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World Englishes, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 119131, 2001. 08832919

World Englishes in 2000 and beyond

YASUKATA YANO*

ABSTRACT: Spreading at the present rate, English will further increase its importance as the global lingua
franca in this century. At the same time, the rapid and extensive localization and nativization will
accelerate the ramification of English into varieties in the ESL (English as a Second Language) regions.
Our challenge then will be how to maintain common standards and mutual intelligibility among those
varieties of English. The users of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) who are relatively free from the
localization of English might be able to contribute to create, maintain, and develop the globalized
standards of Englishes. Such Englishes would be characterized as simple, plain, and regular in their
linguistic forms and socioculturally neutral in their interactional strategies. They would accommodate any
variety of English as far as it is comprehensible to the educated users of any variety, native or not.

1. INTRODUCTION1
The implications of globalization are contradictory. On the one hand, increased trade in a
global economy gives both rich and poor countries access to and opportunities for making
profit. It gives all the countries the opportunity to equally make use of advanced science
and technology, culture and all kinds of amenities to make our life comfortable. In 2000,
for example, Stephen Byers, the British secretary of state for trade and industry, mentioned
that the Republic of Korea (South Korea) was poorer than Pakistan in 1970. Now it is six
times richer than Pakistan as a result of having opened its market to the outside world.
India has rapidly grown to be an IT (Information Technology) center by producing highly
trained, competent, English-speaking IT engineers and by attracting IT-related business
corporations from all over the world as well as sending those competent IT specialists to
other parts of the world. Furthermore, by providing scholarships to children of lower
castes, India gives the opportunity to receive higher education to poor children who would
never have been given the means otherwise. Eventually that might lead to the disintegra-
tion of the caste system in the country.
On the other hand, economic globalization is controlled by the US-type market principle
of the fittest survives in free competition. As a result, a small number of multinational
conglomerates monopolize a huge sum of profit, unemployment increases, employment
becomes insecure, welfare policy is cut down, and pension plans and medicare plans
decrease. In India, those who have access to higher education get richer, those do not get
poorer. A newspaper (Asahi, 9 December 2000) reports that only three people in every
1,000 have personal computers in India, half the population is still illiterate, and the
poorest 250 million are left behind.
Thus economic globalization provides equal access, opportunities, and benefits, but at
the same time accelerates the digital divide, the information divide, the economic divide, and
whatever divisions exist rather than bridging those divides between those who have and
those who have not. As regional economic development accelerates global interdependence,

* Department of English Language and Literature, School of Education, Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo 1698050, Japan. E-mail: yano@mn.waseda.ac.jp

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120 Yasukata Yano

that global interdependence accelerates the digital and other divisions and inequalities
rather than building bridges, due to the unidirectional flow of influence from the richer,
advanced regions where scientific, technological, and economic power reside to the poorer,
less advanced regions.
A relevant queston is: How does this globalization affect our linguistic life? Let us look
into a crystal ball to see what will most likely happen to the English language as a global
lingua franca in the future. The global spread of the English language is rapid and
extensive, but the spread itself is ambivalent. On the one hand, English has the essential
value of being a means of global communication, that is an unprecedented resource for
mutual understanding in this time when we live in multilateral rather than bilateral
relations. On the other hand, the global spread of such a powerful and convenient common
language is driving minor languages to extinction, thus depriving us of the privilege to
understand different beliefs, values, and views which help us to develop insight into the
human mind and spirit, and the precious opportunities to liberate us from the monolingual
and monocultural perspectives.
Today it is a matter of common knowledge among second language acquisition
professionals that learning a foreign language not only involves learning rules of
pronunciation and grammar as well as new vocabulary, but includes the ability to use
these linguistic resources in ways that are socially and culturally appropriate among
speakers of that language. In other words, it is necessary to develop in oneself commu-
nicative competence in the target language (Yano, 1995: 362). As far as English is learned
by immigrants in English-speaking societies such as Britain and the United States, there
does not seem to be any problem in learning the language in the sociocultural framework
of these societies. However, problems arise when English is learned as a second or foreign
language in societies where English is not used as the native language, because English is
no longer used in the Anglo-American sociocultural framework alone.

