TeachingEnglish
Globalization and Englishes: Native speakers' reaction to the growth of Indian and Chinese English varieties
Submitted by albertrayan on 26 November, 2009 - 05:29
We have varieties of Englishes: British English, American English, Australian English, Indian English, Chinese English, etc. In the age of globalization, as the economies of these two countries grow and are expected to play a major role in the coming decades, the native speakers of English will be forced to learn the Indian and Chinese varieties of English in order to do business successfully with India and China. How do / will native speakers of English react to this situation? Will the native speakers be willing to teach and learn these varieties of English?
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I don't think that it's a question of native speakers having to learn Indian or Chinese varieties of English. Americans don't learn British English in order to do business with UK companies so why should they learn Chinese English to do business in China. What will be required, however, is a change of attitude by native speakers towards non-native speaker Englishes.
When native speakers do business together they share the communicative burden (the work needed to be intelligible to each other despite speaking different varieties) and the they make adjustments in the way they speak so as to accommodate to each others' varieties and guarantee communication. Unfortunately, all too often native speakers do not apply the same rules to interactions with non-native speakers. Worse still, consciously or other wise, they place the main part of the communicative burden on the non-native speakers shoulders.
Fortunately, the situation will change in the fututre as the hard facts of the economic strength of China and India give native-speaker business people a strong motivation for accommodating to their interlocutors.
Hi Robin
Many thanks for contribution.
I too strongly believe that "the situation will change in the fututre as the hard facts of the economic strength of China and India give native-speaker business people a strong motivation for accommodating to their interlocutors." It is going to be a positive change in native speakers' attitude towards non-native speakers of English.
The English language spreads fast as L2 or FL in many parts of the world and soon the language may cease to be a second or foreign language in countries such as India and Singapore. Will it pose a threat to the native speakers of English as they will lose their role as the custodian of the language?
Albert
Hi:
I am a native speaker Spanish and a Spanish and English teacher. I don't think the native UK speakers will need to learn the variations from other countries. An example is that Spanish native speakers are about 500 millon people. The native speakers in Spain are 45 millons, less than 10% (some of them don't even want to speak Spanish because the have another language). People from Spain don't study the other variations and the Spanish Americans do not do it either. What we really do since ages is that we share normal books, school books and a lot of literature and we learn a lot about the other variations and we understand each other from Tha Patagonia to Andalucía. I think it could be pretty much the same with English.
I don't think it will come to that; India has been speaking English for more than a century but there's not enough of a variation for others to have to learn that particular dialect, its the same with America, Australia and I believe China in the future.