Abstract
This paper is a brief reflection on the spread of English around the world. Because of this, this language has changed. With so many people learning English, national identities have converged to change this language, making it the world language. Its objective is to advocate an epistemology of deforeignization of this language, based on the assumption that many people have recreated it naturally, in lexical, grammatical and phonological terms. ‘To deforeignize’ the English language, it is necessary to allow the recreation of this language, so that it can be adapted to the learners’ linguistic and cultural patterns. For this purpose, some data are shared. The relavance of this study lies is the possibility to shed light in a topic which still needs to be reflected, mainly because it can support the understanding of how the teaching and learning process of English should be conducted in front of its current status.
Highlights
It is a well-known fact that English has become a world language, due to the power of its speakers, mainly the economic and military ones (Crystal, 2012)
People have bee attracted to learn English. This has come as no surprise knowing that English is the most commom language studied in the world, which, according to the Washington Post, there are 1.5 billion learners
As the deforeignization process is intrinsically related with language change, I truly agree the English language has been oponed to the winds of linguistics changes in totally unpredictable ways and the spread of it has already demonstrated this, with the emergence of new varieties where it has taken roots (CRYSTAL, 2012)
Summary
It is a well-known fact that English has become a world language, due to the power of its speakers, mainly the economic and military ones (Crystal, 2012). There is no use in denying, the fact that English is almost everywhere, with more than 1 billion and 350 million non-native speakers living with this language every day, in numerous settings. People have bee attracted to learn English. This has come as no surprise knowing that English is the most commom language studied in the world, which, according to the Washington Post, there are 1.5 billion learners. As Seidlhofer (2011) points out, English is an international language, but the international language. ‘the’ instead of ‘an’ has a meaning, especially with implications for the teaching of this language, because as it has already escaped from the hands of North Americans, Australians, New Zealand and all those who believed to have ownership on it, it gives us, at the same time, clear signs of untying with its roots (Rajagopalan, 2014), reaching the status of world language
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