2. THE WORLDWIDE SPREAD OF ENGLISH

When we rethink what it is to learn English as a second or foreign language, we first

need to think of the unique situation the English language has come to occupy as the result
of its unparalleled spread over the world, especially to non-Western societies.
The important features of English are what may be called hybridity and permeability,
which helped it to expand quickly as a world language. English has changed substantially
in its 1,500 years of history, reflecting contact with other languages and freely borrowing
from them in its early days, from indigenous Celtic and Latin, later from Scandinavian
Norse and Norman French, and more recently from languages spoken in the British
colonies. Today English has spread globally among second-language users and those who
use it as a foreign language.
It is predictable that in the area where English is a second language, English will develop
in ways which reflect local indigenous cultures and languages, diverging from the variety of
English spoken in Britain or North America. The close relationship between language,
territory and cultural identity is being challenged by globalizing forces. Graddol (1997:
23) predicted that within a decade or so, the number of people who speak English as a
second language would exceed the number of native speakers, and, therefore, the center of
authority regarding the language would shift from native speakers. This numerical
majority of ``nonnatives'' has already been reached.

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World Englishes in 2000 and beyond 121

This shift of power over the language will not take place just because the number of
nonnative speakers far exceeds that of native speakers. It has to do with who those
speakers are. Crystal (1997: 58) explains why Latin became an international language
throughout the Roman Empire. It was not because the Romans were more numerous than
the peoples they subjected; they were simply more powerful militarily, technologically, and
economically. It takes military power to establish an international language, but it takes
economic power to maintain and expand it. The histories of the British Empire and the
United States illustrate this. After implementing colonial policies ruthlessly by military
power, Britain became the world's leading industrial and trading country by the beginning
of the nineteenth century. During the twentieth century, English was maintained and
promoted as a powerful international language through the economic supremacy of the
new American superpower.
It is true that the economies of developing countries are gradually achieving productivity
levels typical of developed countries, facilitated by technology and skills transfer from
richer countries. Graddol (1997: 28) cites the statistics that Britain took 58 years to double
its per capita income, but countries benefiting from flows of knowledge, expertise and
technology transferred from the west have been able to double their income in reduced
time scales the US 47 years, Japan 37 years, Brazil 18 years, Indonesia 16 years, South
Korea 12 years, and China 8 years. The world's `Big Three' trading blocs North America,
the European Union and Japan produced and circulated 55 percent of the world's wealth
(total $25 trillion) within them in 1990. He estimates, however, that the share of world
wealth in 2050 (total $250 trillion, average world growth at 4%) of the Big Three blocs will
drop to a mere 12 percent. In contrast, Asia will have a 60 percent share and the rest 28
percent.
What effect will this shift in economic relations have on the use of English as a global
language? A general rule of thumb in international trade is that selling must be carried out
in the customer's language. The linguistic implication of this is that language popularity
will follow markets. In the United States, universities saw a sudden rise in the number of
students enrolling in Chinese studies when then President Nixon normalized USChina
diplomatic relations in 1972. The worldwide increase in student enrollment in courses in
Japanese as a foreign language closely reflected a rise in the value of the Japanese yen
against the US dollar during the period 1982 to 1989 (Coulmas, 1992: 78). However,
because the multilateral nature of international trade brings with it a greater reliance on
lingua franca, international trading among Asian countries is expected to increasingly rely
on Asian varieties of English, rather than on Asian languages themselves. For example,
ASEAN member countries use English as a common language rather than Bahasa
Indonesia or Bahasa Malaysia.

3. THE CHANGE IN KACHRU'S THREE CIRCLES OF ENGLISH SPEAKERS

It was Kachru (1985) who divided English speakers into three groups (Figure 1) and
since then this model of three concentric circles has been the standard framework of world
Englishes studies. They are the ``inner circle,'' where they speak English as a first (native)
language (ENL); the ``outer circle,'' where they speak it as a second or additional language
(ESL); and the ``expanding circle,'' where they use it as a foreign language (EFL). These
concentric circles of Englishes have been defined with reference to historical, socio-
linguistic and literary contexts.

