3. English in the Southern Hemisphere

Early pioneers did not only head west; they also went east and south. In 1770 James Cook sailed The Endeavour into what is now called Queensland, Australia. In 1788 the first group of immigrants from England – mostly convicts – arrived and set up the first colony. In the late 18^th and 19^th centuries a large number of Irish also emigrated to Australia. Also in the 1700s pioneers travelling south established a colony in the southern lands of Africa, where English remained the dominant imperial language until the late 19^th century, when the Boer War established the predominance of Africaans in South Africa. English is now considered a second language for the majority of the white population in South Africa.

4. Commercial expansion

The colonisations of America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were all very much at the expense, linguistically as well as in other ways, of the indigenous races, American Indians, Aborigines, Maories and Zulus respectively. However, a different type of colonization – based on commerce rather than immigration – took place in other areas, particularly South-East Asia. In India settlements were first established in 1600 by the East India Company, and by the end of the 18^th century it controlled most of the commercial life in India. In the early 19^th century the company was dissolved, but by this time India had become the keystone of the British Empire, and the Indianpopulation had begun to learn English in order to find employment in the new order. In India, English now shares the status of official language with Hindi, and it is spoken by over 70 million people – more than the entire population of the British Isles.

VOCABULARY

3. Scanning a text for specific words

1. Find words in the text that have the following meanings:

   1. survives

   2. aggressive

   3. local language

   4. available for them to use

   5. subtle variations

   6. of mixed origins

   7. coast

   8. uncouth, hard-living, uncivilized

   9. prisoners

   10. local, native

   11. foundation

   12. revised social structure

2. Find the following in the text

   1. five uses of English around the world today

   2. nine languages

   3. three ways of expressing ‘started an enterprise’

   4. three ways of expressing a concept which was unknown at the time described in the text, for example, … what is now north germany …

3. The text you have just read does not deal with the rise of English in chronological order, but according to the part of the world under discussion. Use the information in the text to write a chronology of the development and spread of English, starting like this:

date	event	result
449 AD	British Isles invaded by the tribes from Denmark and Germany	Language of the Angles became vernacular

LANGUAGE LEARNING

1. Speaking

How do you learn languages?

1. Discuss the following questions with your fellow students.

• What are the differences between the ways a baby learns its first language and the ways an adult learns a second language?

• What advantages does the baby have?

• What advantages does the adult have?

  2. Work alone.

What is the most important for you in learning a language? Put the list in order of importance, 1 being the most important.

• learning grammar

• learning vocabulary

• speaking and being corrected

• speaking and not being corrected all the time

• listening

• reading

• writing

• pronunciation practice

3. Work in groups.

Compare your lists. Justify your order, but remember that different people learn in different ways.

3. Can you think of some suggestions for effective language learning?

Example: Practise as much as possible.

Read books and newspapers.