The Influence of English: Is it Spreading like a Virus?

ENGLISH: IS THE “VIRUS” SPREADING?

INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH • English is spreading to other languages. • A good example of this is the aviation industry. • English has become increasingly important because of the importance of America as a super power particularly since the world wars. • It is seen, particularly by the “youth”, as being “hip” because of the influence of Hollywood and western artists

ENGLISH IN FRENCH • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXpUEalMvIg • The French believe that English loanwords continue to threaten their beloved mother tongue despite the “Académie Française” • Words such as “le weekend” and “fast food” are just the beginning as French people begin to take words without adding French pronunciation. • The government “terminology commissions” publishes a monthly lists of “official” new words which are deemed acceptable. • Some French translations of English terms have not caught on “some we keep some we spit out”

ENGLISH IN GERMAN • Denglish owes its existence in part to the cultural predominance of English language pop music, computer slang and to the use of English as the lingua franca of politics, business and science. • Well known examples include “dissen” “joggen” but other examples include those not usually seen in England such as “DJane” • There has been much irritation at the spread of Denglish and calls for Laws against it. • Proposal for an ‘Academy for the Cultivation and Protection of the German Language”

Our Investigation • We were interested to find to what extent German and French was being infiltrated by English • We decided to discover this by seeing how much these languages were understandable English speakers because of the emergence of English words • We found examples of text in both languages from “youth” magazines and from more “high-brow” magazines. • We then asked people to highlight words they recognised as being derived from English and give a brief summary

RESULTS - French

RESULTS - German

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS - German • Bravo = youth magazine Der Spiegel = Political magazine • Bravo – Actual % of English words = 8.1% people perceived as English only 5.1% of the words Why? Obvious words such as “Hit” and “Online” • Der Spiegel - Actual % of English words = 3.4% people perceived as English only 2.31% of the words • Much fewer English words in Der Spiegel than in Bravo reflecting that the “youth” adopt more Anglicisms than the Adult population

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS – French • Elle = Girl Fashion magazine Le Monde = national newspaper • Elle – Actual % of English words = 4.6%, half as much as German (8.1%) However people still perceived as English only 3.2% again due to obvious words • Le Monde – contained very few Anglicisms Actual % of English words = 2.6% People perceived only 1.2% Still, Le Monde seems to contain fewer Anglicisms that Der Spiegel

When asked to explain articles, average scores were: Elle : 2.1/5, 2.4/5 Le Monde:1.0/5 Bravo: 1.1/5 , 1.4/5 Der Spiegel: 1.0/5 This confused us, so…

Harry’s Experiment: “because Prince Charles has big ears, many people find his appearance amusing” “Fo Prince Charles blatt ipp yarog zwitji, zim pinsyrik ljxta lin dooblax zftsit” (french order) “Fo Prince Charles zwitji yarog blatt, ljxta zim pinsyrik lin dooblax zftsit” (german order)

Anglicisation REFLECTION – IS THIS INFLUENCE BAD OR GOOD? Are other languages becoming more efficient? Globalisation Are we ruining the purity of other languages? Is this a “natural” process? Are we going to end up with one language?

LIMITATIONS • We were only able to sample 10 non-speakers for each language clearly this sample size is insufficient. • Everyone we asked had knowledge of other languages, which may have helped them and given them an advantage in the task. • The articles are not very representative • The articles did not cover the same subject matter, so the two were not strictly comparable • The high-brow topics were harder to understand. • Some people highlighted words which were in the language originally.

Conclusion • The youth, and media targeted towards youth use more English language than those magazines or newspapers we used to represent media aimed at adults. • This was true of both languages, • The German extracts contained far more English than the French extracts • A slightly baffling result of our investigation was that we found that people were more successful at giving summaries of the French articles than of the German ones.

Evaluation • If we were to do this investigation more thoroughly we would: • Take far longer • Asking far more people to complete our questionnaire • Ideally these would also be monolingual English speakers • Choose more similar texts

Something to think about “On the one hand, the impact of English on other languages has been pretty disastrous in places - like all major languages which have travelled around the world. On the other hand, as we see English spreading, we see it beginning to reflect local cultural practices. When people adopt English they immediately adapt it. So there is a case for saying that cultural variation is being maintained, but in new ways.” David Crystal

The Influence of English: Is it Spreading like a Virus?