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Inner circle
(ENL)

Outer circle
(ESL)

Expanding circle
(EFL)

Figure 1

However, it may be necessary to slightly modify the Kachruvian circles in the course of
this century. One factor is that varieties of English in the outer circle (ESL) have become
increasingly established. Catherine Lim, Anne Pakir, Mary Tay, and many other Singa-
poreans (personal communication, 19902000), for example, feel they are native speakers
of English and they do have native speaker's intuition. Kachru (1999) recognizes that these
ESL speakers are functionally native speakers and proposes a distinction between ``genetic
nativeness'' and ``functional nativeness'' of the English language, where ``functional
nativeness'' is not to be related to genetic mapping of the languages of the region. Yet
the English language must functionally penetrate the society extensively and deeply. These
functionally native ESL speakers in the outer circle are expected to far exceed those
genetically native English speakers in the inner circle not only by their numbers but by
economic and technological power. That might make the boundary between the inner
circle and the outer circle less clear and thus make the demarcation less significant.
The other factor is that the concept of the inner circle itself may become questionable
because of continued inflow of immigrants and increase of foreign residents. A newspaper
reports that the number of nonnative English speakers will soon exceed that of native
speakers in the states of California, Hawaii, and Texas in the United States. Such
internationalization of community components in Britain, the US, and other countries
in the inner circle may make it necessary to redefine what the inner circle is.
In due course, therefore, the demarcation between the inner circle and the outer circle in
the Kachruvian concentric circles will become more obscure and therefore less meaningful,
although that between the outer circle and the expanding circle will remain as distinct as it
is now. Speakers of English as a native language (genetic and functional those with the
native speaker's intuition who can infinitely generate grammatical and appropriate
linguistic forms in a given situation and make judgements on the grammaticality and
acceptability of linguistic forms) and speakers of English as a foreign language will remain
distinctly separated. A slightly modified version of the Kachruvian three-circle model will
then be the one shown in Figure 2, where a dotted line is used instead of a solid line for the
circle between the inner and outer spaces, indicating that it is less clear and will eventually
disappear.
Further, the future of English can be envisaged from a three-dimensional sociolinguistic
perspective rather than the two-dimensional Kachruvian three-circle model perspective.

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World Englishes in 2000 and beyond 123

Inner circle
(genetic ENL)

Outer circle
(functional ENL)

Expanding circle
(EFL)

Figure 2

First, the concentricity of the three circles which indicates the idea of the native speaker-
centeredness can be removed and all the varieties of English those spoken by genetically
native speakers, functionally native speakers, and nonnative speakers will be on a parallel
with each other. The idea behind this removal of concentricity of the Kachruvian model
arises from the prediction that within this century ESL speakers will establish their
varieties firmly enough not to eagerly and necessarily seek correct models in British,
North American and other varieties of English spoken by the genetically native speakers in
the inner circle. As a result, ENL's role as the source of models of correctness will be
significantly reduced and ENL speakers will eventually join ESL speakers as the speakers
of ``one of the varieties of English'' while those ESL speakers in the outer circle will
increasingly feel and identify themselves as native speakers of English (their varieties) and
feel entitled to be treated on equal terms with genetically native speakers.
It should be added here that it is possible that some EFL speakers can also become
functionally ESL speakers (if ESL speakers generally can be termed ``functionally native
speakers,'' those EFL speakers might be called ``functionally semi-native speakers''
perhaps) through the intensive and extensive exposure to and use of English, although
Kachru did not refer to these EFL speakers. In the European Union, for example, English
is used daily in media, business, professional discourse, higher education and other
intranational communication along with the mother tongues (and a few other languages)
as well as a global lingua franca. In due course, a similar shift from EFL to ESL can take
place in countries in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East.
Second, the distinction between the use of English as a means of international
communication and its use in domestic daily life can be represented in terms of the
social dialectal vertical concept of ``acrolect'' and ``basilect'' used in creole studies. The use
of English for international communication and for formal and public domestic inter-
action is acrolectal in that it is characterized by its formality of linguistic forms and by the
relative absence of local and indigenous linguistic and sociocultural aspects. On the other
hand, the use of English for domestic communication is basilectal in that it is informal,
colloquial, and indigenous in terms of both linguistic forms and sociocultural aspects.
This perspective is shown in Figure 3, where each variety of English is depicted as an
equal-sized cylinder with no distinction between ENL, ESL, and EFL. Seen from above,
the varieties appear to be a bundle of circles of equal size indicated by dotted lines to show

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124 Yasukata Yano

EGL EFL (Japanese, etc.)

(acrolect) EFL (Danish, Dutch,
Swedish, etc.)

