《闲话英伦》特辑：English的前世今生Finale－5.展望未来

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The Future of English (5)

·      Let’s lookat English now

o   Official language in 53countries

o   Around 400 million peoplespeak it as a first language

o   Around 1,400 million peoplespeak it as a second language

o   85% of webpages are inEnglish

o   A knowledge of English isimportant for a wide range of subjects

§  E.g. pilots have to have aknowledge of English

·      We havespoken about the different Englishes in a previous episode

·      What do youthink will happen?

·      Englishmight mix with local languages and become new languages – Singlish in Singapore

o   French, Spanish, Italian,Portuguese are all languages that come from Latin

·      But theInternet means that the world is much more connected

o   Yes, so this means thatEnglish won’t separate too much or there will be two different forms of thelanguage (the written and the spoken)

·     Englishmight become even easier – English grammar compared to other European languagesis already quite simple

o   The number of non-nativespeakers mean that grammar might become simpler – Old English is simpler thanmodern English

o   Languages naturally becomesimpler

o   Some experts think that‘correct English’ is becoming less important – the Internet means that newvocabulary, expressions and spellings are more relaxed

·     What other possibilities doyou think there might be?

·     Probablymore people will be bilingual – the languages people learn have always beenbased on not only interest but if they can make money using the language

o   If English continues to beused for trade, people will still learn it

·      This is thefirst time there has been a language in a globalised world

·      The onlything we know is that the story of English has not finished yet