2. Discuss the following sentences.

a) Do you think the article overstates the importance of English?

b) What other languages might eventually take over from English

as the international language of business?

c) Do you agree that big business accelerates the advance of the

English language?

Attitudes to English

3. Read about six business people attitudes to learning English.

Whose opinion is closest to your own?

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Attitude 1

Well, to be honest, learning English isn’t my idea of fun. I mean

rock concerts are fun. Motorbikes are fun. Snowboarding is fun.

Learning English isn’t fun. It’s hard work. But it’s worth it. I don’t

need English every day in my job right now. But if I want to get on in

my career, I know I’m going to need it more and more. English is

where the money is, so I just think of it as an investment in my future.

We Swiss are very practical like that.

Attitude 2

Hm, well, I accept that English is the language of the media, but

I’m not so sure about business. Personally, I know a lot of business

people who speak almost no English at all. Twenty-five per cent of the

world speaks English. OK, but that means 75% don’t. The way I see

it, if I’m trying to sell you something, I should speak your language.

But if you come to Ecuador to sell something, then you should speak

Spanish.

Attitude 3

Coming from a tiny country like the Netherlands means we’ve

always had to speak foreign languages. So it’s nothing new for us. The

same goes for people from Luxembourg, Belgium, Scandinavia. 80%

of Dutch people speak English. Most of us speak some German too, or

French. We certainly don’t expect anybody to speak Dutch! In fact,

the firm I work for recently introduced English as the official

company language. So now I speak English all day – to other Dutch

people!

Attitude 4

I’m afraid I really don’t like English that much. I find the

pronunciation very difficult. It’s certainly not as beautiful a language

as my language, which is Italian. And, anyway, I think it’s more

difficult as you get older to learn foreign languages. But my company

wants me to learn English, so I really don’t have much choice. If a

quarter of the world speaks it, I suppose I must too. But I’ll always

think in Italian. My brain works in Italian.

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Attitude 5

I don’t know why people who speak European languages

complain about learning English. Try learning it when your native

language is Korean! Actually, I find I can speak English OK, if I’m

doing business with other non-native speakers, like Argentinians or

Japanese. But with native English speakers, I do feel at a

disadvantage. I’ve heard that 60% of British people don’t speak a

foreign language at all. Hardly surprising when so many of us have to

learn English.

Attitude 6

Well, actually, I love English. It’s true the pronunciation is quite

hard to get right, but the grammar is much simpler than my language,

Hungarian – at least at the beginning. That’s the thing about English –

it’s easy to speak a little quite quickly. It gets harder later, of course.

Frankly, I don’t know why some French and German are against using

English words. It seems to me that English is full of foreign words –

especially French and German!

Attitude 7

This is a rather strange and amusing attitude. Do you think the

man who has it is an optimist, a pessimist or …? What are his

problems in learning English? What are his recommendations to the

learners of English? Do you think the man is serious in his opinion?

When I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I’d

been here an hour I realized that I did not understand one word. In the

first week I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language

and the next seven years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I

will never know it really well, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only

consolation being that nobody speaks English perfectly.

Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman

uses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You

may learn another five hundred and another five hundred and yet

another five hundred and still you may come across a further fifty

thousand you have never heard of before, and nobody else either.

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If you live long enough in England you will find out to your great

amazement, that the adjective ‘nice’ is not the only adjective the

language possesses, in spite of the fact that in the first three years you

do not need to learn or use any other adjectives. You can say that the

weather is nice, a restaurant is nice. Mr. Smith is nice. Mrs. Smith’s

clothes are nice, you had a nice time, and all this will be very nice.

Then you have to decide on your accent. The easiest way to give

the impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to

hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and

finish all your sentences with a question: “isn’t it?” People will not

understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get the

most excellent impression.

Many foreigners who have learnt Latin or Greek at school

discover with amazement and satisfaction that the English language

has absorbed a huge amount of ancient Latin and Greek expressions,

and they realize that:

a) it is much easier to learn these expressions than the much

simpler English words;

b) that those words as a rule are interminably long and make a

simply superb impression when talking to the greengrocer, the porter

and the insurance agent.

Finally, there are two important points to remember:

1. Do not forget that it is much easier to write in English than to

speak English, because you can write without a foreign accent.

