Reading
Practice READING Passage
ENGLISH:
THE GLOBAL LANGUAGE

Professor
McKenzie
For many years now we have been referring to
English as a global language....as the language of communication and technology.
Everybody seems to be learning English and it isn't uncommon to see English
being used as a means of communication between....let’s see...a German
scientist....And an Italian politician. These days...if you don’t know English,
you are in danger of being excluded from what’s going on...in education, at
work ... and especially in the world of technological advances.
Very soon English will be the second language
of all the people in the world. This is happening while I am speaking to you.
We can’t be certain of how long the process will take but there is no doubt
that it will happen ...and my bet is that it will happen sooner rather than
later.
First of all English will be an obligatory
subject on every school curriculum throughout the world. By the year 2010
around two billion people...that’s about a third of the World’s
population.....Will speak English as their second language. This isn't my
prediction by the way. This is what the experts say.
We can see evidence of these changes all the
time. Let’s take the Eurovision Song Contest as an example. Whatever we might
think of the contest itself....one thing that has changed recently is that now
countries can opt to sing in English. In the last festival fourteen of the
twenty five competing countries asked for the rules to be changed to allow them
to sing in English. They argued that singing in their own language would put
them at a disadvantage. I suspect that in a few years time all twenty-five
countries will be singing in English.
And what exactly does all of this mean for
native speakers of English? Well, we are already in a minority. If the
calculations are correct, then in ten years time, majority speakers ... that is
non native English speakers...will outnumber native English speakers by four to
one. The two most important English’s won’t be British English and American
English. They’ll be Native English and Majority English. So native English
speakers will be handicapped. We will be the only people in the world who speak
just one language. Because ...let’s face it ...there won’t be much of a reason
for native English speakers to learn a second language. We...and not the
Majority English speakers...will be the disadvantaged.
As more and more people speak English it
makes sense that they will become more competent. They will start to control
more of the English resources being produced and to have a say in what should
or shouldn't be included in dictionaries and language books. This might seem
far fetched but it is already starting to happen. Let’s use Sweden as an
example. Their music exports....predominantly English...account for more than
thirty per cent of its export income. This exported English is bound to have an
effect on English in general. And this is just one small example.
So...all of you native English speakers out
there...get ready to throw away your phrase books...whether you’re planning to
visit Eastern Europe or the Himalayas...one thing you won’t have to worry about
is the language!
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