English as a GLOCAL language

l Who owns English? Not Britain anymore. English is beyond Britain and Europe. This fact resulted into a number of new notions and oppositions: Englishness, Anglocentrism, Britocentrism, Britishness, VS Europeanness of English.

l Initially British Lingaphone company offered courses of language. The term British English was non-existent. English was viewed as real stuff and something fundamental. Divergence became visible and audible when the first British colony in North America was set up in 1607. It was the first step towards globalization. First Webster Dictionary in the 19th century brought spelling division between AmE and BrE

Lots of new terms like Franglaise = Frenglish, Germish = Denglish, Swedlish, Spanglish, Janglish = Japlish, Konglish, Portuguish are arguments in favour of English spread and language interference.

Modern concept of International English is a result of evolution. but the division between the members of the binary oppositions and tertiary oppositions become disputable:

l Standardisation & diversification

l Intellibility & practicality

ENL – English as a native language (anglophone speakers)- L1

ESL - English a the second language L2

EFL - English a a foreign language L3

tripartite model

EIL - English as International language

EILTS- English as International language Testing System – standard for Commonwealth countries

New concepts relevant to English spread are:

l Neutrality VS cultural/ linguistic imperialism, new form of impact and expansion mitigate influence of the USA and Great Britain

l Appropriation, for example, International English in computer industries

New Englishes. Standards

Metropolitan standards: The term would have once been applicable only to standard English of England.

Colonial standards: The colonial history of English has made it an important language in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe)./ The varieties spoken there are referred to in historical dialectology as ‘extraterritorial’ Englishes.

Regional dialects: These are the varieties that may be distinguished on the basis of regional variation within metropolis and colony.

Social dialects: identifiable varieties within a region along the lines of class and ethnicity may occur.

In London there is the difference between Cockney of the working classes, Received pronunciation (RP) / ‘Estuary English’ (Rosewarne 1994).

Pidgin Englishes: Pidgins are defined prototypically as rudimentary languages that have no native speakers, though they may subsequently gain in complexity.

Creole Englishes: These languages are ‘mixed’ in the sense that typically their grammars and lexicons come from different sources

 

Research in World Englishes:

Content analysis of WE

Cultural-conceptual analysis of WE

Politics of code-switching

Core and periphery of WE

Corpus –based exploration

Education, language and the rights of the child

American English as a medium of intercultural communication

WE – response to globalization

English in Japanese pop-music

British attitude towards variability of English

English is lingua franca in Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands

Most popular terms to name the role and diversification of English are dialect, lingualect, variant, variation, variety of English

There have been lots of projects to simplify English and make it more available to millions of people:

Simplification of English

l Basic English – constructed language,

l 1930 Charles Kay Ogden - 7 weeks

l Words selected via tests -850 words

l Simplified grammar which keeps it correct

l Idioms not included

l Words are pluralized with the help of S

l Each of 300 verbs can be turned into nouns by adding ER, ING; into adj by adding ING, ED

l Adjectives turn into adverbs by LY

l Adjectives can be inverted with UN

Operations – 100 words:

l Come, give, get, go, keep, let, put, seem, take, be, do, have, say, see, send, may, will

l About, across, after, at, among, between, by, down, from, in

l A, any, every, no, other, such, some

l North, south, east, west, please, yes

Things – 400 words:

Things – 200 picturable words:

Qualities - descriptive words

l Able, acid, angry, automatic

l Waiting, warm, wet, wide, wise, yellow, young

Qualities -50 opposites:

l Awake, bad, bent, bitter, certain, cold, complete, cruel,

l Thin, white, wrong

l EASY English – simplified at Level A, Level B

 

l A – 1200 words as a foreign language

l B - 2800 words, Cambridge First Certificate

l Commonwealth English – standard English spoken within Commonwealth

l Plain English (simple writing style)

l Globish - simplified, most common English words, made as a result common practice

 

 

Common Features of WE

Many New Englishes show a greater preference for forming yes/no questions by a rising intonation pattern, rather than by auxiliary inversion.

