Take the entertainer (actor) Jackie Chan, for instance. He had stardom in Hong Kong but wished to "reach for the stars" in the USA. Through thick and thin (unless it was part of 'the act') he appears to have made great headway in struggling for some degree of mastery of English. Hence his entertaining career has met with some success on his new acting frontier.
Foreign students wishing to be educated in English-speaking countries must also hone their English to achieve their goal. Economics causes international businessmen to learn English; diplomats and religious leaders to dialogue with it; and even science research largely to engage in its use.
English in its more proper 'standard' form is diminishing however. As more people of the world learn English as a second lg and add in all their respective countries' first language (L1) influence it gets altered and changed sometimes beyond recognition to the native English speaker.
Despite all that, the usage of English is decimating as more people in certain blocks of the world turn to other major languages (lg) in use in those sectors; such as Chinese, Arabic or Spanish regions. They use these lgs for basically the same reasons as English is being utilized in the economic, social, etc areas. All this in time, will lessen the number of users of English and although English usage is still important today, its decline can already be seen.
~ERC 2010~
~*~
No comments:
Post a Comment