ESL
American variety
(mesolectbasilect)
Indian variety
Nigerian variety
Singaporean variety

Figure 3

the looseness of the boundaries among varieties. Seen from the side, the upper portion is
the acrolectal use of variety as EGL (English as a Global Language). Again the boundaries
of varieties are drawn in dotted lines to show that they are not distinct while the lower part
is for the basilectal use for domestic communication, which is depicted by solid lines to
indicate that these varieties are moving toward the establishment of their own linguistic
forms, meanings, and uses. Each variety shows a gradation of vertical, social dialectal
levels in terms of formality from the acrolect at the top through a mesolect to the basilect at
the bottom. The line separating the international use at the top and the lower domestic use
in each variety is dotted, suggesting that the demarcation is loose and not distinct.
The proper use of the acrolect and basilect of English resembles, respectively, that of the
standard and formal language in formal and unfamiliar interactions and local and/or
intimate social dialect in informal in-group interactions. It also resembles the idea of
``glocal,'' (coined from ``global'' and ``local'') by Okushima (1995: 2) in the meaning of
having openness and internationality and at the same time having local self-identity as
well. Pakir (1999) applies this idea to language studies and refers to English as developing
into a GLOCAL language, which has an international status in its spread but expresses
local conditions in the Kachruvian outer circle and expanding circle. Regardless of whether
it is ENL, ESL, or EFL, English seems destined to be ``glocal'' in the future.
EFL speakers do not have the domestic (basilectal) use of English and they belong only
to the global use (the acrolectal space above the dotted line in Figure 3). Japanese people,
for example, use English only as a means of international communication, namely, in their
interactions with non-Japanese who do not speak Japanese. It is interesting to note,
however, that EFL speakers in Western Europe and Scandinavian countries have been
using English domestically quite intensively and extensively, thus moving into the ESL
territory by internalizing and nativizing English. If that is the future configuration, will
English as a global lingua franca be able to maintain intelligibility and standard norms? Or
will it diverge into mutually unintelligible varieties and eventually into different languages
as Latin did a thousand years ago? It is difficult to predict how English will develop in the
future, but the main areas of development in the form and use may not necessarily come
from genetically native speakers of English.
Figure 3 envisaged English from a perspective different from the Kachruvian concentric
three circles. Nonetheless, his concept of the concentric circles will hold in the description
of English use in that the distinction between nonnative speakers and native speakers,

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World Englishes in 2000 and beyond 125

genetic and functional, distinctly remains. To illustrate the point, let us refer to tennis and
quarreling. Tennis is in a sense an ``uncooperative'' sport in that the player tries to hit the
ball to a place where his/her opponent will have the least possible chance of returning it,
and quarreling is uncooperative in so far as participants try to hurt each other's feelings.
Yet in both cases the players and the quarreling persons are cooperating in the Gricean
sense of cooperation unless one stops participating in the activity. On the surface, both
cases do not seem to be collaborative in a sociological sense because they are competitive,
yet on the deeper level they are cooperating. As long as there is a big gap between the
speakers who have native speaker's intuition and those who do not, Kachru's concentricity
holds although three circles will be reduced to two genetic and functional ENL and EFL
circles.

4. LOCALIZATION VERSUS GLOBAL UNIFORMITY OF ENGLISH

The English language will certainly continue to play an important role as a global
language in world communication, international business, and social and cultural affairs.
However, will a single world standard of English develop over and above varieties of first-
language, second-language and foreign-language uses?
One possibility is that the current national standards of North American and British
English will continue to be the models for global usage. Especially, the US has four times
as many first-language users of English as any other country in the inner circle. It has been
the major force in international developments in science and technology in the twentieth
century. It controls electronic and other new industrial innovations. Another is that some
global standard or a set of standards will arise above the current national models for
international communication and teaching. The need for intelligibility in international
communication has already motivated the learning of English as an international language
in many parts of the world.
Crystal (1997: 137) maintains that a new form of English, World Standard Spoken
English, will arise in international communications in that most people are already
``multidialectal'' to a greater or lesser extent. People change their formal and informal,
distant and intimate and other speech styles according to their interlocutors, topics, and
the contexts. Certainly he is right about the fact that written standard English unites the
English-speaking world.
English has always developed new spoken varieties in its first-language, second-language,
and foreign-language usage. At times difficulties of comprehension arise between the first-
language users and the second-language users, but not to the extent of mutual unintelligi-
bility. International radio and television programs via satellite and computer-based com-
munication systems such as the Internet are increasingly available globally to familiarize
both senders and receivers with the existence of other norms. Newspapers, textbooks and
other printed material in standard written English also show very little variation in the
different English-speaking countries. Although new varieties of English will become
increasingly different as time goes by, those speakers will always be able to use acrolectal
forms to meet the demands of the international communication situations.
Graddol (1997: 56) predicts that the widespread use of English as a language of wider
communication will continue to exert pressure towards global uniformity, requiring
mutual intelligibility and common standards. At the same time English will develop an
increasing number of local varieties as the basis for constructing cultural identities when

