Birth of a language

History of English

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English has not always been the global language it is today. In the first chapter of its biography we discover that more than once English was in danger of extinction.
History of the English Language

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Some information about the TV series here

Spanglish

Trailer.


Stepping across the cultural divide.



Don't let me be misunderstood... We have just one world but we live in different ones... My homeland is my language, said a great Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, who, by the way, also wrote in English. As Hemingway and John Donne said, no one is an island. The others are not Hell, the other is a part of me. Beeing a Global language doesn't mean beeing the only language, or beeing an isolated language; on the contrary, it means the possibility of enrichment, it means permeability and interchange. When we learn English, we are not supposed to talk as native speakers, because we are not native speakers; having an accent is all right if our English is understandable and clear; we mustn't try to be perfect, but correct; when speaking another language, we need not stop beeing ourselves; authenticity is a positive value. No one is less than anyone else. Spanglish can be understood as an interlanguage between Spanish and English. Where are we? The times they are a changing, the river flows, and we have to row, that's for sure. No one's already there.


Should English be declared the official language of Government Business in the United States?


Debate on the officiality of English in the USA.


Another debate on the same subject.

On basic global English

What's the difference -if any- between Global English and Native English (English spoken by native speakers)? Should Global English be a simplified tool for direct and basic communication? Would that impoverish English? What do you think about BGE as understood in this video? Discuss.