Friday, June 20, 2008

Say that again

I was reading the latest issue of Wired magazine and came across an article on the English language and how far it has spread. And with that spread comes some discomfort for those who think they 'own' the language. As each culture adopts the language, they add to it and they modify it, just as the American's did to the King's English.

Interesting; from the article comes these facts. There are approximately 300 million English speaking Chinese. And by the year 2020, native English speakers (that's you and me) will make up only 15% of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language.

So, when we 'insist' that people learn the English language and speak it to become good citizens, which English are we speaking of?

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