, spelling and lexis. British English is also encouraged and accepted as the criteria of some major official examinations, for example, College English Test and Test for English Majors which are conducted by government. Similar situations could be found in other countries, for example, in Africa, the West African Examination Council and Joint Admission and Matriculation Board accept the British English as the standard English. Report can also be found that in Cairo, as recently as 1984, some university students received lower grades if they used American spellings instead of British. Modiano wrote that in Europe, “we find teachers, British people as well as natives of the country in which they work, who follow the British English standard, and scorn the American English”.
However the above attitudes are nothing but the last influence of a long-gone period of British supremacy. According to Campbell and others, the beginning of a distinct lead of American English can be traced to the decades after World War II. This coincides with the simultaneous rise of the US as a military and technological power and the decline of the British Empire, which drove many to American English. And from then on, American English has continuously sent its influence to every corner of the planet.
Britain made English an international language in the nineteenth century with its imperialism power, but Americans have been the driving force behind its globalization in the twentieth century. A great deal of examples of the influence of American English can be found in a large quantity of current books, magazines, movies. According to Foster, the popularity of Americanism among the young generation in Britain is “the hall-mark of the tough-guy and the he-man”. After reviewing the presence of American English features in the British variety of English itself, Awonusi gives a great deal of examples of Americanized English in phonology and lexis that he has identified co-exiting in his own Nigerian English. Modiano reports that, despite the influence of expert English teachers from Britain, Europeans “are subjected to a massive amount of American English”, which many students are much more interested in. Campbell’s examples of the influence of American English include the fact that young people in Europe, Asia and Russia use it in daily conversation, even when many of them have been taught British English. In Brazil, people demand for courses in American style rather than British. This is because American English is infiltrating the territories formerly known to be the territory of British English influence, for example, Nigeria, Egypt, Thailand, and more forcefully penetrating Latin America, Japan, and south Korea. Americanized words like guy, campus, movie which do not exist in British English, are now widely used. Today even the BBC, which has long used British English speaking announcers exclusively, now added American announcers in its broadcasts, especially in programs that go to countries like South Korea, where American English is favored.
上一页 [6] [7] [8]
百度搜索:English Language: American or British?
论文录入：朱国文 责任编辑：朱国文
上一篇论文： How to improve the ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing
下一篇论文： Character reflects ones marriage or attitudes towards love----- Four different marriages in Pride and Prejudice
According to Campbell’s estimate, 70% of the roughly 350 million native English speakers speak the American version of English. In fact, the populations of the two leading mother tongue English countries are even more suggestive: The United States has a population of about 260 million while there is only about 55 million in Britain. This seemingly gives the American English much more advantage. The causes of the unprecedented expansion of American English include, as stated above, the post-World War II military and technological advancement. They are for demographic, political reasons, or have to do with the computer and the internet, the mass media, trade, the Peace Corps, and immigration policies:
The last few decades have witnessed an ever-increasing political domination of America on the planet. This status was further reinforced in the late 1980s by the fall of communism, which resulted in the US penetrating and consolidating its position in formerly socialist territories.
The lead of the US in the computer and Internet industry has long been established. That Bill Gates and other computer geniuses are Americans, t
上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] 下一页
