Tom Mcarthur
Biographic Data
| ID | 79164 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Mcarthur |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcarthur |
| SIGNATURE | MCARTHUR T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 164 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 164 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A Central Asian début in ET89
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On Latin, English and capable hands; From the New Editors
Not long ago, I came across Tore Janson's A Natural History of Latin: The story of the world's most successful language (2004) – and I thought: ‘That's an odd claim.’ Then four things came to mind: the Roman Empire, which lasted for centuries; the Roman Catholic church, which has lasted longer; Latin as Europe's international language, and the Romance language family (‘Latin’ under other names). In the later twentieth century, the teaching of Lat…
The old order changes
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A transcontinental distribution
The difference over twenty years, in the making of ET since 1985, includes the vanishing away of paper files. In a cabinet beside my desk I have A–Z files for the many people who literally ‘wrote’ – that is, typed – to me on paper. I almost never consult any of those files now, and don’t remember when I last added a sheet to them. Instead, of course , I check my email, which piles up electronically in non-real space somewhere inside this machine …
Who pecks who in the world of English
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Citing, quoting, and critiquing the Wikipedia
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China Syndrome
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Twenty years on
In 1986, I was interviewed by a long-standing colleague and friend, Arnold Pitt, for the British journal The Esperanto Teacher . As editor of that periodical he referred to the journal I had recently begun to edit, English Today , as ‘the other ET’. His interview questions began with English worldwide, and ended with his key concern, Esperanto as a (or the) world’s auxiliary language. I have always had a strong fellow feeling for ‘Esperantism’. M…
Teaching and Using English in Hong Kong, China, and the World
there are, as it were, three levels in the title of the discussion, each going further ‘out’ from hong kong, although the direction and perspective could as easily have been reversed, moving ‘inwards’ from the world to china to hong kong, one of history's most successful social, cultural, political, and economic anomalies. there could equally easily have been four levels: hong kong, china, asia, and the world, a framework that would even then hav…
Squaring the circle
Sometimes, less can be more. In ET 's twenty years of publication, this issue has the smallest number of contributions ever listed: seven titles in all, whereas traditionally there have been ten or more. It also has the usual number of pages (sixty-four), which means that some or all of the articles are way beyond our long-established norm. Yet at some point this had to happen
Techno-Change
the april 2005 issue, et 82, was hardly out when i began to think i'd been premature in what i wrote in its comment . i noted there that the issue ‘had the smallest number of contributions ever listed: seven titles in all, whereas traditionally there have been ten or more’. the reason of course was the length of several of the articles: closer to ‘papers’ in standard academic journals (yet none the worse for it, readability being as safe as ever)
Worldwideness
The April 2005 issue, ET 82, was hardly out when I began to think I'd been premature in what I wrote in its Comment . I noted there that the issue ‘had the smallest number of contributions ever listed: seven titles in all, whereas traditionally there have been ten or more’. The reason of course was the length of several of the articles: closer to ‘papers’ in standard academic journals (yet none the worse for it, readability being as safe as ever)
Chinese, English, Spanish - and the rest
An adapted and extended version of ‘The Big Three’, a paper presented to the Kongres Bahasa Utama Dunia (‘Congress of the World's Major Languages’), organized in October 2004 by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (‘Institute of Language and Literature’), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Dewan, established in 1956, is committed to both linguistic and literary planning with regard to Bahasa Malaysia (Malay as used in Malaysia) and the recognition of Malay as …
Lexicography on an epic scale
THE WORLD-RENOWNED Oxford lexicographer Robert William Burchfield is a hero of mine who, to my great good fortune, became first a colleague then a friend, as he also was to ET
The first English learner's dictionary
Reflections on the Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary and its mother book, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Global interplay and irony
In recent times ET has received many articles on English in China, and published as many as feasible, but the sheer volume has led to a strangely serious question: How many such articles can we publish without ET becoming English in China Today ? Inevitably, therefore, we have been publishing only some of the publishable submissions received. It is therefore ironic to bring out the cover article for this issue, whose subject matter looks Chinese …
Singapore, grammar, and the teaching of ‘internationally acceptable English’
A consideration of the place of, and options for, explicitly teaching grammar to learners of English as an international language. A development of the opening address given at a conference on the teaching of grammar at the Regional Language Centre (RELC) in Singapore in November 2003. The key issue of the conference was whether the English-language skills of Singaporean school leavers would be improved through a revival of explicit and formal gr…
Only sixteen years
Responses to articles in ET typically reach me three months after the relevant issue comes out. Each issue contains around ten contributions, and presents a wide and shifting range of topics, backgrounds, styles, perspectives, lengths, and densities of expression. In addition, we know from experience that, while some contributors approach ET because for them it is a comfortable and suitable vehicle, others do so because they see it as the only ou…
World commerce, world politics, world English
In 1995, Ballantine Books published in New York a book by Benjamin R. Barber. Its title was Jihad vs. McWorld , a phrase that would not have made much (any?) sense in 1895, or been easily unpacked even in 1975. It is often in word capsules like these that we see how much a language can change in a century, so as to put Arabic jihad alongside Latin versus while attaching Gaelic Mc (courtesy US fast food) to world , the only bit of original Anglo-S…
Learning world languages
For most of us languages aren't all that easy to use, or learn – whether we have been born into one or several languages, or have to learn one or more ‘alien’ languages, with alien writing systems. This may just be part of the general hurly-burly of life, and is certainly the usual way of things in, say, India, Nigeria and the Philippines, or it may happen in the comparative calm of classroom and library (nowadays widely regarded as the ‘proper’ …