2. In a bus, in other public places it is more advisable to speak

softly in good German than shout in abominable English. Anyway,

this whole business is not at all easy. After speaking eight years in the

country, the other day I was told by a very kind lady: “But why do you

complain? You really speak a most excellent accent without the

slightest English.”

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Part II

Glimpses of the History of English

Section I. Battle for the Language

“Adventure of English” (2002),

film 3”Battle for the Language”

The text below informs of the development of the English

language before the 14th century. Read it and answer the questions:

Are there many Celtic words in Modern English?

What effect on the English language did the Roman domination

make?

What is the origin of the word ‘English’?

What are the three results of the Scandinavian invasion?

Why did the English language go underground under the

Normans?

The English language of today reflects many centuries of

development. The political and social events that have in the course of

English history so profoundly affected the English people in their

national life have generally had a recognizable effect on their

language.

The language spoken by the native inhabitants of the British Isles

belonged to the Celtic family, introduced by a people who had come

to the islands in the first millennium BC. There is, surprisingly, very

little Celtic influence – or perhaps it is not surprising, given the savage

way in which the Celtic communities were destroyed.

Though Julius Caesar’s invasions of 55 and 54 BC. mark the end

of Britain’s pre-history and the beginning of her history, they had no

lasting effect on the tribes in the island. Only in AD 43 the armies of

the Emperor Claudius overran the south-east of Britain and

established it as the Roman Province. The history of the province

ended in 410 when the Romans had to leave it because of the

Germanic threat on the Continent. The Latin language did not vanish

with the Romans. The Roman army, merchants and Christian

missionaries brought a huge Latin vocabulary: plant, wine, cheese,

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cat, dish, candle; tile, wall, city, road; camp, decree, commerce, buy,

pound; Mass, monk, minster, alter, preach.

The Scandinavian invasion resulted in the considerable mixture of

the two races and their languages. Bede, the famous medieval English

historian, describes the invaders as belonging to the three most

powerful nations of Germany – the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes.

With scant respect for priorities, the Germanic invaders called the

native Celts wealas (foreigners), from which the name Welsh is

derived. The Celts called the invaders ‘Saxons’, regardless of their

tribe. By the end of the 6th century, however, the term Angli (‘Angles’)

was in use – as early as 601, a king of Kent is called King of the

Angles – and during the 7th century Angli or Anglia (for the country)

became the usual Latin names. Old English Engle derives from this

usage, and the name of the language found in Old English texts is

from the outset referred to as Englisc (the sc spelling representing the

sound sh). References to the name of the country as Englaland (land

of the Angles), from which came England, do not appear until c. 1000.

The next big linguistic invasion came as a result of the Viking

raids on Britain, which began in AD 787 and continued at intervals for

some 200 years. The linguistic result in this prolonged period of

contact was threefold. A large number of settlements with Danish

names appeared in England. Many general words entered the

language. They include again, anger, bag, birth, cake, die, egg, flat,

happy, husband, neck, root, silver, smile, take, want window and many

others. Some of the commonest words in Modern English came into

the language at the time of close contacts between the Anglo-Saxons

and the Danish settlers, such as both, same, get, give. They and them,

and their replaced the early forms. Sindom was replaced by are, -s

ending in the present tense spread.

The year 1066 marks the beginning of a new social and linguistic

era in Britain. It is also the beginning of the period that we call Middle

English ( the 12th – 15th century). In October 1066 Duke of Normandy

William defeated the Anglo-Saxons at Hastings, captured London,

was crowned and became the English King William the Conqueror,

subjugated the country and started to rule with an iron hand. The

French language was established in the corridors of power. Almost all

the English words to do with aristocracy and their servants are of

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French origin. The chief examples are baron, count(ess), duchess,

duke, marquis, page, noble, prince, princess, government, liberty,

constable, empire, arrest, crime, jury, prison, verdict, cardinal,

cathedral, religion, saint, salvation to mention a few. French-speaking

barons, abbots, bishops, merchants and craftsmen made English the

language of the lower classes. Doubtless bilingualism quickly

flourished – English people learning French to gain advantages from

the aristocracy, baronial staff learning English as part of their daily

contact with the local communities. Judging by the documents it

seems that French was the language of

government, law,

administration,, literature, with Latin used in church, and education.

These 150 years is something of a ‘dark age’ in the history of the

language.

During the 14th and 15th centuries there began the movement to

return English to its central place in society. This fight was often a

violent one. It was as much a political story as a linguistic one. Two

segments of the film are illustrations of this fight.