Entering to a university is not easy: the
competition among international students is each time tougher. What better way
to outshine your competition that by knowing another language? This gives you
more power among the rest. Right here we see a relationship between language
and power. Just a Lina states in
her blog, “The more languages you know the easier it is for you to build
bridges amongst different cultures.”
On the other hand we are so used to
speaking a certain language and hearing it that we forget that it controls
us. It has so much power over us that we tend to forget it does. Just as they state in
episode seven, “…language can enslave the people” (8:51). There is no way we
could survive without a form of language. We wouldn’t be able to interact with others
and therefore we wouldn’t be able to commerce and sustain ourselves. What I´ve
learned in my history classes is that kings are always in search of power. They
would constantly expand their kingdom to show superiority among others. Here we
can see another resemblance language has with power. It is seeking to expand.
English has become the more popular language worldwide. It started to be spoken
in developed countries, but it reached a point were even third-world countries
used it. In the video they demonstrate how British demanded for schools to
teach English in India. They wanted for the language to spread and this way
overrule the rest of the languages. It wanted power. Even though English was
competing with 200 other tongues spoken by the people in India it would become
“the imperial language of India” (5:39).
The natives didn’t agree with the changes the British were doing to their community. They didn’t want to replace their traditional language with English. Still, they had no choice since the British were imposing a new language to them. Just as the Roman Empire invaded new territories to obtain more land, the British were imposing the English language on new communities.
The natives didn’t agree with the changes the British were doing to their community. They didn’t want to replace their traditional language with English. Still, they had no choice since the British were imposing a new language to them. Just as the Roman Empire invaded new territories to obtain more land, the British were imposing the English language on new communities.
Why would descriptivist’s be so concerned
about the standardization of English? It is clear that English is spoken
differently all around the world with a different accents and with new words
that are influenced by their traditional language. In my opinion this is not a
negative aspect, just an example of how English was still able to overrun the
rest of the spoken tongues.
According to history all big empire will
reach its rising point and then start to decline. This happened in the
fifteenth century when the Roman Empire fell and the Byzantine Empire rose.
Would something similar happen to the English language? Will it gradually start
losing it´s power and importance? Right now the biggest competition it has is
the Chinese. So would the Chinese language by able to replace the English?
MLA Citation:
The
Adventure of English. Dir. Nigel Wattis. Perf.
Amanda Root and David Gwillim. LWT, 2003. Youtube.
19 Sept. 2011. Web. 31 Jan. 2013.
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