The 'threat' OF or the 'threat' TO English?

This week’s issue of Newsweek international ask a good question on their cover Who owns English?.

In their article Not the Queen's English, they point out that non-native English-speakers now outnumber native ones 3 to 1, and as a result the language is changing. It is the controversial but interesting idea of an ‘International version of English. This is a challenge to all English teachers but also to English learners who tend to focus so much on learning ‘perfect grammar’. Maybe structural mistakes (such as forgetting the present simple third person ‘s’) should be accepted. Indeed who really needs Queen’s English?

The second interesting point is that we should not see English as a threat to other languages but as a new opportunity to enrich our culture by making us bilingual (after all, most people in this world ARE bilingual). This is something I can only agree with as I have never understood the notion of a language being a 'threat' to others.

Here are an excerpt (article Not the Queen's English can be read for free on the Net)

Not everyone is as open-minded about English, or its advance. The Web site of the Association for the Defence of the French Language displays a "museum of horrors"—a series of digital pictures of English-language signs on Parisian streets. But others say such defensiveness misses the point. "This is not about English swamping and eroding local identities," says David Graddol, author of the British Council report. "It's about creating new identities—and about making everyone bilingual."