The nature and significance of English as a global language

Bibliographic Data

ID20357688
AuthorsKeith Davidson (0000-0001-9269-3227, Center for Applied Linguistics, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume23
Issue1
Pages48-50
Publication date2007-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Today (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0266-0784 • E-ISSN: 1474-0567
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0266078407001095
OpenAlexW2143051384
LanguageEN
Citations received5

THE DEMOGRAPHICS of the English language are well known, and the following approximations are based on figures, always provisional, projected by Crystal, Graddol, and McArthur. Anglophones (to use a broader term than ‘native’ or ‘mother tongue’ speakers of English – terms which in any case pose problems) make up some 12% of the global population. Speakers of English in the UK constitute about 16% of the 380 or so million Anglophones worldwide. In the UK, some 2% of the population speaks English as a second language, and perhaps only 15% regularly speaks a southern British form of standard English. Only a small minority of these have a form of Received Pronunciation (RP) as their normal accent, even though RP is predicated as the basis of ‘phonics’ in initial literacy, and is assumed to be the default accent in the second-language teaching of British English, in the UK and elsewhere (with however the notable exception of North America)

Australian English · British English · English language · English-based creole languages · First language · Language assessment · Linguistics · Literacy · Modern language · Pedagogy · Population · Pronunciation · Sociology · Standard English · Demography · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy

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