Tireless Champion of American English

Future

Two future consequences of English being the number 1 language:

1. The impact on other languages

“While there are obvious benefits in terms of global intelligibility,” says David Crystal, “on the other side of the coin, when you have one language that is so dominant, the other six and a half thousand languages in the world will naturally feel under threat.”

Crystal has little sympathy for the anti-English sentiments of already-healthy languages such as French, Spanish and German, which are worried about the influx of English words into their lexicons. After all, openness to foreign-language influences is one of the factors that has resulted in English’s amazing growth.

However, the threat of extinction is very real for other languages. “Something like half the languages of the world are so seriously endangered that they are almost certainly going to die out in the course of the present century,” warns Crystal. These languages must be protected for the same reasons we protect endangered animal species.

2. The impact on English itself

As for native speakers of English, their mother tongue has ceased to be under their control. Three quarters of English speakers are non-native, and that proportion is growing. “The population growth in countries where it is a mother tongue, like Britain, America and Australia, is about a third of the rate of the population growth in countries where it is a second language, like India, Ghana and Nigeria,” Crystal points out.

The result of this is hard to predict, but it seems clear that these new English speakers are not simply learning the language – they are shaping it. If some Asians have trouble making that “th” sound, why spend hours trying to master it when they will be perfectly well understood saying “one, two, tree”? If you keep forgetting to add “s” in the third person, why not dispense with it altogether? Nobody is going to misunderstand you if you say: “My mother work in an office” – indeed, leaving out the “s” is perfectly well acceptable in the grammar of Jamaican patois.

So does this mean that the next time you get your English homework back and it’s covered in red-pen corrections, you can explain to your teacher that you didn’t actually make any mistakes – that, as a non-native speaker of global English, you were shaping the language? We wouldn’t recommend it.

But it is true that the international language belongs to you as much as anyone else. English is yours to keep. Try not to break it!

30. Read the text and render it in Russian or in English.

The most famous of all American dictionary-makers, Noah Webster was as influential in the history of American English as George Washington in the American Revolution. From his Dissertations on the English Language in 1789 to his great monument of 1828, an American Dictionary of the English language (referred to simply as “Webster’s”), his work is a real landmark in American history.

Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and, like many of the American revolutionaries, turned from law to teaching as a means of making his living. It was one of those career changes that transforms a man’s life. Britain was at war with the colonies, and schoolbooks, traditionally imported from London, were in short supply. Besides, in Webster’s view, they were unsatisfactory. So, very much in the spirit of the New World, he set about filling the gap. Between 1783 and 1785 while still in his twenties, Webster published three elementary books in English, a speller, a grammar and a reader. The American Speller turned out to be a runaway bestseller, selling over 80 million copies in Webster’s lifetime (second only to the Bible).

The success of the American Speller gave Webster more than enough to live on, and he now devoted the rest of his life to the championing of the cause of the American language, its spelling, its grammar and its pronunciation. He wrote: “Our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as in government.” An old printer, recalling his apprenticeship, told the story of the day when a little pale-faced man came into the office and handed him a printed slip, saying, “My lad, when you use these words, please oblige me by spelling them as here: theater, center, etc.” It was Noah Webster travelling about the printing offices and persuading people to follow his “improved” conventions.

In 1806, Webster published his first Dictionary, the next step in his program to standardize the American language, and continued to call for the “detachment” from English literary models. From 1812 to 1822 Webster lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he helped to found Amherst College. In 1825, having devoted more than twenty years to the study of the English language and having travelled in both England and France, Webster returned to new Haven to complete the work of his life.

The culmination of Webster’s efforts came with the publication of his American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828, larger than Samuel Johnson’s by about a third and containing much American usage. But Webster’s importance does not rest only upon the size of his book. His precise definitions are models of lexicography style. Also, by the inclusion of thousands of technical and scientific terms, Webster laid the groundwork for the modern comprehensive dictionary. Despite its now honored place in the history of American English, the first Webster’s sold only 2,500 copies and he was forced to mortgage his home to bring out a second edition. The rest of his life was dogged by debt and he died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1848 with much of his effort unrecognized and unapplauded.

In retrospect, Webster’s influence on American spelling was enormous. It is to him that Americans owe “color”, for “colour”, “fiber” for “fibre”, “tire” for British “tyre”, etc. Webster’s dictionaries had a great influence on American Speech rhythms and resulted in the remarkable uniformity of much American speech.

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