Study Of The Spread Of English And Its Localized Varieties

There has never been a language so widely spread or spoken by so many people as English. With the military support of the British Empire first and the economic support of the United States later, English is currently used in more than one hundred countries as the native language, second language or lingua franca. As a result, English is viewed as the world language. Since the price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use, many localized varieties of English emerge. They are roughly divided into three types. The first type belongs to the branch of British English, including English English, Australian English, New Zealand English and South African English. The second type involves the branch of North American English, including American English and Canadian English. The last type of varieties arises when English is used as a second language in such countries as India, Singapore and the Philippines. After years of development, they have formed their own distinctivefeatures at the levels of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, which are worth examining in detail. Although English is popular worldwide nowadays, it is also meeting some challenges, the biggest one from Chinese.