ABSTRACT
Barbara Strang’s History of English was one of the first language histories to take account of the importance of the international spread of the world language. The world-wide spread of English has taken 500 years in all to complete, but the major developments have taken place in the course of the last 200 years. Scholarly interest in ‘New Englishes’ and their functions would have been difficult to justify: most colonial forms of native English were considered provincial, backward, incorrect and not quite respectable. The spread of English was a much slower and more laborious process than its present distribution would lead one to expect. The success of English in its function as an international auxiliary language has often been regarded as the measure of its adequacy for the job, and scholars have tried to account for it with reference to the type of language English is.
