Introduction
In the twenty-first century the world is becoming more urban and more modernized, and the adoption of English is a symptom of this, for increasingly English serves as the lingua franca of business and popular culture. It is dominant or at least very prominent in other areas such as diplomacy, shipping, computing, medicine and education. Ding and Saunders (2006) defines lingua franca – a term which refers to any language which serves as a common medium for communication between speakers of different tongues--has its origins in the domination of the Levant by Latin-rite Europeans (Franks) during the Middle Ages. While English is incontestably the global lingua franca of the current era of globalization, it is not without competitors (Ding & Saunders, 2006). In Asia, especially in East and Southeast Asia, with the development of tourism and international trading more frequently, Chinese has becoming one of the most important communication language in the region. A report in YAZHOU ZHOUKAN (2003), said that:
Due to the rise of China’s comprehensive power and huge target market and international influences, there was a great mass fervor of learning Chinese, and more than 85 countries added Chinese lessons, covering nearly 30,000,000 students. Most of them are Japanese and Korean. The second large populations are Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese and other southeast countries’ people. The third are North Americans and European countries people. Chinese is becoming a new dominant language just after English.
There is no doubt that English has been the dominant global language for a century, but is it the language of future? Thousands of people have thousands of answers. Maybe it still need time to tell. As David Crystal (1...
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...l not replace English as the global language in the next century. English language has a solid foundation of population and technological field. Since everybody is learning and communicating with each other in English, is it necessary for everyone to learn a new language (Chinese) for sharing ideas? The answer is obvious. However, it is possible that English will not keep its monopoly in the next century. Rather, a small number of languages including English may form dominant roles – each with a special area of influence, for instance, Chinese’s rising will create a bilingual English-Chinese region. In other words, English may supplement or co-exist with other important languages by allowing strangers to communicate across linguistic boundaries. It may become a tool that opens windows to the world, unlocks doors to opportunities, and expands our minds to new ideas.
As discussed in World Geography class, the world has become more globalized in the modern world due to the expansion of the internet and transportation for easier travel to areas of the world. Through the internet and tourism, the spread of more populous languages grows. According to the Globalization and Diversity textbook, through globalization, smaller cultures have a hard time catching up with the rest of the world; thus, these cultures must adapt to the dominate culture. The Tuvan, Aka, and Seri cultures cannot compete with English, for example, as the numbers of English speakers are significantly higher. In a world of globalization, the need for a common language, or lingua franca, is important for numerous cultures to
Something fun about China, China’s language is Called Standard Mandarin and it's a very big language it is amazing how they write and read this interesting language. Around 70% of the population speaks and understands this language but the small amount who don't speak mandarin use mainly English, the same language as us!
According to Bernard Comrie (1990: 83),’ there are more than 1,000,000,000 people are speakers of some form of Chinese.’ By seeing this figure, Chinese should have appeared long enough for its evolution and let it spread to different areas in which Chinese or its form can become the dominant language.
According to a report, “China hosts a little less than 10 percent of all international students.”[1] We can see lots of foreigners studying in china everywhere, not only the teenagers, but also the elderly. Besides, there is a rapidly increasing in the number of national students who study for degrees. Many top Chinese universities. Such as, Peking , Tsinghua, Zhejiang. They offer a wide variety of majors in history, economics, literature etc. As we all know, there are over 1 billion people who speak Mandarin Chinese around the world, about one fifth of the global population. And with the increased standing of China in politics and economics, currently China plays a important role in the world. As the saying goes: “China’s influence is everywhere today.” So Chinese is getting more and more popular in the world.
Although the powers of all English, Standard Chinese and Cantonese have not been hugely influenced by the handover, there was still a major change because Hong Kong government has started to promote Mandarin through the education system. As Davison and Lai (2007: 121-122) well observe, by the 2003/04 academic year, there were over 90% of all primary and secondary schools offering Mandarin as a subject.
Schools all around the world from Europe, to the United States of America, to Australia, now offer courses in Mandarin Chinese, to broaden peoples’ languages and allow them to communicate with the economic superpower of China. Multilingual people are becoming more marketable across the globe compared to monolingual people. As it’s spoken fluently by almost everyone in Mainland China and Taiwan, the appeal to the Chinese language is continuing to increase as the Chinese job market increases. In Asia, standard Mandarin is even seen as a lingua franca.
