Global English: Product, process and project The English language has been taken worldwide by soldiers, traders, and settlers, the process being initiated in the British Isles (Wales, Ireland et al) and in the ‘colonies’ of North America. When these succeeded in detaching themselves from the British crown in the late eighteenth century, Noah Webster made a case for political independence being strengthened through linguistic independence from Britain so as to establish a specific ‘national character’: ‘Let us then seize the present moment, and establish a national language as well as a national government.’1