ABSTRACT
Languages don’t have to come into direct contact for linguistic features to cross borders. Even overwhelmingly monolingual countries will not be unaected by outside inuences. In places like Britain, Australia, Japan, France and Germany, for example, children will usually become native speakers of only one language, but of course there are quite large groups of people in these countries that make regular use of other languages, and there is considerable linguistic diversity. So although people may have little or no face-to-face contact with speakers of other languages, foreign features (usually words and expressions) can be transferred by mass media and via language teaching. e fact that English is currently the global lingua franca (or common language) places it in an interesting position in this regard. Over many years it has been making contributions to the lexical coers of many languages; some originally English words (like ok) are now so widespread as to be truly international. But this position also has its down side, and we nd a number of people who “blame” English for the decay of their language(s) – a claim which is untenable from a linguistic perspective – or who even describe English as a “killer language” that gradually eliminates other languages. ere is some truth to the latter, but the story is certainly more complex, as we will go on to describe.