She’s coming tomorrow? (=‘Is she coming tomorrow?’ – IndSAf Eng)

She promised you? (Sgp Eng;

Anthony learned this from you or you learned this from Anthony? (Sgp Eng;

To my sister sometime I speak English. (Sgp Eng;

Q: Zulu? (i.e. Do you speak Zulu as well?)

A: Yah, and Zulu I speak.

Bokamba (1992:138--40) notes a common tendency in sub-Saharan African Eng to reduplicate adjectives to form adverbs:

Quickquick ‘quickly’;

small-small ‘in small doses’;

slow-slow ‘slowly’.

 

Kachru notes examples like different-different things and one-one piece.

The semantics here is distributive, with a stylistic nuance of emphasis.

In IndSAf Eng wh- words can be reduplicated with the semantics ‘plural/distributive’ based on details of the syntax of the Indic substrates.

Who-who came? (= ‘Who (of several people) came?)

What-what they said? (= ‘What (different) things did they say?’)

The use of -s plural markers is overgeneralized. luggages, furnitures, firewoods, or grasses/ discontents, informations

 

Singlish

English in Singapore = English –based creole spoken colloquially in Singapore

Numerous cases of code-switching (Chinese, Malay, Tamil)

Broken English/ bad English → Speak Good English Movement

Schools discourage students from taking Singlish, but Singlish is often used for humorous effect, when the audience is local., in the Army, in coffee-shops & restaurants

 

Singlish as a sociolect phenomenon. Sometimes, analysts prefer to use the terms basilang, mesolang and acrolang, rather than basilect, mesolect and acrolect, to emphasise that they are dealing with developing competence in an L2

Acrolectal - high-class form, well-educated people in informal situations, close to BrE

This guy’s Singlish is very good

 

Mesolectal – middle class, semi-formal situations

Dis guy Singlish very powerful one

 

Basilectal – colloquial, unique lexical, phonological & grammatical features

Dis guy Singlish is bey powerful one

 

Singlish Phonology

/p/ t/ k/ become unaspirated esp among Malay Singaporeans →

Pat, tin, come → bat, din, gum

/t/ /d/ → three → tree, then → den

The distinction between /l/ & /r/ not found at basilectal level - “Use your blain!”

 

Plural – s is often omitted which might be the result of Chinese influence which does not distinguish between single and plural forms

Singlish is syllable-timed compared with other varierties of English which are stress-timed

Pitch tones are well-defined, tones resemble Chinese

Singlish tends to preserve tone of loan words from Mandarin and other languages

Singlish Grammar

Nouns are optionally marked for plurality. Articles are optional too.: He can play piano. I like to read novel. Your computer got virus one, izzit?

As a copular and auxiliary verb be is often omitted: Dis house very nice/ Dat car not worth the money / You looking for trouble, izzit?

Past Tense markers are optional: He talk for so long, never stop, not even when I ask him. I eat liao (I ate or I have eaten) How come he never pay just now? (Negation+ past tense marker)

Interrogative This book you want or not? Can or not? They never study, is it? You don’t like that, is it?

Reduplication My boy-boy is going to primary school. We two friend-friend one. Want to go Orher walk walk see see or not? (Orchard Road) You got take the small-small one.

1. Kena is an auxiliary to mark the passive voice: He was scolded – He kena scold (negative evauation) VS * he kena praised.

Singlish Discouse Particles

Lah - Drink, lah! – Come on, drink! (in the end of the sentence to assert solidarity)

What / wat/ - But he very good at sports what!

Mah – This one can also work mah!

Leh – command, complaint, claim:

Give me leh!

Daughter: Mum, it’s private. How can I let you read it?

Mother: Can la. I’m your own mother.

 

Wife: You bought cheese, Farouk? (= ‘Did you buy cheese, Farouk?’)

Husband: No’, but lot butter I bought. (= ‘No, though I did buy a lot of butter’) (No’ = [noυ])

Why didn’t you come in?