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126 Yasukata Yano

more and more foreign-language users turn into second-language users. However, these
diverging trends will not threaten the role of English as a lingua franca because, since the
first records of the language, there have always been major differences between varieties of
English.
However, there will develop a loose league of acrolect-level local varieties of English as is
shown in Figure 3, which have less regional specificity and have global mutual intelligi-
bility, while keeping their local sociocultural uniqueness and identities for intranational
use. There will be an amalgamation of varieties, rather than a single standard. The other
possibility, though not very likely, is that English will diverge into many mutually
unintelligible local varieties as Latin developed into various Romance languages such as
French, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian and Spanish (though it maintained itself as an
international written language until the eighteenth century). Or it may ramify into a variety
of mutually unintelligible dialects except in writing, like Chinese.

5. ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The above-mentioned trend of internalization or nativization of English is the inevitable
consequence in such countries as India, Nigeria and Singapore where it is used as a second
language. Reflecting local culture and languages, their varieties of English are increasingly
divergent from the variety of English used in Britain or North America. When they cease
to depend on British English for a correctness model and assert that English is their own
language, as some already do, through which they express their own values and identities,
we will see more varieties of English developed and established in the second-language
regions. It is yet to be seen, however, whether those varieties will increase their own
uniqueness or converge into larger categories such as Asian English, Euro-English and
Latin English (English spoken in Mexico and Central and South American countries)
through frequent interactions among themselves as shown in Figure 4. In the course of
time, African English and Arab English (English spoken in Islamic countries the world
over) might be added.

African English

Asian English

EGL Euro-English

Latin English

Arab English

Figure 4

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World Englishes in 2000 and beyond 127

Even in regions where English is used as a foreign language such as Europe, the
tendencies towards the nativization of English have become increasingly conspicuous as is
mentioned above. There is growing evidence that English has become the major business
lingua franca. Many organizations use English as a working language if not an official
language. Crystal (1997: 80) refers to the fact that 99 percent of organizations in Europe
use English as an official language. English has also become a familiar means of
communication for many Europeans. They are daily exposed to English through English
TV and radio programs, and English newspapers and magazines. Graddol (1997: 46) refers
to a 1995 survey that shows that 70.2 percent of Europeans felt able to understand English
well enough to follow TV news or read a newspaper in the language (43.8% of them felt
able to understand French and 40.2% German). Accordingly English is currently the most
widely studied foreign language in the European Union (60.3% according to Graddol
1997: 45). English is the foreign language most taught at the primary age in Europe. Since
the 1960s, English has become the usual medium of instruction in higher education for
many European countries. For example, advanced courses in the Netherlands are widely
taught in English (Crystal 1997: 1023). If students, especially in science, must read
monographs and periodicals written in English, it is reasonable to teach advanced courses
in that language.
Unlike Europe, Japan is a typical country where English is and will certainly stay a
foreign language in that it will function only as a means of communication with non-
Japanese in international settings. It will probably never be used within the Japanese
community and form part of the speaker's identity repertoire. There will not be a distinctly
local model of English, established and recognizable as Japanese English, reflecting the
Japanese culture and language.
Yet it is inevitable that Japanese linguistic and sociocultural characteristics will seep into
the English of Japanese speakers. For example, the Japanese language doesn't distinguish
[l] and [r], so we can consult Wrongman's Dictionary; Japanese doesn't have [v], which is
replaced by [b], and [ou] is not distinguished with [o:], making vote and bought homo-
phones, so during the US Presidential voting in Florida, the vote was bought. The language
has an open syllable structure and vowels are inserted to break up English consonant
clusters. Street becomes [sutori:to]. It does not have post modification either and the
phrase ``a girl who is dancing on the street'' becomes ``a dancing on the street girl.''
Japanese people don't discuss a matter, they discuss about a matter. Japanese prefer to use
the passive structure and ``We decided on the plan'' is usually ``The plan was decided on.''
And the response of ``yes'' and ``no'' corresponds not to the content but to the form of the
question sentence. So when asked ``Don't you want another drink?'' the answer is most
likely ``Yes, I don't.''
Nevertheless, Japanese will not use English intensively and extensively enough to
establish what might be called Japanese English in the same way as Indian English or
Singapore English. Instead, it will be a kind of formal and normative form of English,
showing little regional variation and meant for only occasional public and formal
communication. It would be like the standard form of a language against vernacular,
informal varieties with a strong geographical and social basis. Furthermore, unlike what
Fairclough (1989) claims, it will not conform to the norm of a particular society where
English is used as a first language such as Britain and the United States because English
would not be used extensively enough in Japan. It will be above or outside of the norms of

