新鮮視頻:英語的歷史之全球的語言

The history of English in ten minutes. Chapter ten, global English or whose language is it anyway? In the 1,500 years since the Romans left Britain, English has shown a unique ability to absorb, evolve, invade and if we're honest, steal. After foreign settlers got it started, it grew into a fully fledged language all of its own before leaving home and traveling the world, first via the high seas, then via the high-speed broadband connection, pilfering words from over 350 languages and establishing itself as a global institution. All this despite a written alphabet that bears no correlation to how it sounds and a system of spelling that even Dan Brown couldn't decipher. Right now, around 1.5 billion people speak English. Of these, about a quarter are native speakers, a quarter speak it as their second language and half are able to ask for directions to a swimming pool. There's Hinglish, which is Hindi English, Chinglish, which is Chinese English and Singlish, which is Singaporean English, and not that bit where they speak in musicals. So in conclusion, the language has got so little to do with England these days. It may well be time to stop calling it English. If someone does think up a new name for it, it should probably be in Chinese.