal’ approach to defining the concept Nigerian English. The data was analysed by converting tokens of occurrence to percentages, the higher percentages being taken as the norm. The acoustic analysis was done in a computerized speech laboratory. The study establishes that vowels occurring in typically unstressed syllables in traditional Standard English remain strong and full in educated Yoruba English.

Of all the major colonial varieties of English, South African English (SAfE) is arguably the most under-studied. Its linguistic history is also one of the most complex, South Africa having been the site of a series of immigration events involving English-speakers from a vast array of regional and social backgrounds. On top of this the English spoken by native speakers of other languages also, conceivably, had a role to play in this dialect's formation. This paper provides a brief historical reconstruction of the formation of SAfE, drawing on recent work which seems to indicate that in many important respects SAfE is younger than many might suspect.

It goes without saying that a common culture and a common language make trade easier between individuals and countries, and for this reason the human being has always tried to find a way to communicate with foreign people in order to buy and sell goods and services. But learning as many languages as the market requires has always been a rather difficult issue, so since ancient times some languages have played the role of lingua franca. Throughout history there have been various lingua francas in the world, used as working languages or bridge languages, based on the prestige and economic relevance of some countries in particular phases of history, as is the case with Latin in the Roman Empire; in the Eastern provinces of the Empire Greek served the same purpose (De Houwer & Wilton, 2011).

China's stunning economic growth is now widely recognized around the globe (Wong, 2009). Its gross domestic product (GDP) is now the second largest in the world, and, according to the World Bank (2015), in terms of GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), it already has the world's largest economy, surpassing that of the United States. It is commonly claimed that China will be the strongest economic power in the near future, and that it will have a concomitantly more potent political and cultural influence on the rest of the world.

Kachru (1965, 1966) has presented a detailed analysis of the idiosyncratic vocabulary items of Indian English (hereafter IE). He observes that “in India an idiom of English has developed which is Indian in the sense that there are formal and contextual exponents of Indianness in such writing, and the defining-context of such idiom is Indian setting” (1965:396). To illustrate how IE has become culture bound in India, he mentions many formations, such as confusion of caste, dung wash, saltgiver, rape-sister, etc., drawn from IE fiction, and calls them Indianisms.

A survey-related classification of kinds of writing and writers, and people's preferences about the implements they use, from the pen to the PC

With the intensification of globalization and advancement of digital communication, interactions online have gained increasing vitality in our life. Online communication now influences the spread of various languages (e.g., English) and semiotic signs (e.g., emoticons) to many countries, especially for those characterized by Kachru (1986) as belonging to the Expanding Circle (e.g., Japan, China — countries where English is usually practiced as a foreign language). Recent inquiries of digital discourse analysis have researched how English and its features are adopted in countries of the Expanding Circle (e.g., Crystal, 2008; Zhang, 2012). This paper continues to explore the linguistic landscape of English practices online, and specifically focuses on how micro-blogging users in mainland China adopt English as a resource for meaningful multilingual communication.

Standard English need not be a matter of prescriptivism or any attempt to ‘create’ a particular standard, but, rather, can be a matter of observation of actual linguistic behaviour. For Hudson (2000), standard English is the kind of English which is written in published work, which is spoken in situations where published writing is most influential – especially in university level education and so in post-university professions – and which is spoken ‘natively’ at home by the ‘professional class’, i.e. people who are most influenced by published writing. In the papers in Bex and Watts (eds, 1999), it is recurrently claimed that, when speaking English, what the ‘social group with highest degree of power, wealth or prestige’ or more neutrally ‘educated people’ or ‘socially admired people’ speak is the variety known as ‘standard English’. However, ‘standard English’ may also mean that shared aspect of English which makes global communication possible. This latter perspective allows for two meanings of ‘standard’: it may refer both to an idealised set of shared features, and also to different sets of national features, reflecting different demographic and political histories and language influences. The methodology adopted in the International Corpus of English (henceforth ICE – cf. Greenbaum, 1996) enables us to observe and investigate each set of features, showing what everybody shares and also what makes each national variety of English different.

Japan not only borrows words from English; it often changes them radically. The present study reviews both the historical background to contact between English and Japanese and the periods in which English loans entered the Japanese language. Such loans are particularly significant sociolinguistically because they shed light on the exposure of the Japanese to English since they opened up to the world. Discussing the inflow of such borrowings both provides a background to the many English-derived words currently in daily use in Japanese and makes a broader point about the adoption of loanwords as a cultural process involving both acculturation and deculturation.

In the Arab world, English is having substantial effects on the region's educational systems, language policies and patterns of language use (Nunan, 2003; Bolton, 2008; Kirkpatrick, 2008). Having realized the importance of English in all domains of life, Arab countries have encouraged the acquisition of English by their people. Most Arab countries have introduced English as a main subject in the school curriculum. In most government and private sectors, most business organizations ask for proof of English proficiency before hiring people for employment.

IN RECENT years an increasing amount of literature has become available regarding the learning and use of English in a wide range of contexts, notably including continental Europe: cf. Berns 1995; Cenoz & Jessner 2000; Dushku 1998; Fonzari 1999; McCallen 1991; O'Reilly 1998; Petzold & Berns 2000; Phillipson & Skutnab-Kangas 1997; Schleppegrell 1991; and Van Essen 1997. However, little recent published work has explored the role of the language in Spain. The information provided here is based on on-site investigation, interviews with English teachers and other language specialists in Spain, and an examination of relevant curricular documents and other published sources. The aim of the article is to cover three areas in particular: the history of English in Spain; its current status in the nation's multilingual context; and the learning and teaching of the language nationwide of proficiency.

Some observations on using motion pictures to teach Business English. THE USE of motion pictures or other captioned films as part of teaching English as a foreign language has markedly increased in recent years in China. Because of this, we undertook a four-year experiment to determine how effective the use of English-language movies has been in the teaching of business. From this experiment it became clear that a cavalier use of movies in effect misused them. The appropriate and effective use of motion pictures requires a range of elements: (1) movies that are at one and the same time educational, informative, and entertaining; (2) a workbook linked to such movies that enables students to get ready beforehand; (3) most importantly, a range of classroom activities to induce and elicit timely and optimal output from the students, so as to make talking and writing about communication easier and more effective. Activities such as dubbing, story retelling, acting, discussing, debating, and role playing are only a few of the effective techniques a teacher can employ to engage the students.