English Isn’t One Language

February 3, 2008

In the article “Is English the next Latin?” by the linguist Nicholas Ostler, it tells several variations of the “Standard English” from the different regions of the world. This is the English spoken in the part of Asia:

Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China. Most Chinese schoolchildren learn English. Native speakers of Chinese may say “open the computer” for “turn on the computer,” since in Chinese the same word is used for “open” and “turn on.” Nouns often turn into verbs (”Do not noise in hallway”); the is often dropped, or used for proper nouns (”the England”); very may be used to emphasize verbs (”I very disagree”) and the “s” for plurals is often dropped (”three car” instead of “three cars”). Some linguists discern separate dialects in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland Chinese English. Most Japanese also study English for six to 10 years in school, and here, too, a creative local variant has grown up, as in “Let’s beer” for “Let’s have a beer,” or “I feel apple” for “I feel like having an apple.”

For the other variations, you can read the article here.

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