English Today
The History of the English Language
Course 1 · Chapter 10 · English Today
The last chapter looks at where the story has reached: how many people speak English, what it is used for, and why the sources say it is still changing. It ends with a recap of the ten chapters, a self-test, and a pointer back to the two earlier courses in the series.
How many, and where
The English language article (I read only the first 100,000 of about 253,821 characters) gives:
| Item | What the article says |
|---|---|
| Native speakers (2021) | 380 million (infobox; the source is not named in the part I read) |
| Second-language speakers (2021) | 1.077 billion, per Ethnologue |
| Total (2021) | 1.457 billion |
| Rank | Most spoken language overall; third among native languages, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish |
| Official status | Official or co-official in 57 sovereign states and 30 dependent territories; co-official in the UN and the EU |
| Regulation | Unregulated, with no language regulator |
| Non-native to native ratio | In 2003, David Crystal estimated non-native speakers outnumbered native speakers about three to one |
The article calls English the most widely learned second language and the de facto lingua franca of diplomacy, science, technology, trade, tourism, aviation, entertainment and the Internet. It did not give a vocabulary-size figure in the part I read, so I give none.
English between people with other first languages
Wikipedia's English as a lingua franca article (ELF) defines it as English used among speakers of different first languages, defined by its function and not by native-speaker norms. It says native speakers are outnumbered by non-native speakers, and that English became the main lingua franca of academia after the 1940s, when French and German had been equally important. Its areas include business, diplomacy, medicine and the Internet, where English is "the most used language on the Internet".
- The debate: Sowden argued that ELF scholars want to replace standard English as the teaching model; Cogo replied that ELF is not a single variety and that researchers describe usage rather than prescribe it; Sewell argued the debate polarises native and non-native speakers.
- Criticism: some see ELF data as learner error, some think scholars treat it as a single variety, and some see it as masking English-speaking dominance, a view the article attributes to Phillipson's "linguistic imperialism".
- Reliability: the article has several "citation needed" tags and one error, expanding ELF as "English as a foreign language" in one section. I use it for the debate and not for numbers.
Change that is still going
Wikipedia's Language change article lists reasons languages change: economy of effort, loss of force in overused words, analogy, contact, cultural change, imperfect learning and social prestige. It gives English examples:
| Kind of change | Example from the article |
|---|---|
| Pejoration (meaning gets worse) | villain moved from "peasant" to a negative sense |
| Amelioration (meaning gets better) | wicked is moving toward a positive colloquial sense |
| Narrowing | hound narrowed from "any dog" to a specific breed |
| Broadening | dog became the general term |
| Reduction in speech | going to reduced to gonna |
| Prestige | the loss of rhoticity in British Received Pronunciation |
The article says calling change "corruption" is a value judgement and that modern linguistics rejects it, because innovations cannot be scientifically labelled good or bad. That fits what you have read: Chapter 8 showed rules that were later than their reputation, and Chapter 6 showed a sound change that left the spelling behind.
The internet and English
Wikipedia's Internet linguistics article describes a field advocated by David Crystal, studying new styles that arose from the Internet and media such as SMS texting. It says text and chat limits encouraged shortened forms such as lol, omg and gtg, that emoticons and capital letters make up for the "loss of emotivity" of plain text, and that virtual worlds and games produced slang such as pwn and noob.
- Does it damage language? the article says there is "no scientific evidence to confirm the proposed connection" between internet use and writing errors; Naomi Baron argues student writing suffers little; a 2009 study found students who texted regularly had a wider vocabulary; and Crystal views change as creativity, not decline.
- The apostrophe: the claim that internet slang caused the "death" of the apostrophe is, the article says, a folk-linguistic claim and not a research finding.
- Age of the sources: the article says much of its sourcing dates from 2010 or earlier and needs updating, so its examples are old for a topic that moves quickly.
The whole story
| Ch. | Title | The point in a line |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Where We Left Off | The four periods are conventions; the articles give different dates for the same boundaries |
| 2 | French Arrives | The Conquest replaced the ruling class; most French words came gradually, 1250 to 1400 |
| 3 | Middle English | Endings and gender were lost; the Peterborough Chronicle shows it happening; Chaucer wrote in English |
| 4 | London Takes the Lead | A London-based written standard grew from records and letters; the sources disagree about Chancery's role |
| 5 | The Printing Press | Caxton in 1476 and printing helped fix spelling while speech kept changing |
| 6 | The Great Vowel Shift | Long vowels shifted from about 1400 to 1700, which is why spelling and sound diverge |
| 7 | Shakespeare and the Bible | Inkhorn words, Shakespeare's disputed coinages, Tyndale and the 1611 King James Version |
| 8 | Dictionaries and Rules | Cawdrey 1604, Johnson 1755, Lowth 1762 and the late history of the split-infinitive rule |
| 9 | English Goes Abroad | American English, Webster, and the three circles of world Englishes |
| 10 | English Today | A global lingua franca, still changing |
Where this fits
This is the third course in a series. Britain Before English covers the island before the English arrived, and The Story of Old English covers the first seven centuries of the language, to about 1150. Together the three run from the first humans in Britain to the present day. Middle English grammar and reading courses are planned but not written yet.
Words to know
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| L1 / L2 | First language / second language |
| Lingua franca | A language used between speakers of different languages |
| Pejoration / amelioration | A word's meaning becoming worse / better |
| Folk linguistics | Popular beliefs about language that are not based on research |
| Internet linguistics | The study of language use online |
| Language regulator | An official body that sets rules for a language, such as an academy |
✏️ Try It Yourself: a self-test on the whole course
The first six questions look back over the course; the last two are about this chapter. Think of the answer first, then click to check.
1. Which event is the usual start of Middle English, and why is the date only a marker?
Show answer
The Norman Conquest of 1066; the articles say the change came some time after it, and they give different dates for the same boundaries (Chapter 1).
2. When were most French loanwords borrowed, and what is the cow and beef story called?
Show answer
1250 to 1400 (about 40% of the French words first appear then); the article calls the story a "Norman culinary myth" (Chapter 2).
3. What does the Peterborough Chronicle show, and which pronoun is first recorded there?
Show answer
English changing from Old to Middle English, with gender almost lost; she (spelled "scæ") (Chapter 3).
4. Give the printing date for England and the date of the Great Vowel Shift range.
Show answer
Caxton set up the first press in England in 1476 (Chapter 5); the shift ran mainly between 1400 and 1700 (Chapter 6).
5. Name the dictionary published in 1755 and the grammar published in 1762.
Show answer
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary and Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar (Chapter 8).
6. Name Kachru's three circles.
Show answer
Inner, Outer and Expanding (Chapter 9).
7. Why should you be careful with the figure of 1.457 billion English speakers?
Show answer
It is a 2021 estimate, second-language counts depend on how proficiency is defined (470 million to over 1 billion), and two of the article's figures had no named source in the part I read.
8. What does the Language change article say about calling change "corruption"?
Show answer
It is a value judgement; modern linguistics rejects it because innovations cannot be scientifically labelled good or bad.