The Future Status of English Since the world is experiencing a rapid globalization, the adoption of one or two global languages to enable different language-speaking people to communicate with one another successfully has become unprecedentedly crucial. Even though inevitably, there are worried people giving out various opinions on how bad there own languages might be harmed as English becomes a global language, we as citizens of this global village do have the need to take advantage of a widely recognized and used language in business, academic field or even just in our daily lives. In a newspaper article, Andrew Downie (2000) presented a Brazilian law banning the some use of English in Brazil. Regardless of this backlash from those bothered people, we cannot but admit the fact that English is strongly needed. The following paragraphs shall point out why the future status of English as a global language is assured. According to Downie (2000), many of the stores in the shopping malls in Brazil, rather than using the local language—Portuguese, have changed their words for promotion into English. For example, “sales” has replaced “promoção.” As a result, some language purists see this as the store-owners‟ abandonment of their own language. Although it could be considered an abandonment, to see it from another angle, it may well be viewed positively as the stores‟ attempt to reach a wider range of customers. People open up the business so they could profit from it; therefore, if
pasting the word “Sales” across their front windows” can make the information conveyed received not only by the Portuguese speakers but also by other language speakers who travel to that area, and thus generate greater profit, there seems no reason why any store owner should refrain from substituting. Taking the example to a greater scope, if anyone wants to do international business, which has great importance nowadays, the language she/he has to use with a partner from another country with a different native language would definitely be English in order to attain sufficient mutual understanding. Downie (2000) also cited the legislator‟s advice for Portuguese-speaking people who try to use words from other languages to “ consult to the style book of O Estado de São Paulo, one of the nation‟s biggest newspapers, which offers the following wordy wisdom: „(1) You have a language, Portuguese, that is just as good and as functional as any other. (2) It is your language.‟ ” The second part of the statement is invincible—it is unquestionable that Portuguese is the native language of the Brazilian people. Nonetheless, Portuguese along with many other languages, such as Chinese, are not as functional as English in, for instance, Internet usage. The url of a website cannot contain any of the diacritics of Portuguese nor can it contain any Chinese character. And sometimes, using or not using the diacritics does make a world of difference. Take the Spanish word, “años”, meaning “year”, as an example.
There should be a tilde above the “n”, if not, the word “anos” means “asshole.” Another example would be Chinese. Even though there is the pinyin system, many Chinese websites still use English words as their url for fear that pinyin could be confusing at times. “The birth of the computer and its American operating systems gave English a nudge ahead; that of the Internet has given it a huge push.” (The Economist, 1999) Sadly but truly, we must admit that there are times when the speakers of languages other than English have to sacrifice their languages to the Internet and that this phenomenon will persist. In the article, Downie (2000) also mentioned Aldo Rebelo, a Deputy in Brazil, who is horrified by the idea that English is invading Portuguese and who has been attempting to fight against it. Not only the Brazilian, but also the Polish government tried to fight against this by setting up a law to prohibit the use of English during daily transactions if Polish translations are not given at the same time. This kind of law is ridiculous because the way how people should talk cannot be restricted, and it is undemocratic to legalize what words people should use. Further more the law might be unenforceable because the standards of crossing the line might not be very clear. As a matter of fact, there is former evidence of banning English—French people trying to wipe out the so-called “franglais,” that is, to fight against English words entering French vocabulary. And time has proven that effort vain because “e-mail”,
“football” and other famous English words are still used by a lot of French people. (try google translate) This also gives the information that laws set up against English will not work, because English has merged into our daily lives no matter what kind of language we speak. To sum up, one of the world‟s biggest countries, Brazil, is trying to eliminate the so called language invasion, and there might be other small countries trying hard under the table. Still, English has its own unconquerable advantages. It is more economic to use words in English because they are sometimes shorter than the words of the same meanings in another language. (in Chinese yes, but can you prove this in other languages?)On the other hand, concerning computers and the Internet, there are times that the use of English is compulsory, because the world of those two things is dominated by English speaking countries. Also, because English is used in various field, the human-made laws cannot fight against the natural phenomenon of English retaining its status as a global language. As a result, even though there might be another language, such as Chinese, coming up, the status of English as the dominant global language is impregnably assured now and in the future.
Work Cited: The World Language (1999). The Economist, Millennium Issue 31 Dec. 1999:85
Downie, A. (2000). Brazil considers linguistic barricade. Christian Science Monitor. Sep 2000:26. Retrieved on 13 Sep. 2004, from http://csmonitor.com
Critique: 1. Most the citations are from the same sources. It will be better if you can cite from many different articles. Plus, only does the negative side (abandon English) have the evidence. The affirmative side (support English) has seldom evidences. It is like that you only use your own ideas to rebuttal the negative side. 2. In your first argument, you say that using English can enhance business. But, in the conclusion paragraph, your first idea is that English is economic. It seems that the business part does not appear in the conclusion paragraph and the economic part bumps into the conclusion paragraph. Grade: 80 (It is quite a fluent article. But the organization can be improved.)