1819  International English (warning: no tango content)

Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 10:59:07 +0200
From: Adam Tinworth <adam@TINWORTH.ORG>
Subject: Re: International English (warning: no tango content)

On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 02:14 am, Stephen Brown wrote:

> During the era while England was the dominant world power, however,
> French, German and Spanish had more cachet as international languages.
> The
> real internationalization of English owes more to the open architecture
> that Americans introduced into their English. With open architecture,
> anyone can introduce new words.

I'm sorry, but this simply isn't true. English has always been an
"open-architecture" language. The simplest evidence is Shakespeare, who
invented and borrowed many words from other languages which then moved
into common use. What we now know as the English language has slowly
assimilated words from surrounding or invading cultures, and its
origins certainly predate the Norman invasion.

The roots of English as a world language are simple: the political
domination of the British Empire being steadily replaced by the fiscal
and media domination of America through the course of the 20th Century.
The first established English as a language useful in a significant
proportion of the world, the second reinforced that hold and shifted
the balance towards the American dialect of English.

That said, there's no "true" English anyway. All variations, both
intra- and inter-national are constantly re-informing and reshaping
each other.

Regards,

Adam