Hurricane Hits England

English has many different accents. We can even think of Englishes. Here we have an example of a poem read by Grace Nichols, a poet from the Caribbean who lives in Britain. Listen to the poem read by the author herself and try to understand what the Hurricane in England represents for her.




Poem: Hurricane Hits England
Written and performed by: Grace Nichols
Animation by: Jake Robinson

© Grace Nichols Media 2004


It took a hurricane, to bring her closer
To the landscape
Half the night she lay awake,
The howling ship of the wind
Its gathering rage,
Like some dark ancestral spectre,
Fearful and reassuring:

Talk to me Huracan
Talk to me Oya
Talk to me Shango
And Hattie,
My sweeping, back-home cousin.

Tell me why you visit.
An English coast?
What is the meaning
Of old tongues
Reaping havoc
In new places?

The blinding illumination,
Even as you short-
Circuit us
Into further darkness?

What is the meaning of trees
Falling heavy as whales
Their crusted roots
Their cratered graves?

O Why is my heart unchained?

Tropical Oya of the Weather,
I am aligning myself to you,
I am following the movement of your winds,
I am riding the mystery of your storm.

Ah, sweet mystery;
Come to break the frozen lake in me,
Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me,
come to let me know that the earth is the earth is the earth.

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.

Some foreign eyes look at you

Please, answer the following questions before watching the video:


.Is Chile an isolated country?

.Do you think your country is atractive, in what sense?

.How do you think your country welcomes foreign people?

.Do you think English is important in Chile for communicative purposes?



Watch the video if you have already answered the preceeding questions.
After having watched it, answer again, and check the differences.
Anyway, do you thing it's an objective or a subjective video?

English as a Global Language

Here you have some videos as a starting point for our debates.












David Crystal - English as a global language Download link -thanks to Jorge Molina.