English is Evolving

            As we are learning in class about how Old English became Modern English, this article talks about how Modern English is evolving now. English is being so called “globalized” as the article conveys. More and more people are learning English and taking it back to their hometowns. There it may take on a life of its own. An astounding fact is “by 2020 native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language” (Erard). As Americans who have grown up with only English, we may think this is our language, but there are many more people who are using it. In turn, English is probably going to become more like the languages that the other non-native speakers speak.

            An interesting story was about the Chinese people and how they have a hard time getting native speaking teachers in China. For that reason, The Chinese have to teach the English language. They might be able to read and write it, but it’s hard for them to speak it correctly. So, English there starts to sound like Chinese. It offered a couple examples of how the English language is already taught differently because of how the Chinese learn. One of the ways was that certain th sounds became f, v, t, or d.

            The most confusing part of all of this to me would be not turning certain nouns into plurals. For a lot of groups of animals we do not add s. Instead we keep it the same as the plural form. So it would be like asking, “how many deers are outside?” That just sounds weird to us because of the formation we are used to.

            One good thing is that it most likely will not replace English. It most likely will just become its own separate group. In turn, I could guess that English might take some aspects of this newly formed Chinglish into consideration for our own language. We might eliminate more words, so our language is not so wordy. Until then, were stuck with the confusing language that it is and I can only be thankful that I grew up learning English because I would never want to learn all of the rules to it.

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-07/st_essay

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