研究生英语阅读教程(基础级2版)课文01及其翻译

研究生英语阅读教程(基础级2版)课文及翻译

World English: A Blessing or a Curse? Universal language

By Tom McArthur

[1] In the year 2000, the language scholar Glanville Price, a Welshman, made the following assertion as editor of the book Languages in Britain and Ireland:

For English is a killer. It is English that has killed off Cumbric, Cornish, Norn and Manx. There are still parts of these islands where sizeable communities speak languages that were there before English. Yet English is everywhere in everyday use and understood by all or virtually(actually) all, constituting such a threat to the three remaining Celtic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh... that their long-term future must be considered... very greatly at risk. (p 141)

Some years earlier, in 1992, Robert Phillipson, English academic who currently (at the present/ at the moment) works in Denmark, published with Oxford a book entitled Linguistic Imperialism. In it, he argued that the major English-speaking countries, the worldwide English-language teaching industry, and notably (especially) the British Council pursue policies of linguistic aggrandisement. He also associated such policies with a prejudice which he calls linguicism [a condition parallel to(equal to/ similar to) racism and sexism]. As Phillipson sees it, leading institutions and individuals within the predominantly "white" English-speaking world, have [by design(=deliberately) or default(=mistake)] encouraged or at least tolerated—and certainly have not opposed—the hegemonic spread of English, a spread which began some (about) three centuries ago as (when) economic and colonial expansion. [2] Phillipson himself worked for some years for the British Council, and he is not alone among Anglophone academics who have sought to point up the dangers of English as a world language. The internationalization of English has in the last few decades been widely discussed in terms of three groups: first, the ENL countries, where English is a native language (this group also being known as the "inner circle"); second, the ESL countries, where English is a second language (the "outer circle"); and third, the EFL countries, where English is a foreign language (the "expanding circle"). Since the 1980s, when such terms became common, this third circle has in fact expanded to take in the entire planet.

[3] For good or for ill, there has never been a language quite like English. There have been many "world languages", such as Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. By and large, we now view them as more or less benign, and often talk with admiration and appreciation about the cultures associated with them and what they have given to the world. And it is fairly (very) safe to do this, because none of them now poses much of a threat.

[4] English however is probably (perhaps) too close for us to be able to analyze and judge it as dispassionately (objectively), as we may now discuss the influence of Classical Chinese on East Asia or of Classical Latin on Western Europe. The jury is still out in the trial of the English language, and may take several centuries to produce its verdict, but even so we can ask, in this European Year of Languages, whether Price and Phillipson are right to warn us all about the language that I am using at this very moment. [warn sb. of sth.]

[5] It certainly isn't hard(difficult) to look for situations (examples) where people might call English a curse. An example is Australia, which is routinely regarded as a straightforward English-speaking country. The first Europeans who went there often used Latin to describe and discuss the place. The word Australia itself is Latin; evidently (Obviously/ Apparently) no one at the time thought of simply calling it "Southland" (which is what Australia means). In addition

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