History of English

History of English
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Chapter 9 of the Harley textbook talks a great deal about how English has changed across centuries. For many of us, looking at Old English was probably a real trip, because it’s hard to parse in comparison to what we normally read.

The history of English videos that you watched this week mention a lot more about the spread of English around the world, and what English looks like in some sense, in other places. These other varieties of English spoken around the world are often called World Englishes, a term coined by linguist Braj Kachru.

One of Kachru’s other major contributions to the field was hist taxonomy of the Three Circles of English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Englishes#Kachru.27s_Three_Circles_of_English
I’d like you to read about the Three Circles discussed on the Wikipedia for World Englishes, and then we’re going to focus on Englishes from the Expanding Circle. This circle are those countries where English is widely used, even though it plays no real historical or governmental role.

After you’ve read about the Three Circles, pick one of the countries in the “expanding circle” of World Englishes. Use web resources to investigate the role of English in education, business, science, and other industries within that country. What did you find? In what areas is English used in your country of choice? Much of the research surrounding this taxonomy of the Circles of English is well over 10 years old at this point– does it still make sense for that country to be classed in the “expanding circle”? Why or why not?