Common Mistakes - Non-Native Common Mistakes - Native Finding a Teacher Greetings
Business Greetings Inflection and Stress
In 1887, L.L. Zamenhof published his treatise on Esperanto, and artificial language which he had constructed for the purpose of international communication. Today it is the most widely spoken artificial, constructed language, and even has native speakers. However, it has failed to become a language of global commerce. English appears to have taken this role, becoming a lingua franca (a language widely used by non-native speakers). Esperanto, on the other hand, seems to have found its place as a cultural, educational and literary language.
Since English is so widely spoken, many non-native speakers have found that they've been required to learn it to stay in business. It has seemed to me, doing business globally, that there are a tremendous number of people from non-English speaking countries who speak English fluently.
English has approximately 370 million native speakers, born in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries. However, it has been estimated that there are over a billion non-native speakers of English.
Some people mistakenly think that English is a Romance language. It is rather a Germanic language which was heavily influenced by the Normans upon their conquest of England in 1066. The Normans eventually went on to become the French. The early Britons adopted many of the Norman word roots, which has resulted in many similarities between French and English today.
Today, English is widespread largely due to the fact that it is used so heavily in television, film and music. Hollywood's global spread has contributed strongly to the international popularity of English. It is also the predominant language on the internet. Pages in other languages even tend to have an English translation. The British Empire and the dominant nature of American popular culture have contributed overall to the spread of English across the planet.
My personal feeling is that this trend should continue. Today, there are significant language barriers between people of different countires.. If more people learn English, and come to speak it fluently, these barriers could be broken down. A person in Holland would not need to learn Chinese in order to communicate with his friends in China. Instead, he could use English as a neutral language. Then, if he wished to learn Chinese for his own purposes, he could do so at his leisure, rather than being forced to learn it in a crash course just to be able to communicate (probably badly) with his friend.
One of the biggest problems we have in Texas, particularly, is that there are a lot of Mexican immigrants into the country. Many of them fail or even refuse to learn English. This is odd, seeing that there are people in China and Japan who speak English fluently or who are actively and avidly trying to learn it. It is extremely important for Mexican immigrants and second and third generation Americans of Mexican descent to encourage their friends and family to learn English. The reason why English is so popular in other countries is because people have realized that it is an economic tool. It is much more so for people living in English-speaking countries.
There is a strong push in this country to establish English as the official or only language. This movement has met with criticism, however, even though the United States Federal Government has not established an official language, most of the states have. Fully twenty-five states have established English as their official language, and one county in Florida even established an anti-bilingual ordinance.
I am by no means opposed to bilinguality. I am opposed to people living in a country and refusing to learn the predominant tongue. Spanish is alive and well in America. It is the second most widely spoken and taught language next to English. There is a significant minority (19%) of Hispanic Americans who speak only Spanish, and the majority (55%) have only a limited proficiency in English. Only 17% are fluently bilingual. In my view these numbers are unacceptable. However, the statistics seem to show that English is spreading rapidly through the Hispanic population, favored by the young and by Hispanics born in this country.
I seem to recall some talk of attempting to establish Spanish as an official second language of the U.S. Since the Federal Government has taken no steps toward establish a national official language, this is unlikely. Also, it's unlikely that English-only will ever be established the official language of Texas, since there are so many Spanish speakers living here.
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