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English as a global language
English as a global language
English as a global language
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Languages change. It is an inevitable change. They do not stay the same, yet somehow manage to be spoken for hundreds maybe even thousands of years. Language is a fundamental element of human daily life. With language, humans are able to talk to their families and friends, conduct business deals, gain an education, the list goes on and on. What if in twenty years, the language humans speak today were not understood? What about fifty? Or even one hundred? Would humans be able to adapt to the changes in language as they had in the past? This essay will view John H. McWhorter 's article, "What the World Will Speak in 2115;" (2015) and discuss how humans have changed languages in the past, what might happen in the future with languages, and if English will continue to be the dominant language that it is today. McWhorter begins the article talking about how languages have been made up in the past; however, these languages were never spoken by plenty of people, and that resulted in them …show more content…
He states that by 2115 less than 600 languages should still be existing around the globe. His final conclusion relates to the story of the Tower of Babel. The story of the Tower of Babel is that humans of different cultures, therefore, different languages, attempt to build this tower to reach heaven, however due to them all speaking different languages they face numerous difficulties achieving this. The multiple languages, like McWhorter says, are a curse and not a blessing in this case. A future with less languages should be a blessing for the reason that humans will be more able to interpersonally communicate with one another, meaning they would have an easier time working with one another. McWhorter ends on the note that if English were the main, dominating, language of the future, it would not be the most ideal option, although it would not be the worst possible
For this summary I watched a video called Voices of the World: The Extinction of Language and Linguistic Diversity. The video starts off with how people believe that there are about 6, 000 languages. David Crystal talks about how with all these different languages half of them are endangered of becoming extinct. Each different language offers a different point of view of the world and culture. He said that if different languages are lost then “we lose the meaning what is it to be human.”
The article The Strange Persistence of First Languages by Julie Sedivy was an intriguing and eye-opening piece of writing to read. The concepts she brought to life through her explicit writing revealed many things I had never heard of before. The further I read, the more I wanted to know and the deeper my interest became. As a monolingual, this article was insightful, captivating and ultimately provided me with a new perspective on language.
The film goes into basic information about many of the worlds’ countless distinct languages and language families and how they are diversified throughout the world. The film highlights how a single ancestor language can evolve into a variety of unique languages. These languages divide and change until eventually they become mutually. Many of these languages can be traced back and included in language families. Not all languages can be traced back so easily and because the mutually unintelligibility is so high, similarities to other languages cannot be found.
Since it’s been a predominant topic of our discussion, let us talk about the infamous English language. We can be sure that it has painstakingly progressed throughout generations of reevaluation and modernization, and has thus become what it is today. It has gone in several directions to try and mesh with the various epochs of language, from the Shakespearean era to the common English slang we use now, we can all agree that English is a language that has been transcending and will continue to transcend into many
He describes language change is quite small even though in our lifetime we can not notice it. However, we can find out the huge language changing, what we mean is that the sentence morphed, generation after generation (18). He expresses, because of the continual changing bit by bit, such as Latin to French, a whole new language was born in the world. He uses five faces to describe the processes of language change: “Sound change: Defining Deviance Downward,” “Extension: Grammar Gets a Virus,” “The Expressiveness Cycle: The Bass from Hell,” “Rebracketing: The Story of Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear,” and “Semantic Change: Making Love to Ginger Rogers (18-31).” He gives several cases about languages change. For instance, the author uses the change of the word “husbandry”, from Shakespeare’s basic meaning, “manager of the house,” to the modern meaning in other languages, “thrift” (39). At last of the first chapter, McWhorter says that we cannot know what the first language was, but we know that one must have been
Mary Linn uses languages are becoming extinct to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of her argument. The author uses data such as”96 percent of languages are spoken by less than 4 percent of the population.” If we celebrate International Mother Language Day 96
This essay will discuss the causes of language death and if endangered languages are worth saving. This essay agrees that endangered languages are worth saving and that many factors contribute to language death. Firstly the essay will explain what language death is and the meaning of what is an endangered language. Secondly discuss language death and language birth. Thirdly discuss the causes of language death. Lastly, critically discuss if endangered languages are worth saving. The purpose of this essay is to show that language death is much higher than language birth.
In her article, How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think, Lera Boroditsky (2009) explains how the results of her experiments support the idea that the structure of language shapes the way we think. In one of her experiments, she found that English speakers would place cards showing temporal progression in temporal order from left to right, Hebrew speakers would place them right to left, and that the Kuuk Thaayorre would place them from east to west. This shows that the written language affects how time is represented to them. In another one of her experiments, she asked German and Spanish speakers to describe some items and found that the masculinity or femininity of the noun in their respective languages affects how it is ultimately described. This can also be seen in how artists represent the human form of abstract entities like death. Boroditsky concludes that “Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.” (Core reader p. 49) I would like to add that language is also the foundation of a person’s culture, pride, and self by exploring articles written by Eric Liu, Amy Tan, and Gloria Anzaldua.
How we speak clearly reveals much about our lives and the immediate society and culture that around us. From my examination of my family’s cultural and linguistic heritage, it seems to me that non-family environment and our peers have the greatest impact on our identities and our linguistic acquisition. It’s therefore not surprising that heritage languages are so rapidly lost by subsequent generations.
Have you ever wondered who taught you to talk the way you do? People learn to talk and express themselves everyday of their lives. Starting from the day you were born you used language or some form of it to communicate with those around you. As a baby you usually show your displeasure with your new surroundings by crying, and if you don’t the doctor will make sure you do. Everyday we express our point of view to others in some form of language. Whether it is through verbal communication, written discourse or through body language, you can tell if a person is upset, angry, or happy. We as human beings don’t realize how much language has to do with our lives. How can you determine if one of your friends is angry with you? Is there a different tone to their voice? Do they have a stern look on their face? Of course they do, your friend feels the need to express their anger to you by these different forms of language. Where do we learn to use these different forms of language? How are our uses of these languages shaped? The three main contributing factors to how we express ourselves through language come from our schooling, our friends, and most of all from our families.
Language influences the view of the world, embodies a person’s essential for survival to communicate with people, interpret ideas, and have perspective about cultural and traditional knowledge. However, Language extinction is a huge element in every day’s life. Because language extinction also means the culture, religion, social values, and its history is slowly getting loss at the same time. There are many factors to language extinction due to the population, educational, and economic principles. Melanesian is one of the rapid extinction of the world's languages that are endangered before they disappear completely.
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
The settlement of the British Isles by north Europeans followed by Norman French paints the backdrop to this essay which will focus on the period between the early 15th and 17th centuries, when a 'standard' English evolved. It will show that modern-day English is very different to that first introduced to the British Isles, but by identifying changes through time, its continuity can be demonstrated. Finally, it will suggest that present day English is in a position analogous to that which existed before the Norman invasion, when there were many varieties and dialects, and that this may lead to its decline as a global language, due to decreasing intelligibility.
Finally, there are many different varieties of English, or as it is called Englishes, such as Singaporean English, Indian English and Nigerian English. Each variety of English expresses the identity and culture of its speakers. It has been predicted that in the distant future these forms of English will fragment into mutually unintelligible varieties. Therefore, this fragmentation may slow the spread of English as a global language.
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.