Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
History of the English Language
Fall 2006
Crystal (2003) Chapter 2 - Answers
1. What are the main areas of the world into which English has expanded through the practice of colonization?
According to Crystal English is everywhere! Today English, thanks much to the colonizing efforts of the British and later the Americans has spread to almost every major region of the world. English-speaking countries or countries in which English has a special status are to be found on every continent and on every ocean in the world. Both the Americans and British even have research stations on Antarctica. English is the most widely spread language in the world and only French comes remotely close to having similar type of spread. While the simple fact that English spread around far and wide is not necessarily a great indicator of its global status it is a necessary prerequisite for any language that is going to be global. It must also be acknowledged that even though much of this spread is the result of a rather brutal history of subjugation of people over the world for personal gain, much of the recent spread of English has been not due to call the station but has actually been the willful shift to English of countries around the world. Certainly the spread of English, the mere fact that English is somehow accessible, has had a large effect on English in general.
2. The expansion of English through colonization can be broken down into different waves, each with their own locations and characteristics. Identify and describe each of these waves of expansion.
Maybe the best way of thinking about the colonial expansion of English is to break it down into different waves of expansion. As a means to this and below you will find seven different waves organized roughly according to time, or the sequence in which each occurred.
1st Wave - The islands of Britannia and Ireland
It could be argued that the homeland of that English is not actually England but somewhere back on the European continent on the North Sea coast between Southern Denmark and the northern part of what is now the Netherlands. It is certainly true that English was not born on the island of Britannia or the country of England. It did originally come from the continent and in the fifth century A.D. made a jump from the continent over into what is now England. So, we can argue that English has been a language which has always been on the move. The English language has been a tireless colonizer and aggressor, hence the tremendous spread of English around the world.
Once the nation of England had been firmly established, even before the end of the Viking raids on Britannia, the English started to expand out. It must be remembered that the island of Britannia at this time was occupied by different groups of people which we can roughly call the Celts. Therefore, when we think of the expansion of English and England on the island of Britannia we need to remember that they were Not expanding into empty areas. The first place they expanded into was what is now called the Cornwall region of England. This is in the southwestern part of Britannia. Following that the country of Wales was brought under the English wing and finally Scotland to the north was brought under English power and the country we now call the United Kingdom was formed in London.
The first overseas colony of the English was of course Ireland. Ireland made and relatively easy mark because it was close by and Britannia is its only close neighbor. The English tried for several hundred years to subjugate the Irish with mixed results and I really wasn`t until the mid-17th century. That Ireland was really fully brought under British control. The colonization of Ireland was an important step in British colonial expansion because it was through their long and sometimes bitter experience in Ireland that the British really learned how to successfully subjugate people in order to run a colony.
2nd Wave - The Americas = The US, Canada, Carribean
The second wave of British expansion came when they moved into the Americas. The first British colony is where in what is now the East Coast of the United States. It must also be said that the British really lucked out when they arrived in the Americas. Unlike the Spanish and Portuguese who were interested only in gold, the British wanted to establish permanent settlements devoted to farming. The soil was a rich and as a result of diseases they Europeans carried the native population died soon as they got there which made it much easier to take the land. The colonies in the middle part of North America were so successful that the British started to expand out first to the north in Canada and second south into the Caribbean. In both of these respects the British were also lucky in that the move into Canada was precipitated by the decline in French power there and the expansion into the Caribbean was made possible largely by a wane in Spanish power.
Of course we all know what happens in the British colonies in the central part of North America. These colonies broke off at the end of the 18th century and formed their own country, United States of America, which also developed into a pretty strong colonial power. From this point on, the 19th century, we can argue that the expansion of English occurs as a result of two major powers that of England and that of the United States. Both of them concurrently work to spread English.
3rd Wave - Australia and New Zealand
The third wave of British expansion was into Australia and later into New Zealand. While these expansions occurred at approximately the same point in time as South Africa and Asia, we can refer to this is the third expansion because these expansions actually took place faster as we shall soon see.
4th Wave - South Africa
British colonists started to move into what is now South Africa fairly early on (1820), but it took much longer for the British to consolidate power in South Africa. This also interesting to note that while South Africa eventually fell under British rule English has always been the minority language there and certainly the most prominent European language is not English but Afrikaans.