B: You told me to wait here, what

 

Manglish / Malgish

Variant of colloquial English spoken in Malaysia. The language shares a substantial pool with Singlish, some experts claim they are the same languages with a few slang words found in one and non-existent in another.

Malay is the country’s official language since 1968. As English is widely spoken, many Malay words penetrated into informal English or Mangled English. The impact of other languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Hokkien) spoken in Malaysia is also taken into account.

Many speakers of Manglish belonging to various ethnic groups tend to pepper their speech with the words from their mother tongue which is the example of code-switching

 

Manglish particles

Lah – used in the end of the sentence to affirm a statement which often ends with an exclamation mark Don’t be an idiot lah! Mah – less intensive than lah

She’s like that mah

Liao - means ‘ already’ No more liao!

Meh – used in questions, often skeptical Really meh

Lor - used when explaining smth Like that lor!

One - used as an emphasis in the end of the sentence Why is she so naughty one?

What - unlike AE & BrE is used with an exclamation mark

What! How could you do that?

 

 

Manglish Vocabulary

Kapster – a talkative person

Blur – confused

Jalan – to walk

Kena – to get caught

Makan – to eat

Minum – to drink

On/ off - to activate/ deactivate

Pon – to skip school

Saman – to issue a traffic ticket

 

HP (handphone) - mobile/ cell phone

KIV – keep in view - keep for further consideration

Outstation - out of town/ overseas

MC – He is on MC today (medical certificate) - sick note

 

Can - yes/ alright

Cannot - no

Photostat - photocopy, Xerox

Different meanings

Driver - a personal chauffeur/ odd job man, often sent on errand

Alphabet – a letter of alphabet (The word ‘vase’ has four alphabets.

Exclamations in Manglish

Best/ syok – indicates that the object is superlatively good, Die/ finish/ gone – to indicate trouble like English ‘damn it’

 

Many things were borrowed from Chinese dialects: Why are you so like that one? =

Why are you behaving in that way? (BrE)

 

Philippine English

English functions in Manila since 1762 when the British invaded the country, but got rooted in 1898 when the USA took the government. Americans set up education system with English as the language of education.

After independence the Philippines government followed the same line with parallel usage of Filipino. In private schools arranged by Catholic Church dual system is valid and English prevails.

American spelling prevails.

Educated people prefer American pronunciation.

Mispronunciation

lead /i/ as in leader

salmon / l/ is pronounced

climber / b/ is pronounced

Wrong syllables are stressed:

Comfortable - /komFORtabl/

Preferable /preFERabl/

Admirable /adMYrabl/

Category /kaTEGori/

Ceremony /seREmoni/

 

Short /u/ turns into long /u/:

Frustration / froostr../

Suspend /soospend/

T, k, p are pronounced without aspiration

Vocabulary and usage

C.R. – Comfort Room = toilet, bathroom

Get/ go down the bus – get off the bus

Open/ close the light – Switch on/off the

Every now and then - often

 

Japlish/ Janglish/ Engrish

Japlish/ Janglish are typically considered more derogatory and referred to any East Asian language.

Engrish is a pejorative term used to describe attempts of Japanese writers to create English words and phrases, or mistranslation of an original Japanese text, exotic embellishment of the text in ads.

Engrish is applied to East Asian languages as they do not separate L and R sounds.

Engrish refers to Japanese pronunciation of English loan words.

Engrish occurs commonly in electronics produce manuals.

Engrish is used in Japanese pop culture as English is considered to be extremely fashionable.

Humorous English mistakes which appear in Japanese advertising and product design

Engrish can be found in other countries but the funniest examples come from Japan

Some of the English-based Japanese coinages can be used as Japanese originated English.

Actually, walkman, karaoke, play station, case-by-case, or forward-looking have already been received internationally, while nighter (bargain), washlet, hot carpet, or paper driver may have a good chance of adoption if appropriately introduced.

Nihonglish

Badly pronounced and ungrammatical Japanese produced by a native English speaker. Usage is intentional either with sarcastic or humorous intent. NB! Japanese bites back!

Variants of English/