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128 Yasukata Yano

respective English-speaking societies in terms of sociocultural constraints. In other words,

it will be socioculturally and geographically neutral.

6. PLAINER, SIMPLER, AND MORE REGULAR ENGLISH

The importance of teaching English is recognized in the extended circle. South Korea
has started English education at the elementary level, and Japan is going to follow suit.
Studies and proposals on what variety of English to teach and how are numerous in the
extended circle. However, this is nothing new. There have been countless discussions and
proposals in the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle.
To cite just three, Strevens, who devoted himself to simplifying and regularizing English
for the learners of English as a foreign language, proposed a simplified version of English
called ``Seaspeak'' in 1980 for maritime international communication (Strevens et al.,
1984). It is a simplified English, whose grammar, vocabulary and message structure are
standardized. For example, the distress signal is MAYDAY, and 15 December 2000 is to be
read ``day one five, month one two, year two-zero-zero-zero,'' to avoid misunderstanding.
When you ask a question, you prepose Question to it; when you answer, you start it with
Answer; and when you tell a reason, start with Reason, avoiding other expressions such as
because, so that, in order to, as, to, and so on. You use only Say again for What did you say?
I can't hear you. Please repeat that, and so forth. Seaspeak can be a little too extreme, but
similar standardization of expressions to avoid peculiar idioms and ambiguous ones is
going on in other fields of communication such as international aviation and computer-
mediated communication.
Quirk (1982) proposed Nuclear English, which possesses properties such as learnability,
communicative adequacy, and extensibility (from its ``common core,'' a subset of natural
English). Nuclear English is free of the presupposition of Anglo-American culture. It will
not put first-language speakers of English at an advantage over others in international
communication. And it has enough communicative adequacy not to be taken as a second-
class language, as pidgins are. As appropriate nuclei in grammar, for instance, he suggests
replacing the burdensome tags of tag questions with simpler isn't that right? or is that so?
Or he suggests restricting the uses of polysemic modals such as may, to avoid overlap.
May, in He may go, might be restricted to epistemic use (be possible) and excluded from
deontic use, which can be rephrased as, He is permitted to go.
Suzuki (1975) also proposed ``Englic.'' It is a variety of English dissociated as much as
possible from the sociocultural norm of Britain, the US, or other countries where English
is a first language. It is a socioculturally neutral medium for international communication.
All of these proposals, while they are worthy of exploration, have not been developed to be
of practical use yet.
One of the most important trends, however, is the plain English campaign which took
place in Britain and the US (Crystal, 1988: 26673, cited in Yano, 1991: 31718). It is the
movement to expel unnecessarily complicated language from application forms, official
letters, contracts, insurance policies and other documents produced in government offices,
businesses, and other organizations. It started in the late 1970s and by 1985 over 21,000
forms had been revised and 15,000 withdrawn in Britain. By changing to plain English,
questions, complaints, and erroneously-filled answers against official notices, business
letters, instructions, application forms and such have decreased and organizations, which
previously had to employ staff to answer them, have saved time and cost. Accidents caused

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World Englishes in 2000 and beyond 129

by misunderstanding of medical instructions have also gone down. Although shifting to

plain English is not problem-free, it will greatly help English to be simple, plain and clear,
the very condition to be a global language.

