Text III

Pre-reading exercises:

Ex.1. Transcribe the following words and practice to read them:

To require, effort, to realize, recent, for example, nation, tongue, above, growth, century, society, bilingual, forced, purpose, entire, incredibly, enough, survey, to reinforce, either, further, scientist, retrieval, to surround, plant, potato, tobacco, tomato, musician, among, opera, operetta, piano.

English in the World

Today, when English is one of the main languages in the world, it requires an effort of the imagination to realize that this is a relatively recent thing – that in Shakespeare’s time, for example only a few million people spoke English, and the language was thought to be not very important by the other nations of Europe, and was unknown to the rest of the world.

English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother tongue outside England, in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English began in the seventeenth century, with the first settlements in the North America. Above all, it is the great growth of population in the United States, assisted by massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has given the English language its present standing in the world.

People who speak English fall into one of three groups: those who have learned it as their native language; those who have learned it as a second language in a society that is mainly bilingual; and those who are forced to use it for a practical purpose – administrative, professional or educational. One person in seven in the world’s entire population belongs to one of these three groups. Incredibly enough, 75% of the world’s mail and 60% of the world’s telephone calls are in English.

Surveys of range of use of English carried out by UNESCO and other world organizations reinforce the general statistic impression. English is used as official or semi-official language in over 60 countries, and has a prominent place in a further 20. It is either dominant or well established in all 6 continents. According to conservative estimates, mother-tongue speakers have now reached 300 million, a further 300 million use it as a second language; and a further 100 million use it as a foreign language. Over two thirds of the world’s scientists write in English. Of all the information in the world’s electronic retrieval systems, 80% is stored in English. Over 50 million children study English as an additional language at primary level; over 80 million study it at secondary level (these figures exclude China). English radio programmes are received by over 50 million in 120 countries.

The English language surrounds us like a sea, and like the waters of a deep sea it is full of mysteries. English is and has always been constantly changing. Some words die, some change their meaning and all the time new words appear in the language.

There are several ways to add new words to the language. One of them is by borrowing words from other languages. In English there are many words that are borrowed from Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and other languages. When Columbus came back from the South America he brought home to Spain new plants – potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco. With the plants he brought their names. This is how these words appeared in Spanish and later were borrowed from it by the English language.

The words that are borrowed tell us about the countries they have come from. For example, many Italian words, that are now a part of English (opera, operetta, piano), have to do with music. This is natural as Italian musicians have always been among the most famous in the world. Many of the words that people borrow from other languages are names of food.