5th Wave - South Asia - India and environs
British interest in South Asia and India in particular started early on, but as with South Africa because of other European competition as well as a large indigenous population it took quite some time for the British to consolidate power.
6th Wave - Greater Africa
British movement to the greater Africa came later and in basically two major regions, East Africa and West Africa.
7th Wave - East Asia and the Pacific
Expansions into east Asia and the Pacific were rather late in coming and mark the first time that former colonies of the UK played an important role in the expansion process. The US, Australia, and even New Zealand all have and continue to have colonies in the Pacific and Australian influence in South East Asia (particularly Paua New Guinea and the Indonesian archipelago) is still strong.
3. There are two main forces in the expansion of English as a global language. Who are they and what are the specifics of each of their roles?
In looking at the expansion of English we can certainly see two major forces which are first military/economic power and this was the beginning of the spread in the first place and then there is the tremendous economic/cultural power which came as the second force. It should be noted that the British had a somewhat different in method for expansion. Much of the British expansion into different regions was not surely military but was often conducted by companies which were commissioned by the British government to set up trading posts. The British were actually much more interested in trade and military conquest and once a trading post was set up and flourished (often by military means) then the military was simply used as a method of ensuring the safety and expansion of that trading post. We can therefore see that the British always had economics on the back of their mind and that economics was the main driving force behind this great expansion.
The American expansion was somewhat different in that the American expansion was founded on the idea of land. United States in order to be able to compete with the European powers realize that it needed to be larger. Land was the entity which fueled the American economy for more than a hundred years. When the size of the country had reached a certain point and people had gone in and claimed all the land then the was nothing else to do but get more land. In this venture the United States was relatively successful and were able to expand into regions dominated by the French(Louisiana) , Spanish (Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Philippines), English (Virgin Islands), Russians (Alaska), Mexicans (Texas, New Mexico, California, and Arizona), and even parts of Canada were taken by the Americans. Because these land grabs fueled the American economy economic development can quickly to these new regions which bolstered not only the American economy but also the reputation of the United States. When the period of acceptable colonial expansion in the world started to wane after World War II because of the nature of their clothing covers both the US and Britain were well situated to move into the second phase of the expansion in English.
While the British did well in setting up an expansionist empire, it would be the Americans that would take this expansionist empire into the second phase. The second phase of the expansion of English is one which we are the living right now and didn`t really start in earnest until after the second world war. After World War II the United States stood as the only economically developed country in the world. This simple fact coupled with the previous expansion of both United States and particularly England led to a particularly easy road for English to take. Since English was sort of familiar to so many of the world people through British colonial expansion it was that much easier for people to accept English for the gains they presume it will bring them.
4. On page 61 Crystal shows a chart depicting the use of English in specific countries in three generalized groups. What are the principle differences between these groups?
There is not really any easy way of categorizing these different groups. There will always be exceptions may be one of the simplest ways would be to categorize them based on their English use. For this reason there are two basic ways in which we can categorize them. First we can categorize the countries the world based on the way they use English. In general the inner circle countries are ones in which English is the first language of the majority of people (not all the people). In the outer circle countries English can be seen as a second language where there will be specific purposes where English must be used, but there may not be large numbers of first language speakers of English. There should, however, be quite large numbers of second language speakers. In the expanding circle we can say that English is a foreign language but it is a foreign language with a special status in that it is the foreign language which people are much more apt to learn, study, and use than any other. The second way of categorizing the countries of the world is by looking legally at the role which English takes in each society. For the inner circle this means that English is without question the dominant language even if, interestingly, it is not legally stated as such. For example, English is not the official language of the United States, but it is undoubtedly the language which everybody who goes to United States needs to learn. These outer circle countries are ones which were, more often than not, colonies of an inner circle country and still have legal residents of that conversation. The countries in the outer circle all have English as either a legally sanctioned official language or sometimes just a legally sanctioned national language. The countries in the expanding circle have not yet made English and legally a language different than others even though in these countries English undoubtably receives special attention and treatment.
5. Which of these groups is hardest to define and why?
Among the three different groups of Kachru`s world English circle we can say that the expanding circle is probably the hardest to define. When the main problems is trying to actually assess how much English is being studied and used in the expanding circle. Very often since these are non-governmental organizations which are sponsoring the English learning there is no way of actually counting how many people are involved and determining exactly what they are doing. Legitimate government agencies which do have statistics very often don`t extend their statistics to English learning in the expanding circle. Much of the information comes from individual groups which may or may not be accurate depending on how much the group is trying to push their own purpose. These types of things cloud the issue of what is actually going on in the expanding circle.