Is it world or international or global English, and does it matter
This review explores the histories and meanings of, and similarities and contrasts among, three labels for English at large: world English, international English , and global English , first as phrases containing the words world, international , and global , then in terms of their history and use, and how a range of dictionaries has dealt (or failed to deal) with them. The first has been used to mean both standard English and all English; the sec…
A kind of symbiosis
Not only do copies of ET go round the world, but our contributors are based in a multitude of places. In recent editions, we have been using map motifs on the front cover to demonstrate the worldwideness (internationality? globality?) of the journal and its topics, and it seems appropriate, at least this once, to pinpoint the kind of places from which contributions come or to which they relate (or both). On this cover we see at a glance that ET78…
Oxford Guide to World English
PREFACE MAP 1. Introduction: A Global Lingua Franca 2. Europe 3. The Americas 4. American and British 5. Africa 6. Asia 7. Australasia, Oceania, and Antarctica 8. Conclusion: World English A Chronology of World English Bibliography Index
Win some, lose some
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The China syndrome
Not everyone interested in English needs to give much thought to Chinese. This statement is so true that it borders on the banal, and a similarly true and banal statement might be: Many people involved with Chinese don't need to give much thought to English
Worlds of Reference
Part I. Mind, word and world: 1. Knowing, referring and recording: storing information beyond the brain 2. Information and World 3: in the beginning was the Word Part II. The Ancient World: 3. Containers of knowledge: the first reference technologies 4. Systems for knowledge: school and letter, book and library 5. The taxonomic urge: class, classic and classification 6. Missionaries and monasteries: reference and reverence Part III. The Medieval …
World English and world Englishes
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The power of words
The use, nature, impact and general potency of words-whether in their free state or as listed in dictionaries-is too large a subject to cover in a paper of this length. I have therefore limited myself to five areas that I take to be fundamental in the issue of words as tokens or counters in the various power games that we consciously or unconsciously engage in. These areas are: First, bias and centricity (ego-, ethno-, Anglo- and so forth) in our…
Idawanna Contragate
Languages of Scotland
Languages of Scotland
Concise and human
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Caliban and the Language Fair
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An ABC of World English England to Ireland
The third of a four-part gazetteer of the basic geopolitical vocabulary of the English language, dealing with the facts, fancies, fallacies, ambiguities and subtle implications of such words. For convenience of presentation, the material is not always in strict alphabetical order
An ABC of World English Brit to Creole
The second part of a four part gazetteer of the basic geopolitical vocabulary of the English language, dealing with the facts, fancies, fallacies, ambiguities and subtle implications in such words. For convenience of presentation the material is not in strict aphabetical order
Women Among the Words
The first known woman lexicographer was the Abbess Herrad in the 12th century, while the first in English appears to have been Sam Johnson's friend Mrs Hester Thrale or Piozzi (with her British Synonymy in 1794). There were never many, right into our own century, but nowadays it is no longer unusual to find women in controlling positions in the world of lexicography. Tom McArthur interviews two such women among the words: ELIZABETH KIRKPATRICK, i…
An ABC of World English
The fourth of a four-part gazetteer of the basic geopolitical vocabulary of the English language, dealing with the facts, fancies, fallacies, ambiguities and subtle implications of such words. For convenience of presentation, the material is not always in strict alphabetical order
Taking the auspices
The Budapest Daily News printed the report of the Associated Press of New York, entitling it 'New magazine about the usage of English' -then sent off directly to Cambridge asking for ET on a regular basis. Under the heading 'Anybody here speak Japlish?' the London Evening Standard described ET as 'a slightly erudite glossy' that 'looks like justifying the backing of Cambridge University Press'. In a prime-time broadcast BBC Radio Four built a mis…
An ABC of World English America to Australia
The first part of a four-part gazetteer of the basic geopolitical vocabulary of the English language, dealing with the facts, fancies, fallacies, ambiguities and subtle implications in such words. For convenience of presentation, the material is not in strict alphabetical order
High wires and haute cuisine
W hile editing English Today, I have developed a fellow feeling for tightrope-walkers and chefs
Bonuses in the Mail
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Poetic Nonsense
On the 3rd November 1984 there appeared in The Guardian newspaper (London and Manchester) an article entitled ‘The earth lay gloog, the cattle bollowed deep’. It was the work of MAGGIE COOK, the founder of the Boscobel Poets of Hastings, and lies squarely in the tradition of English literate nonsense. The article is reproduced below, with a commentary by TOM McARTHUR
A Foundation Course for Language Teachers
A Foundation Course for Language Teachers
Dreadnought and frigate
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Classics of their kind
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Interfacing
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Applying linguistics
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The Problem of purism
Prompted by a variety of letters from readers about deterioration and falling language standards, TOM McARTHUR discusses purism and the standard language, past and present
Riders of the Purple Page
An American living in Mexico and translating French cowboy comics into the language of Mark Twain? Tom McArthur talks to JOHN PINT, re-writer extraordinary
English to Order
All published works in English are planned, but some are more planned than others – right down to the last word. TOM McARTHUR takes a look at the tradition of shaping words to fit an educational need
Smoothing out the wrinkles
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The usage industry
Guides to ‘good usage’ have been part of the tradition of ‘standard English’ since the 17th century. Such works have been a commercial success and are as abundant today as in the past. What characterizes the tradition of these ‘bibles of usage’
An augment of quiet passion
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Computer Science (109 works) · Mathematics (90 works) · Philosophy (61 works) · Physics (61 works) · History (59 works) · Linguistics (59 works) · Nutrition, Health, and Society Studies (30 works) · Psychology (29 works) · Lexicography and Language Studies (28 works) · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity (22 works)