The spread of the English Language across the world: C or D?

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Oh shit, sorry Will. It was a joke. As much as I dislike Melvyn Bragg his series the Roots (Routes) Of English about the export and subsequent dialects of Enlgish was very interesting. Most interesting was that English English (ie English as spoken in England) is one of the smallest minorities of discernable English dialects - even within Europe. Euro-english will be the language of the EU, using English words but often with continental sentence structures and with aides to facilitate it being used as a second language.

It also showed how Geoffrey Boycott was a cult figure in India and how kids are now speaking like him which was less instructive but very very weird.

No worries, Pete!!! Honestly, its a (dare I say it?) valid point and its something I've thought a lot about, myself.

Its not as if they speak Brazillian now is it? Maybe the Portugeuse should have been so thoughtful. And - um - things change. I actually think that now we have the spiffy Interweb languages are a lot less likely to die out for instant publishing of documents preserving said lingos is suddenly cheap.

I think that English is an okay language to go global seeing as the British Empire touched every continent. For those who were not lucky enough to be part of the British Empire, at least English has Germanic, Greek & Latin origins so if they were part of the French, Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch "empires", English is still a somewhat suitable language for them.

there's always a language spreading throughout the world. in the 18th Century french was the language of international communications insofar as they had them.

the world will never be full of clones of english, people vary.two groups of mutual friuends speak differently, language is always mobile.

More English-language records in the charts in every European country *every week* than records in French or German in the UK charts in the last 49 years. So maybe more inevitable than Classic or Dud?

Though the Radio 4 series Pete mentions was revealing for its exposure of the new linguistic fusions developing between old dialect words and US slang (a kind of linguistic folk-rock, if you like) which cut through a lot of pessimistic bullshit from both sides.

I don't see why we shouldn't return to Latin. The language of scholars for a good 2000 years. Why on earth did we change that? It made so much sense than writing heedlessly in whatever language you happened to SPEAK, but now there's bunches of papers to translate and a leftover dead language. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I'm not opposed to globalization, but I'm certainly opposed to a change in it.