NEW DELHI, INDIA, October 10, 2004: Indian-style English will soon become the most commonly spoken form of the language globally, a leading British language expert has predicted. “Already, a third of Indians are speaking the language, a percentage expected to rise in coming years. With the Internet spreading English like no other tool ever, and Indians at the forefront of the IT revolution, Indian English will reach around the globe and take over from British and American forms,” said Prof David Crystal, one of the world’s leading linguists and author of several books on the English language.
But the professor also sees the future bright for other variations of English spoken as a second language. “I believe the mother tongue countries have had their day. It is now the turn of countries where English is spoken as a second language to take the lead,” he said in his lecture “The Future of Englishes” at the British Council on Saturday evening. Some 400 million people, mostly in former British colonies, speak variations of English as their second language, about the same number as those speaking it as their mother tongue. But with second language countries growing at about 3 per cent per annum, compared to a meagre 1 per cent growth in mother tongue countries, the variations would soon have many more adherents, the professor said.
Another 700 million people or so speak English as a foreign language, though their control over the language is still fairly weak, according to Crystal. Some 1,500 million people, therefore, speak English today, or a fourth of the world’s population – the first time ever that one language has commanded such a vast following. Crystal said that this had happened because English had had all kinds of powers vested in it. “The first was political power. With the growth of the British empire, many took to English as a means of accessing political power, besides those who were forced to learn it by the colonizers,” he said. “Then you have information power, the power lying in scientific texts and manuals. Two-thirds of inventors during the industrial revolution came from English-speaking countries, and people had to learn English to make use of their inventions. Even today, about 80 per cent of world’s scientific literature is in English.” Economic and cultural power were the other reasons. English dominated the world monetary system from 19th century itself and in the 20th century also became the foremost language of cultural expression – be it through music, cinema or literature. The last 50 years have been particularly significant for the spread of English, according to Crystal. With the growth of international trade and formation of United Nations, the world increasingly felt the need for one language to converse in. English took over this role, and many newly-independent nations were also forced to adopt the language.
“But they did not just adopt it, they also adapted it according to their own culture and requirements,” Crystal said. “This has led to the rise of so many varieties of English. And in their rise I see the future of the language.” “The internationally-accepted standard English is of course there, but the real language resides in these colorful, creative local varieties. It is manifest even in written expressions of the language. Hardly any book written in standard English has won a Booker prize in recent years.”
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