7. THE FEATURES OF ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE

What features for international communication is English supposed to have? Above all,
English should be as simple and regular as possible in its linguistic forms, in its rules of use,
and socioculturally as neutral as possible in order to attain high learnability and usability.
If it is ever possible, English for global use should be dissociated from the norm of any
English-speaking society. It would be what I called (Yano 1995) emic English. The idea of
-emic as against the -etic of the American structural linguistics of the 1950s is applicable to
characterization of global English in that global English takes note of only significant
functions and disregards minor differences. Thus English for international communication
accommodates any varieties of English as far as they are comprehensible to the educated
speakers of any other varieties. It also is free from the sociocultural constraints of any
English-speaking society's norms of communicative behavior. In order to be equipped with
those features, the language should go through gradual modifications in its linguistic
forms, its rules of use and its strategies in communicative use.
On the phonological level, global English requires that the speakers can distinguish
phonemic differences both in recognition and production but not necessarily phonetic
differences because the aim is to decode the meaning carried by the utterance and not the
utterance itself. Speakers should be able to distinguish [p] from [b] and [t], for example,
but not necessarily [p] (in spot) from an aspirated one (in pot) and unreleased one (in
stop). Of course if the speaker can make the phonetic distinction, it is better, but there's
nothing wrong with having a foreign accent as long as we can communicate adequately.
The use of regular pronunciation of the plural suffix ( [-z] after voiced sound, [-s] after
voiceless sound, and [-iz] after sibilant sound) should be encouraged for newly-coined
words or those newly borrowed from foreign languages. At the same time, irregular
forms such as [hauziz] for houses (the plural form of the noun, not the verb) should be
regularized as [hausiz] on the basis of the present rule of pronunciation, not on the
historical one. Spelling should be changed to reflect the present pronunciation. Such
informal spellings as nite for `night' and thru for `through' are welcome and should be
encouraged. Regarding the pronunciation of borrowed words as well, the final [t] of such
words as beret, ballet, debut should be pronounced according to the English phonological
rule as is done in the case of restaurant.
On the morphological level, the use of regular forms both in morpheme and the choice
of vocabulary items should be encouraged. Take the plural morpheme of countable nouns,
for example, choose the -(e)s form in Greek/Latin-originated words (e.g., alumnus, formula
and stimulus alumnuses, formulas and stimuluses rather than alumni, formulae and stimuli
some of which are already being practiced). It would be hard but in the distant future,
men would be mans as it is already regularized as a proper noun, Sony's Walkmans,
Disneyland's Micky Mouses, not Micky Mice. Irregular verb conjugation such as drive-
drove-driven and take-took-taken should be regularized to drive-drived-drived and take-
taked-taked. Regarding the choice of vocabulary items, those words that play essential and
canonical semantic roles could be learned first. Thin, for instance, should be learned before
such words as slender, slim, lean, and skinny, which are in the same semantic field.

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130 Yasukata Yano

On the syntactic level, the above-mentioned idea of Quirk's (1982) Nuclear English can
be applied with some modifications. The tags of tag questions, for example, can be an
invariant form (not necessarily his isn't that right? or is that so?). The American English
question form, Do you have . . .? in ``Do you have a book?'' is more regular than the British
Have you . . . ? in ``Have you a book?''
On the pragmatic level, speakers of English as a foreign language can also contribute to
liberating the use of English from constraints of individual societies' norms of language use
by promoting culture-free varieties of English use for international communication. By
avoiding expressions heavily-laden with beliefs, views and values of a particular society or
accommodating silence and non-eye contact in non-verbal skills, the speakers of English as
a foreign language may be able to contribute to the promotion of some common
denominator-like language use to help create a global English communicative model,
which would depend more on the language itself and, therefore, be more suitable for global
use and less resisted by the speakers of English as a foreign language because of its
neutrality.

8. CONCLUSION
As we have seen above, English has substantially changed in the past 1,500 years. It is
changing today and will keep changing in the future. If the speakers of it as a foreign
language contribute to regularizing it, English as a means of international communication
will be easier for speakers of other languages to learn and to use.
The English language will maintain its importance in world communication, interna-
tional businesses, and other affairs. A single world standard will not arise, but neither will
English fragment into mutually unintelligible local varieties. Certainly local varieties will
increase as English shifts from being a foreign language to being a second language, and
from being a second language to being a first language, each variety will in its own way
establish a norm, especially when those varieties cease to look to the British or the US
varieties as a model for correctness. The growing demand and importance of English for
international communication, however, will require mutual intelligibility and common
standards among varieties. As far as the demand lasts, English will continue to be a means
of world communication, helped by the development of international media and computer-
mediated communication such as the Internet, as well as being the means of expression for
local culture and identities.

NOTE
1. This paper is a revised version of a plenary address given at the 7th International Conference of the
International Association for World Englishes, Portland, Oregon, December 15, 2000.

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(Received 1 February 2000.)

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