A little while back Wired Magazine had an interesting article: How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand. It’s all about how so many people speak English as non-native speakers that stand “mispronunciations” are actually becoming standard.
There’s a similar (but opposite) thread on the BBC today: Italian call to use fewer English words
Brits often say that English English is the accent to teach because that’s where it was “invented”, Americans often say that more Americans speak English so an American accent should be standard. Personally I’d go with the British accent, because if you speak with one of those in the States people love you! ; )
But if you take that argument to its natural conclusion, the Indian accent should be the standard as there are more Indian native speakers of English than anywhere else. Indeed when I do workshops in India the teachers don’t let me “correct” their pronunciation, claiming that it’s the pronunciation of the 21st century!
I often hear the same thing in Japan, however unfortunately with Japan having a birthrate of just 1.21 then simple numbers tell you the future of English will be a battle between Indian and Chinese!
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I guess it makes allot more sense than most of us realize.
When i first came to Japan and didn’t speak Japanese -and long before i started teaching i must add – i found even myself slipping into some pretty bad grammar just from – listening to it. There’s allot of “English” in parts of London (or even the Bath area where i come from) that i really really don’t understand too – and it’s amazing how much ‘street’ language filters into the media even if the bad grammar doesn’t. When you think of it like that – something as big as the whole of Asia (not forgetting all the other countries out there, of course) it seems obvious there’ll be an influence. We just don’t tend to think about it that way, i suppose.