The English is Coming: How One Language is Sweeping the World Review

The English is Coming: How One Language is Sweeping the World
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The English is Coming: How One Language is Sweeping the World ReviewIt's an exciting time for the English language. All over the world, people are learning English and using it as a lingua franca, a common language. Everyone has an opinion on the merits and the detriments of a single language gaining so much influence - it makes communication easier if more people speak a common language, but at what price? Are other languages being shoved out of existence by this language gorilla?
Meanwhile, while people debate the influence English is having on the world, what influence is the world having on English? It's apparent that the English people are speaking in Singapore, for instance, is not the English people are speaking in Texas or in Zimbabwe. And English, or Englishes, aren't sitting still - they're mutating and morphing at a furious pace. What's happening?
Several recent books attempt to answer these questions and figure out where English is going. The English is Coming is one of the more entertaining ones I've seen lately. Leslie Dunton-Downer initially takes a traditional route by looking at the history of English as a language and as a lingua franca. (You can't tell where you're going until you know where you've been.) She does this in an easy manner, free of academic jargon. I imagine that middle schoolers and older would find it easy to follow.
Dunton-Downer's book is not only conversational in tone, but it appeals to those of us with short attention spans. It jumps from topic to topic smoothly, and breaks things up every so often with the story of a word that has transcended English and gone international, such as taxi and shampoo. Some of the stories are familiar - okay and bikini, for instance. Others choices are debatable, such as cookie and safari. But they are all interesting.
The English is Coming stands in contrast to the recent Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by Robert McCrum. McCrum was one of the writers of the excellent PBS series of several decades ago, The Story of English. In Globish, he loses a lot of his credibility by making outrageous claims that English is, by its nature, conducive to democracy and other fine qualities. Globish is rubbish. The English is Coming, on the other hand, is mostly even-handed about English, although Dunton-Downer makes the case that English is an excellent choice for a global language because it is inherently easy to learn. I wonder if that's true - it seems like a difficult language to learn, but as a native English speaker, I can't say.
Other recommended books on global English:
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler
English as a Global Language by David CrystalThe English is Coming: How One Language is Sweeping the World Overview

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