Task: Give examples of other varieties of English than
those that are used in the Anglo-American core area, and reflect on their
distinctive character.
I am going to write about 3 different countries, and
talk about the
different types of English they speak. And
I have chosen three countries from three different parts of the world: and they
are France, India and South
Africa.
When it comes to France and India, I
will focuse a
lot on the EF English Index rapport. And this report ranks 63 different
countries, and shows how good countries are when it comes to English. I will
also write a little bit about the accents, and how
they stand out from standard English. Starting with
France…
According
to the EF English Proficiency Index report, France is number 29 out of 63
countries when it comes to English skills. It
has a moderate proficiency, and the country is actually nearly last when it
comes to European countries. Europe is the continent that has best results,
and the 11 best countries are from Europe, but France is further down. However, they do not really do much to improve this position. Improving their
English skills, is not really a subject of a national debate.
But
there are a lot of French employers seeking French people who can speak English.
But the French education system is failing. Parents think that only kids who
can afford to trips abroad, and etc., need English. The ones, who have a lot of
money, and goes to private schools, have high degrees of English proficiency
compare to others.
So,
a little bit about the accent; cause when French people speak
English; it is usually easy to understand that they come from France. Most
French people have a clear French accent. And you can specially notice
that when they pronounce the R-s and the H-s
differently, compared to the standard English. They don’t
have the typical, American R,
and they don’t
pronounce the H’s.
Moving
on to next country, and that is India...
India
is a part of what we call the BRIC countries. Brazil, Russia, India and China.
They are among the world’s ten largest economies, and together they account for
nearly half of the world’s population. Due to large public and private spending
on training, English language skills are improving steadily across the BRICs.
All four countries have big development when it comes to economy, particularly
India. India has a moderetate proficiency, and
they do better than the other BRIC countries. And India is number 25 in the
report.
In India, they have to official languages.
And they are Hindi and English. English is included, and mostly because of its
colonial history. And today, about 10% of the population use English. It is
used a lot in Universities and education on higher levels. There are a lot of Indians use
English as a daily language, but most people speak another language as well.
And there are not many people who has English as their mother language.
The
combination between Hindi and English is called Hinglish. It’s a basically English with an Indian
accent. Some words here and there are from the Hindi language. For an example: changa
(which means fine) machi
chips (which means fish and chips) and yaar (which means friend)
Most Indians speak with a broad accent, but they speak good english. However, sometimes it can be hard to understand them, specially if they have
a lot of
slang words include
Last country is South Africa. South
Africa is one of the most developed and
globalized countries in Africa. There are elven official languages in South
Africa. English and Afrikaans is the most used ones. Around 14 % use Afrikaans
as their home language, and about 10% use English, even though most people know
how to speak English. And there are over 50 million people living in South
Africa.
They
call the English South African English, and some people say it sounds a bit
like Australian. But there is difference between
the white people and the black people, because the white people often have an
accent that sounds more like the standard English, while most black people
speak a more Afrikaans-English. Anyway, the language is not hard to understand
at all. Of course, it has some slang words, mainly from the Afrikaans
language.
One
of the things they pronounce differently is the capital A. They often make an
E-sound when they are pronouncing A. For an example, when we say South Africa,
they say South Efrica.
Sources:
The content is fine - still, more examples would of course add a plus. We'll talk about language challenges.
SvarSlett