Monday, November 29, 2004, 15:20 GMT
Just my long long standing question – and wondered if anyone could help me or share their thoughts with me: does anyone know how English has come to be recognised as 'the international language'? Has there been any official body who authorised the decision? Who constituted the committee? Apart from the fact (or my speculation) that the British had killed most people in other countries in the world, what was so special about English at that time? I understand the pragmatic benefit to have English as the ‘international language’ whenever the decision was made, but my questions concern whether the decision was made under a properly regulated organisation, and whether the decision was based on any scientific grounds rather than pragmatic ones (e,g., it seems that English seems to be the language most people speak in the civilised society now!)
I am a lecturer in psychology /psycholinguistics in a UK university. Originally from Japan (brought up as a total monolingual until 25). Having lived in the UK for more than 10 years, I can manage my everyday communication in English, including my teaching, quite well - but the more time I spend in the UK contributing to the UK education (and welfare system as a tax payer – although ironically my salary comes from tax papers), the more uncertain I become as to what's so special it is to be an English native speaker – or if not, a simultaneous/early bilingual in English, a native speaker of a language which is linguistically close to English (e.g., an Indo-European language - almost any of them, compared to my mother tongue, Japanese). Are they supposed to be more intelligent than ‘us’ lot whose mother tongue is so different from English? Is it why we all have to make so much effort (after paying so much more money (tuition fees) to study here) to get our work recognised ‘internationally’ when our colleagues who are English (or related languages) native speakers manage to produce the output of the similar quality spending by far less time?
I have no itemisation to dispute the benefits of having an international language. Or I have no intension to promote any other ‘fairer’ language to replace English. What I am trying to do is, I suppose, find out the historical contexts that made English ‘the international language’, and how people have historically justified the unfair benefits that could make English native speakers (or the likes) more advantaged than others. Any suggestions as to good readings (books, papers, web pages etc) are very welcome!
Many thanks for your help in advance (& thanks for reading this!)
Cat
I am a lecturer in psychology /psycholinguistics in a UK university. Originally from Japan (brought up as a total monolingual until 25). Having lived in the UK for more than 10 years, I can manage my everyday communication in English, including my teaching, quite well - but the more time I spend in the UK contributing to the UK education (and welfare system as a tax payer – although ironically my salary comes from tax papers), the more uncertain I become as to what's so special it is to be an English native speaker – or if not, a simultaneous/early bilingual in English, a native speaker of a language which is linguistically close to English (e.g., an Indo-European language - almost any of them, compared to my mother tongue, Japanese). Are they supposed to be more intelligent than ‘us’ lot whose mother tongue is so different from English? Is it why we all have to make so much effort (after paying so much more money (tuition fees) to study here) to get our work recognised ‘internationally’ when our colleagues who are English (or related languages) native speakers manage to produce the output of the similar quality spending by far less time?
I have no itemisation to dispute the benefits of having an international language. Or I have no intension to promote any other ‘fairer’ language to replace English. What I am trying to do is, I suppose, find out the historical contexts that made English ‘the international language’, and how people have historically justified the unfair benefits that could make English native speakers (or the likes) more advantaged than others. Any suggestions as to good readings (books, papers, web pages etc) are very welcome!
Many thanks for your help in advance (& thanks for reading this!)
Cat