Hello again and welcome back to Britain under the microscope---the epic story of English continues.
Hello Anlan.
Hello everybody.
Last time, you mentioned that we are going to talk about the current situation, the English today and also the future of English.
Ok, so let's first take a look at English in 2018, English is now the official language in 53 countries.
Wow, 53, never realized it was that many.
Around 400 million people speak it as a first language.
400 million.
And over 4 times of as many people speak as a second language.
4 times? That would be, what, over 1 billion?
Yeah, it would be 1.4 billion people speak it as a second language.
That's as many people as we have in China.
Absolutely, so, on the internet 85 percent of webpages are in English.
85, see, this is why this whole discussion of why do we need to learn English, like we said last time, English doesn't belong to any countries any more, nobody owns it, it's just a common language and to think, to learn English, you can access 85% of all the webpages in the world.
And lots of people need English for their work, so for example, pilots nowadays they all have to have a basic knowledge of English because all communication is via English.
And like people in academia, if you want to publish something internationally, most likely you'll be publishing it in English.
Absolutely, because English is all over the world, there're lots of different styles of English,
We talked about that last time.
Yeah. We just mentioned a few, but there're many more beyond that.
This is the English now. So looking at the future, what do you think will happen?
Well, it's really difficult to say because no one really knows. This is essentially the first language in the world to have ever reached this status.
Well, not even Latin.
Well, Latin was used throughout Europe, but if you consider that now it's global and also it has been recorded by technology, by the internet as well. So there is quite a few different opinions about what will happen; so you mentioned Latin, Latin was spoken throughout the Roman Empire and in the end when the Roman Empire came down, it broke apart: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese all became separate languages.
That's why they all have Latin roots.
Yeah. So some people think this might happen with English.
Oh, so English might break into minor languages.
It might do.
With local characteristics.
Yeah. Or, English might mix with local languages and become new languages, so for example, in Singapore, Singlish.
Oh Singlish, yes, is that not just an accent?

Well, not really because it has its own vocabulary and it has its own structures.
And also people are talking about Chinglish. Chinese English, Chinglish has a life, and you also have, nowadays, you can hear a lot of those, you'll hear Japanglish, Frenglish. So seems to be a lot of mixture of languages.
Absolutely.
Actually with the internet, that means the world is much more connected, wouldn't that mean the languages would be kept together?
Some people think it would be; some other scholars, some other experts, they think that English wouldn't separate too much. But there'll be two different forms of English. So there'll be a written form, a very formal style of English for writing and a spoken form which will have much more local influence.
Oh, be more diverse and the written would be more global standard.
Yeah so a language that has this would be Arabic where you have standard written Arabic; then you have different forms of Arabic spoken in the different countries.
所以阿拉伯语是这样的。
To a certain extent.
It's interesting to think about how language evolved, but one thing I think a lot of our listeners are interested, will English become easier or more difficult?
Well, to be perfectly honest, I know many of our listeners, they probably think English grammar is very difficult. Actually, it's not.
It's not compared to other European languages. French and German, they all have much much more difficult grammar.
Absolutely, English grammar has a lot of irregularities, but it's a lot simpler than French, German and other European languages. And it's already much simpler than old English which, as we spoke about, is a little bit more like German. So some people think, and I agree with them, that the number of non-native speakers needs that grammar might become simpler.
For example, "long time no see" that was just adopted in New English. There's no grammar in it any more.
Yeah. A nice example will be who and whom.
Who and whom. Uh, you still see in some TV shows, there will be people who're really anal, they are fixated on it, like Shelton form the big bang theory. "Who" "whom"， but both are ok now, isn't it?
Well. whom is technically more correct. But most people will say who. So this is one influence of the internet as well. Because anybody can write on the internet nowadays, some people think that correct English is becoming less important because new vocabulary, new expressions, new spellings are much more relax; they are much more tolerated.
And you see new words coming out every day. I think that is happening to Chinese as well. What are the possibilities apart from its becoming more mixed or two forms and also easier.
Well, I'd like to think that lots of people learn English because of interest, but lots of people learn it because it's a world language, and they need it for their job, they need it in order to do business.
Because it's useful
It's useful and that's the same with any other language. People learn the language which can get them the most money, or the most prospects.
Yeah so that means I would say more people would be bilingual.
Bilingual means speaking two languages.
And if English continues to be used for trade and I think people will still want to learn it.
I think the only thing we know is the story of the English has not finished yet.
Absolutely not, so let us know what you think. What would you think English will be like in a hundred years'time or two hundred years'time?
Or even how do you think Chinese, as a language would evolve.
Please leave your comments in the comment section
And remember, language is alive.
That's the epic story of English. As lulu said, it's a story that hasn't finished yet.
We will be waiting to see how the next chapter will unfold.
We will see you next time.
Bye.

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