By: Santillan, Esther Ruth A
English is part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is like German or Chinese, a pluricentric language. This basically means, that there exists more than one version of standard English: British English and American English are well known. By year 1000, the English language consisted of approximately 40 000 words. Nowadays, the number has grown to more than 500 000. British colonialism in the 19th century and American capitalism and technological progress in the 20th century were undoubtedly the main causes for the spread of English throughout the world. Now is the era marked by the significant spread of English worldwide, with speakers of English as a second, foreign, or other language outnumbering native speakers (Jenkins, 2006;Mckay, 3002).
Kachru (1986, 1996) captured English’s pluricentric profile in a useful diagram he refers to as the Three Concentric Circles of English. The three circles, including the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle, and the Expanding Circle, represent three distinct types of speech fellowship of English, phases of the spread of the language, and particular characteristics of the uses of the language and of its acquisition and linguistic innovations (Kachru, 1986). According to Bhatt (2001), in terms of language acquisition and use, the circles comprise the following: (a) the Inner Circle, represents those countries where English is spoken as a first or native language (L1) in countries including English-speaking Canada, USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand; (b) the Outer Circle, represents countries wherein English is institutionalized as an additional language and learned as a second language (L2), such as Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, India, and Kenya; and (c) the Expanding Circle, represents countries such as Norway, Brazil, China, Korea, and Japan, where English is a foreign language (EFL).
At present, English goes by many names. It has been dubbed an international language, a lingua franca, a global language, and a world language (Erling, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; McArthur, 2004). In addition, led by scholars such as Kachru, English has developed a plural sense, with its different varieties designated world Englishes and the ensuing acronym, WE; these uses denote the essential plurality and inclusivity that informs the conception of English (Bhatt, 2001).
exegesis 