词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Future of English

Broadcast on Coast to Coast: March 18, 2004

English is fast becoming the language of science around the world, but what is its future among everyday speakers? One expert points out that the percentage of native English speakers is declining globally while the languages of other rapidly growing regions are being spoken by increasing numbers of people. But, as VOA Science Correspondent David McAlary reports, English will continue to remain widespread and important:

DM: Just 10 years ago, native English speakers were second only to Chinese in number. But British language scholar David Graddol [GRAD-doll] says English will probably drop in dominance by the middle of this century to rank, after Chinese, about equally with Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu, a south-Asian tongue closely related to Hindi. He points out that the decline will not be in total numbers of English speakers, but in relative terms.

GRADDOL: "The number of people speaking English as a first language continues to rise, but it isn't rising nearly as fast as the numbers of many other languages around the world simply because the main population group has been largely in the lesser¹ developed countries where languages other than English have been spoken."

In a recent article in the journal Science, Mr. Graddol noted² that three languages not now near the top of the list of the most widely spoken might be there soon. These are Bengali, Tamil, and Malay -- spoken in south and southeast Asia.

But another expert on the English language says Mr. Graddol underestimates the future of its dominance. David Crystal of the University of Wales, the author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia³ of the English Language, says about one-and-a-half-billion of the world's six-billion people speak it as a second tongue compared to the 400-million native speakers.

CRYSTAL: "Nobody quite knows what's going to happen because no language has been in this position before. But all the evidence suggests that the English language snowball is rolling down a hill and is getting faster and faster and faster and accreting⁴ new foreign language users unlike any language has ever done before. I don't myself see that process stopping in the immediate⁵ future. David Graddol thinks even that momentum⁶ will die in the near future, but personally I think there is no sign of this."

DM: David Graddol does not dispute English's expansion as a second language, but his sense of proportion differs. While Mr. Crystal says more than three times as many people speak it as a second language than as a first, Mr. Graddol says that only recently have the second language speakers surpassed the number of native English speakers.

Whatever the total, he disagrees with the notion that English's growth as a second tongue means it will become the world language to the exclusion⁷ of all others.

GRADDOL: "We have grown up with the idea of dominance meaning that a language actually pushes out other languages and takes over the world. That's not actually what seems to be happening. Precisely⁸ because people are learning English as a second language, they are not actually giving up their first languages. They are becoming bilingual or multilingual. So the spread of English around the world is actually creating a greatly increased bilingualism and multilingualism."

Mr. Graddol says this will put people who speak only English at a competitive disadvantage. In the new linguistic⁹ world order, he says most people will switch between languages for routine tasks and monolingual English speakers will find it difficult to participate fully¹⁰ in society.

GRADDOL: "In India, for example, someone might speak five, six, even seven languages and not think that is a particularly unusual thing. But there will be some activities like going down to the market and buying vegetables that they might be able to do only in, say, Tamil. Then when they go home, they will talk to their family in another language, but when they go to college they will use probably English."

DM: Mr. Graddol notes that employers in parts of Asia are already looking beyond English. In the next decade, he says the most important language to learn for job opportunities is likely to be Mandarin¹¹ Chinese.

For Wordmaster, I'm David McAlary on VOA's Coast to Coast.
 

1 lesser   

adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地

参考例句：

• Kept some of the lesser players out.不让那些次要的球员参加联赛。
• She has also been affected,but to a lesser degree.她也受到波及，但程度较轻。

2 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

3 encyclopedia   

n.百科全书

参考例句：

• The encyclopedia fell to the floor with a thud.那本百科全书砰的一声掉到地上。
• Geoff is a walking encyclopedia.He knows about everything.杰夫是个活百科全书，他什么都懂。

4 accreting   

v.共生( accrete的现在分词 )；合生；使依附；使连接

参考例句：

• Accreting to statistic, 75 percent of students'school time is spent in the class. " 据统计，学生在学校的活动总量有75%的时间是在课堂上度过的。 来自互联网

5 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

6 momentum   

n.动力，冲力，势头；动量

参考例句：

• We exploit the energy and momentum conservation laws in this way.我们就是这样利用能量和动量守恒定律的。
• The law of momentum conservation could supplant Newton's third law.动量守恒定律可以取代牛顿第三定律。

7 exclusion   

n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行

参考例句：

• Don't revise a few topics to the exclusion of all others.不要修改少数论题以致排除所有其他的。
• He plays golf to the exclusion of all other sports.他专打高尔夫球，其他运动一概不参加。

8 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

9 linguistic   

adj.语言的，语言学的

参考例句：

• She is pursuing her linguistic researches.她在从事语言学的研究。
• The ability to write is a supreme test of linguistic competence.写作能力是对语言能力的最高形式的测试。

10 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

11 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。