ABSTRACT
The world’s population is approaching eight billion and a staggering proportion of this eight billion are already regular users of English – approximately one person out of every five speaks English to some level of competence. While the ‘success’ of English might be good news for English speakers, bear in mind that one of the effects of the worldwide movement of English and its use as an international language is widespread linguistic destruction. The spread of English around the globe has triggered a burgeoning of diversity in the form of new dialects, second language varieties, pidgins, creoles and mixed languages, all influenced by the many different cultures and languages it has come in contact with. English is the official or co-official language in more than 75 countries; they include places with colonial associations with Britain or America, as well as those without these traditional links.
