English as a global language

Hey citizens of the world, happy 2011!

To celebrate the new year, I'd like to talk about English as a global language.

It's extremely interesting what's happening with English these days, as the world's lingua franca.

For the very first time, a language has been spreading regardless of territory.

What I mean is, people from all over the world have been using English sponteneously among their native language. I was reading a fashion magazine in Portuguese last week and the number of expressions in English, being used so naturally among the articles is amazing!

For instance, I was reading this short essay:

"Você pode utilizar qualquer uma das cores, whatever works."

Another reccurrent expressions was "out", "a must-have".

So, this was a fashion magazine.

But we can all observe that the same thing is happening with other magazines too, academic journals, newspapers. It is also curious to observe that foreign words are being incorporated in English as a global language. A good example of this is the the word "favela", which I have previously posted: http://englishhavad.blogspot.com/2010/11/favela-in-english-is-favela.html

Other examples are vuvuzela, sushi, confetti, among thousands of others.

The good news is that with so many resources available on the internet, we can all get acquainted with new expressions and improve our English quickly and interestingly.

So, here again, the link from some of my favorite websites: http://englishhavad.blogspot.com/2010/05/purpose-of-this-blog.html

I wish you all a fantastic year!