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For example, in the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe, knowledge of English as a second language is nearly universal, with over 80 percent of the population able to use it, [91] and thus English is routinely used to communicate with foreigners and often in higher education. In these countries, although English is not used for ...
However, English is not the only language used in major international organizations, because many countries do not recognize English as a universal language. For instance, the United Nations use six languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.
Braj Kachru divides the use of English into three concentric circles. [8]The inner circle is the traditional base of English and includes countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland and the anglophone populations of the former British colonies of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and various islands of the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean.
For example, With overwhelmingly greater-than-chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are postpositional. Strictly speaking, a tendency is not a kind of universal, but exceptions to most statements called universals can be found. For example, Latin is an SOV language with prepositions. Often it turns out that these exceptional ...
For example, many linguistic theories, particularly in generative grammar, give competence-based explanations for why English speakers would judge the sentence in (1) as odd. In these explanations, the sentence would be ungrammatical because the rules of English only generate sentences where demonstratives agree with the grammatical number of ...
English as a lingua franca (ELF) is the use of the English language "as a global means of inter-community communication" [1] [2] and can be understood as "any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice and often the only option".
While programs offering English language skills have broadened access to English internationally, they have been criticized for promoting linguistic imperialism, a phenomenon that entails the transfer of a dominant language to minority language speakers as a result of hegemonic and economic power structures. [12]
The English language descends from Old English, the West Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons. Most of its grammar, its core vocabulary and the most common words are Germanic. [1] However, the percentage of loans in everyday conversation varies by dialect and idiolect, even if English vocabulary at large has a greater Romance influence.