The Future of English

The ‘rush’ to English around the world may prove to be a temporary phenomenon, which cannot be supported indefinitely. Leading edge technology, computers and information technology, has been largely English based in several respects. (1) Its research and development is focused in the US. (2) The literature and conferences in which researchers keep up to date with developments elsewhere are English based. (3) Communications technology and document-handing software have developed around the English language. (4) The installed user base of new technology is primarily located in the US, resulting in support manuals, help lines, on-screen menu system and so on, appearing first in English. As software and technology become more sophisticated, they supported other languages. Computer operating systems and software are now routinely versioned for many languages for e.g. in year 2004, Microsoft made his Windows and Ms-office software in Hindi version. In many cases, the user can further customise the product, allowing even very small languages, unknown to the manufactures, to be accommodated. Therefore, whereas English speakers used to enjoy the best and latest technology, this is no longer true.

The Internet epitomises the information society, allowing the transfer of services, expertise and intellectual capital across the world cheaply, rapidly and apparently without pollution. At present 90% of Internet hosts are based in English-speaking countries. The majority of traffic and of Web sites are based in English and that those users based in other countries and who normally work in other languages, find they have to communicate with others in the cyberspace community through the medium of English. The quantity of Internet materials in languages other than English is set to expand dramatically in the next decade. It is clear from the research by linguists that new genres and forms of English are arising on the Internet. The system is not simply encouraging the use of English, but transforming it. English will remain pre-eminent for some time, but it will eventually become one language amongst many. As computer usage spreads, it is predicted that English content on the Internet may fall to 40% of the total material. The Internet Society has reported preliminary findings (figure-3) in a survey of the language of ‘home pages’ using different methodology. The main conclusion is that language other than English is now being used on the Internet and this trend is likely to be of growing importance.

Figure-3. Languages of home pages on the Web