Lemonpiglet’s Weblog

The development of Englishes means there are no more judgement on better English forms or bad English forms. In other words, except the American English and British English which are called “standard English” the other English forms are no longer being seen as lower level than them. Althrough the American and British English still be used as the guiding ones, other Englishes get their respect from people for their value which has be ignored before. So the development of Englishes shows the trend of English becomes the international language– every English form develops equally. And every English form is important, because it shows the development of English in the local cultures.

The development of Englishes shows the trend of English has being globalized to become a more international language. Meanwhile, this situation also means more and more different English dialects, slangs and accents will be created in different English-speaking areas. And it may block the communication among the people come from different places. Take two examples from mine. Because the Chinese English textbooks include both British English and American English, I learnt some British and American English vocabularies and phrases in the same time but I didn’t notice it. Until I got the lessons taught by foreign teachers I found there are problems by using different English forms. The first time I met Problem was one of my foreign English teaher say thank you to me then I say not at all to response him. His facial expression told me that his didn’t catch what I said, so I say you are welcome to instead for the second time, then he finally got what I want to expressed. That teacher is an American, he said he had never heard of the phrase of “not at all” to response “thank you”. But I am quite sure I learnt the phrase from my textbook. So I think this phrase comes from British English. Another case is once I did conversion with my another foreign English teacher who comes from Australia, I mentioned the phrase “queue jumper” and it made him quite confused. So I had to spend time on explaining and spelling this phrase to him. But he was still quite confused on this phrase I used. He told me he had never learnt the word “queue” which means line and never heard about the phrase “queue jumper” which refers to the people who get into a waiting line without order. This situation made me very embarrassed and the only thing I could do was explaining for myself that I learnt it from my textbook. I remember once Bonnie told us in our class that she watched a film made by U.K and she was confused about some plots of that film because of its British slangs. So althrough it is a good thing for everybody owns his/her own English, the development of Englishes will also bring communicative problems.

Because I am a Chinese, the engish form which I most familiar with is Chinglish. I want to talk something on what I know about Chinglish. When I bagin to learn English in my primary school, I found there is a dispute on one letter’s pronunciation-C. What I learn from my English teacher is pronounce it as “si:”, but some other teachers of mine pronounce it as “xi:”. When I asked my father to read the alphabet, he also pronounced the letter C “xi:”. He told me when they learnt English in their childhood, their English teachers prononced C as “xi”. But this pronunciation be changed in my generation, that’s why their pronounciation is different from mine. Now I few to hear somebody pronounce C as “xi:” except the people is aged. With the development of English teaching and learning in China, the English pronunciation has also been changed closer to the standard one. The English in China got much more influence by the “standard Englishes” in Western countires than it did to them at the time I began to learn English. But now under the environment of globalization of English, each english form does affect other forms. For example, the phrase “long time no see” comes from Chinglish, but now it also well-known and used by the English speakers of Western countries.There are also some other Chinglish phrases have being known by more and more Western English speakers, such as “good good study, day day up” which is used to encourage students work hard on their study; and “people mountain people sea” which is used to describe the situation of lots of people crowd together.