The history of English is conventionally divided into three parts: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Now, we are talking about a fourth period in the history of English: after Modern English comes the period of "Global English". Rhetorically inconvenient though a fourth period would be, it would allow an exploration of the new status of English as a global lingua franca and the cultural, linguistic, political and economic issues surrounding English as it is used in a postmodern world.
There is, however, a great danger in simply adding a new historical period to cater for global English. The traditional history of English, as taught in all the main textbooks, was largely created in the 19th century and reflects 19th-century values and world views. Just as archeologists and historians have argued that our modern understanding of medieval life has been distorted through a 19th-century lens, so some linguistic historians are now urging a reappraisal of the history of English.
The traditional history is constructed as a grand narrative. It provides a myth of national origins as a rags-to-riches folk tale in which our hero, the English language, emerges from humble and obscure origins and flowers in Old English times - both as a literary language and as the foundation of a new Anglo-Saxon political awareness (presaging the role of English in establishing a future national identity).
Now comes the complication in the story; the point at which the villain appears and disrupts the status quo. In the grand narrative of the history of English, it is French which is positioned as the villain, with whom the English language does battle - and eventually triumphs. According to this account, the linguistic and cultural integrity of Old English was all but destroyed after the Norman invasion, not least by relexification from French. The whole business of recreating a literary language and national identity had to begin anew. Hence the modern era - starting in the 16th century - represents the final triumph of English. The language now overcomes its historic villain and re-emerges as a national language, with a literature provided by the likes of Dryden and Shakespeare; scientific writing by Isaac Newton and his contemporaries in the Royal Society (17th century); regulatory apparatus provided by the kind of dictionary first compiled by Samuel Johnson (18th century) and, most monumentally, by the Oxford English Dictionary in the late 19th century.
The values that permeate this conventional story of English are those of the 19th century, including Victorian concepts of modernity. As we have seen, modernity was a discourse about progress and growth and about constructing modern nation- state identities. Linguistic modernity was not just about constructing national monuments to the language such as the Oxford English Dictionary, but also embraced the need to shoulder the "English speaker's burden" of taking English, as a civilizing force, to the furthest reaches of empire.
If you take the view that the traditional history of English reflects a very national, modernist, 19th-century view of the world, then tacking on a new chapter entitled "Global English" may be a serious mistake. It dangerously continues the grand narrative by adding a coda, suggesting that English, which in modernity triumphed as a national language, has now triumphed as a global language, overcoming its arch rival yet again, but this time in the global arena by displacing French as the preferred international lingua franca, or as the preferred working language of Europe.
This view of global English is altogether too ethnocentric to permit a broader understanding of the complex ways in which the spread of English is helping to transform the world and in which English, in turn, is transformed by the world.
The world languages system
The number of languages in the world has been falling throughout modernity, and may be accelerating. The spread of global English is not the direct cause of language endangerment. The downward trend in language diversity began before the rise of English as a global lingua franca. English has greatest impact on national languages, higher up the linguistic "food chain"
The Ethnologue, which provides one of the world's most comprehensive gazetteer of languages, currently lists almost 7,000. However, these are extremely unevenly distributed amongst the global population, with the top 12 languages accounting for 50% of the global population.
Whilst the majority of the world's languages are spoken by very small communities of speakers, most of the top languages, including Chinese, English and the large European languages, are spoken as first languages by a declining proportion of the world population.
In terms of native-speaker rankings, English is falling in the world league tables. Only 50 years ago it was clearly in second place, after Mandarin. Estimating the number of speakers for the very large languages is surprisingly difficult, but it seems probable that both Spanish, Hindi-Urdu and English all have broadly similar numbers of first-language speakers. Some commentators have suggested that English has slipped to fourth place, where its position will become challenged by Arabic in the middle of the present century.
English challenged
English is no longer the "only show in town". Other languages now challenge the dominance of English in some regions. Mandarin and Spanish, especially, have become sufficiently important to be influencing national policy priorities in some countries.
LANGUAGES OF BUSINESS
English is by no means the only language in global business. Davis (2003) observes: While English is a major language, it only accounts for around 30% of the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and is likely to account for less in the future. Neglecting other languages means ignoring quite significant potential markets.
Davis(2003) analyses the linguistic impact of the economic growth of the BRICs as reported by Goldman Sachs calculating the proportion of world GDP that each language will account for. Such calculations raise many methodological questions, but some basic underlying trends are worth noting, in particular, the steady rise of Chinese and slow relative decline of Japanese and most European languages: ... Russian, Portuguese, and Indic would all increase as well, but most significantly after 2010.
MANDARIN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In many Asian countries, in Europe and the U. S. A., Mandarin has emerged as the new must-have language. The rush towards learning Mandarin in South Korea, for example, is reminiscent of the enthusiasm for English only a few years ago. The Chinese government now actively supports the growing interest worldwide in learning Chinese as a foreign or second language through a worldwide network of "Confucius Institutes", the first of which was set up in November 2004 in Seoul, South Korea. Others are now open in Stockholm, Perth, Nairobi, and Washington. An estimated 30 million people are already studying Mandarin worldwide and the Chinese government expects this to rise to around 100 million in the next few years.
In several countries, the first wave of Mandarin learners comes from local ethnic Chinese communities, whose heritage language is often one of the other Chinese languages, such as Cantonese.
In many Asian countries, there is a sense of urgency about the need to acquire Mandarin because of the rapidly growing economic importance of China. South Korea, for example, now trades more with China than with the U. S. A.
THE RISE OF SPANISH
Brazil, one of the most important new economies outside India and China, passed a law in July 2005 requiring all secondary schools in the country to offer Spanish courses, allowing students to choose it as an alternative to English. A shortage is expected in both teachers and textbooks as Spanish is offered to over 9 million Brazilian secondary students.
The growing importance of Spanish is apparent in other parts of South America. Trinidad and Tobago declared in 2005 that it aspired to become a Spanish- speaking country by 2020, setting a target of having at least 30% of public employees to be proficient within 5 years. Ironically, Trinidad and Tobago has been a popular study destination for Venezuelans learning English, but the language trade may now reverse with a shortage of qualified Spanish teachers on the islands.
Languages trends The world language system is being transformed, as the relationship between "big" languages change and many smaller languages are disappearing. English is not the main reason for global language loss. The impact of English is mainly on the status of other national languages. The attractiveness of Mandarin to learners across the world is growing, and language schools in many countries are expanding their provision to include it. Unlike the enthusiasm for learning Japanese which was prompted by the economic rise of Japan, there are reasons why interest in Mandarin may remain a long-term trend. Where the global importance of languages used to depend on the number and wealth of native speakers, now the number of people who use it as a second language is becoming a more significant factor.