Santa Claus, Outlaws and Butlers: The Dutch, Viking and French Influence on English

Danubius Noster

As the allusion in the title to the unintentionally humorous phrasebook published in the nineteenth century suggests, broken English and mistranslation have long been a source of humour and condemnation. Both of them abound due to the increasing prevalence of English in the world and the challenges posed by learning and using a foreign language, and by using translation to bridge the gap between English and other languages. If we add to this the appropriation of English by its speakers beyond the lands of the English, we appreciate some of the issues the spread of the English language in the world brings to the fore. The Englishes spoken in the 21st century are an outcome of the history of the English language, which is in turn bound up with the history of the speakers of the language. In what follows, we will start at the beginning and consider in broad strokes how English came to be, where it went, and how and why it spread. For this I will use as a framework the four diasporas, o...

Education Papers and …, 2008

Metaphors of English The discourse about English in the South African context draws on an interesting spectrum of metaphors including the following: English as a liberator, a gatekeeper, a killer of other languages (Skutnabb-Kangas 2006; Pennycook 1994) or a colonizer of minds ...

2020

Languages users may cause violence and racism: in 1976, protests against the imposition of Afrikaans at South African schools<br> became a massacre when the police killed 172 native protesters. But, which language to choose as language of instruction since South Africa counts eleven official languages. Therefore, this paper discusses whether English should be South Africa's sole language of instruction, to stimulate the native population's presence at universities. To support the research, governmental documents on language policy and education have been examined. Also, the linguistic diversity of South African English through language contact has been described. South Africa's language policy underlines education in vernacular languages at public schools, whereas English is used at universities. This generates a low proficiency in English; therefore, many native South Africans do not enroll at universities. The result is once again an Apartheid-like segregation, w...

Per Linguam, 2011

English World-Wide, 1993

English Today, 2010

As early as 1992, Cox and Furlong indicated that some already considered English a national language in the Netherlands given how widely it was understood. Likewise, McArthur announced at a 1993 conference in Amsterdam, ‘English is now simply one of your languages, along with Dutch and Frisian.’ Against this backdrop and the increasing momentum of notions of World Englishes, it is no longer far-fetched to consider seriously the proposition of Dutch English emerging as a legitimate variety of the world’s lingua franca. That such varieties have emerged in ESL or ‘outer circle’ countries such as India, Nigeria and Singapore is now well established. More controversial is the idea that so, too, could they emerge from traditionally EFL countries once relegated to Kachru’s (1982) ‘norm dependent’ expanding circle (such as the Netherlands and Scandinavia), which are now seen as transitioning – or indeed having already transitioned – to the ‘norm-developing’ realm of ESL.

The performance of pupils using African languages at home testifies to both the inequalities of South African society and education and to a failure to address language problems in education. We reflect on findings from a case study in a secondary school. It was found that pupils struggle to articulate ideas in English which is, for most pupils using African languages at home, both their second language (L2) or First Additional Language (FAL) at school and their language of learning. This article aims to offer a new analytical perspective by focusing not simply on cognitive and linguistic issues, but also on the different ways in which reality (or ontics) is enacted within different language communities. A postcolonial view is developed which does not oppose the use of English instead of the home language (HL), but which emphasises the importance of developing pupils' abilities to live in tensions created by the opposing ontological assumptions embedded in the different languages and cultures. In order to benefit from these insights, pupils must be well grounded in their HL, as well as in the dominant language, and furthermore, pupils must be enabled to live simultaneously within different realities (ontics).

PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2014

This thesis revolves around two main research questions: ‘Should the English used in the Netherlands be considered a second-language variety or should it simply be regarded as learner English?’ and ‘Can Schneider’s Dynamic Model be extended to account for non-postcolonial, Expanding Circle contexts such as the Netherlands?’ Chapter 1 describes the motivations for the project and the theoretical and methodological framework. Chapter 2 explores the relevant models in the field of World Englishes (WEs) and identifies a lack of in-depth research on European settings in general and the Netherlands in particular, despite their dynamism in terms of the spread and development of English. Chapters 3 to 5 address three criteria established to answer research question 1, concerning the functions of, attitudes towards and forms of English in the Netherlands, respectively. Chapter 3, on the functions of English in the Netherlands, develops a comprehensive sociolinguistic profile covering the history of English contact, the present demographics of English spread, and the domains of education, science, business, advertising, public administration and the media. It reveals a widespread assumption of English competence in daily life in the Netherlands and increasing intranational use of English to construct cosmopolitan, scholarly or subculture identities. On this basis, the chapter concludes that English functions as a second language in Dutch society. Chapter 4 explores the second criterion for research question 1, attitudes towards English, by way of a large-scale questionnaire. Some results support the notion of English as a second language in the Netherlands; for example, it is acquired in wider society and not just within the confines of the foreign-language classroom. Others, however, are indicative of a foreign or learner language; in particular, BrE remains the main target model and ‘Dutch English’ is rarely viewed in a positive light. The chapter also identifies three groups of people: an instrumental group, whose participants regard English as personally important, but place great value on Dutch as well; and two peripheral groups: an anglophile group and an anti-English group. Chapter 5 focuses on the third criterion for research question 1, the forms of English in the Netherlands. It first outlines a range of potential morphosyntactic, lexical and pragmatic/discoursal features of Dutch English. Next, it describes the development of the Corpus of Dutch English, the first Expanding Circle corpus based on the design of the written components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). The chapter then presents a case study of the progressive aspect. The first part, a comparative corpus analysis, reveals no strict divide between Dutch English and the second-language varieties under investigation, yet marked differences compared to Dutch learner data. In the second part, a grammaticality judgement survey, some evidence of developing local norms is identified. The findings from chapters 3 to 5 make clear that, in answer to research question 1, the Netherlands cannot be said unequivocally to be either a second-language or a learner variety. It is acknowledged, however, that this is partly attributable to the categorical nature of the question. Therefore, Chapter 6 turns to research question 2, seeking to determine whether the developments in the Netherlands can better be explained by a developmental approach such as Schneider’s (2003, 2007) Dynamic Model. It identifies a number of developments in the Netherlands, both historical and present-day, that parallel the predictions of the first three phases of the Dynamic Model. However, as Schneider (2014) himself recently noted, these need to be selectively extracted from what is predominantly a colonial framework. The thesis concludes that this and other models need to move away from a colonisation-driven approach and towards a globalisation-driven one to explain the continued spread and evolution of English today.

Studies of Tribes and Tribals, 2013