In 1985, Braj Kachru put forward the famous “Three Concentric Circles” framework to explain the spread and usage of global English. The inner circle includes the country where people speak English as native language. Then, the outer circle refers to the society which English is treated as a second language while the extending circle indicates the nation which English has the status of foreign language. (Bolton, 2000, p.266) Due to the colonization, English has maintained and gained official status in Hong Kong. Based on the theory, Hong Kong should be categorized into the outer circle. However, English is mainly adopted in international communication rather than in personal domains. (Groves, 2009, p.57) In this view, Hong Kong also has the trait of extending circle. Furthermore, Hong Kong has gone through a transition from British colony to a Special Administrative Region of China. The dramatic change of social politics called for a great change of linguistic situation.
Society and the way it works has changed tremendously over the years. Business between countries has grown and connections have grown with it as well.The world is a boundless place full of many different cultures and has “roughly 6,900” languages around the world that are all unique in their own way (source B). Although there is an overwhelming
...nology is moving ahead at the speed of light. With all this advancement comes the inevitable need for a language that unifies the world. The need for a common language to conduct our business and economic affairs, and our need to communicate internationally on political and world interventions has made English the leader in world languages. It is not the language spoken first by most, but it the language that the world uses when it comes together to communicate.
Therefore, there is the term of world Englishes or new Englishes in many parts of the country. People speak English to communicate because nowadays people around the world travel to one country and another. English has the different dialect, so that is why there are varieties of English. There is inner circle, where most of the populations are monolingual English speakers, expanding circle where the population uses English as an additional language and outer where the population uses both of their national language and English language. In another word, the language of wider communication is English, or it called as lingua franca. Wardhaugh, on his book said that “lingua franca is ‘a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate communication between them” (Wardhaugh P.59) Indeed, lingua franca also a linguistic system that can be used as a tool of communication and it can be spoken in a variety of ways. According to the history, the term lingua franca (in Italy means “Frankish Language”), or Sabir (‘to know’) is started from pidgin language in the 14th century. “In some countries, the most useful and widely used lingua franca is an official language or the national language” (holmes, Janet P.84) one of the example is Indonesian
The spread of English where it used as a foreign and/or a second language may be compromised if it is replaced by another language such as Chinese or Spanish. For example, if China continues to gradually dominate the world economically, politically and technologically, its language could replace English as the major foreign language taught and learnt in various countries’ education systems because they b...
It has been adopted by different sectors making it one of the most used languages in the globe. This has been attributed to its effective nature, easy learning and rich history. However, conservative groups exist who argues that there should be global language since it may cause the emergence of superior cultures. Nevertheless, it is evident that different cultures ranging from the early polish immigrants, the African American community, the advertising and media will greatly benefit from the globalization of the English language. This will prove in the end that English is indeed a global
English being the “world language” and growing its influence in China through media and economics, the influence of English is, in fact, minimal relative to other languages since a majority of the English accented words compose of specific pronouns, and specific words in popular culture so Chinese has yet to lose its authenticity.
In order to visualize the “global” as an adjective in the collocation “global language”, a study has shown the numbers of people speaking the language. According to them, there are about 6000 languages in the world and not surprisingly English is at the top of the list of most dominant. In the world there are 375 million first-language speakers, approximately the same number of second-language speakers and about 750 million foreign-language speakers (David Graddol, The Future of English? A Guide to Forecasting the Popularity of the English Language in the 21st Century. British Council, 1997). According to magazine Economist, more than one billion people speak some form of English. These numbers could make people think that English is really conquering the world which can be both positive and negative.
English spreads widely in each countries, no matter the area of region or information transfer, English becomes an important position in global language. As the specification of a global language, it essentially refers to a language that learned and spoken internationally, so English can be the most out-standing. According to the number of English-speaking calculations, English is the official language used by most countries, English is the most widely used second language in the world, and the percentage of web pages with English content is estimated to be over 50% (Crystal, 2003). Meanwhile, the history and usefulness cause English to be a global language, and they mainly influence to spread English faster in China and to bring convenience