6. Where do you think Korea fits into this grouping and why?
Korea is most definitely in the expanding circle. We know this because English has no legal status in Korea yet anyway. In addition Korea has no history of being colonized by any English-speaking country. At the same time it must be acknowledged that English certainly has a very important position in Korea. Korea is actually quite a very good example of an expanding circle country in that despite the fact that Korea has had very little relation world historically in recent history Koreans have become almost obsessed with learning English. English has started to intrude into many different aspects of Korean life the most important of which is probably education.
7. Crystal draws attention to a distinction between the forms of English being used in many former colonies (the outer circle) and in traditional bases of English (the inner circle). What is this nature of this distinction and why is it important?
One important thing that needs to be understood about the English language is that there is no standardized form of spoken English. Each country in the inner circle has its own standardized dialect or dialects and the world generally thinks of these different dialects as being very and forms of some sort of standardized English. Since they are mutually intelligible in general then we don`t worry too much about this. What we need to start worrying about are some different forms of English spoken in many of the outer circle countries which have developed as a result of specific colonial practices in certain regions. In the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific regions the language that the indigenous people generally was exposed to was not necessarily standard English but a good meal of English. Jamaica is one of the largest islands in the Caribbean and after initially being a Spanish colony it passed into English hands. The English found a native indigenous people, the ones that were left over after the Spanish left to be not only too small in number (most of them had died) but also not particularly willing to do a lot of the work which they wanted done. Jamaica was set up as a gigantic plantation to grow sugar which was worth a huge amount of money in Europe at the time. To solve this labor shortage people were brought forcibly from West Africa to work in the sugarcane fields. To avoid any kind of problems the groups were all mixed up so they wouldn`t be able to speak together. So these African slaves could not talk to each other but they also had difficulty speaking to their English bosses. As a result of very quickly a simplified form of communication was developed so that work could be done. This simplified communication system (a pidgin) was based on English and incorporated certain elements of various West African languages. When these pidgin speaking slaves have their own children these children then converted the pidgin, a highly simplified for communication, into a full-fledged language which is called a creole. So a Creole is really just a language which has a somewhat different history than other languages in that it is more mixed than other languages. In much of the outer circle what people actually speak is not any kind of standardized form of English, but rather a standardized creole.
Now the big question is, do we accept these creoles as variant forms of English or do they count as different languages. Crystal incorporates them into the larger English-speaking world, but the reality remains that English speakers do not understand English based creoles. If we take these creoles out of our list of English-speaking countries then obviously the numbers will go down. It is interesting to note though that over time these countries in the outer circle who use creoles are slowly shifting more toward standardized forms.
8. How many English speakers are there today and how do we calculate this number?
The number of endless acres in the world is actually very hard to determine. The main problem is not from the inner circle or possibly even the outer circle countries but mostly from the expanding circle. It is estimated that there are a lot more expanding circle speakers of English than there are certainly inner circle and even outer circle speakers but it is very hard to get actual numbers or even in assessments of proficiency levels from the expanding circle as was mentioned above. Crystal estimates that there are between 320 and 380 million people who speak English in the inner circle. These would basically be native speakers of English. There are roughly 300 500 million speakers of English in the outer circle and most of these would be second language speakers who have quite good control (whatever that means) of English. The expanding circle is claimed to have between 500 million and one billion speakers or learners of English. Taking this all together we can argue that about one quarter of the world speaks English to some degree. That`s a lot of people. The trend to really watch though it is the fact that the number of native speakers of English is going to drop dramatically in the next 50 years while the number of second language speakers of English in the outer circle and expanding circle is estimated to grow dramatically. This will change the way in which English is looked at. English certainly is no longer the language of the English-speaking world (the inner core) alone. A native speaker of English and has no legitimate right to the English language over any other person in the world. This means that English will change. Fun.
Now these numbers are taken from census data, non-governmental organizations who monitor languages such as linguistic societies, places like the British Council and the CIA as well as many other organizations. I asked this question because you might need to go to true try to find some of the sources in your own presentations.