A year in provence

1. "A Year in Provence" by Peter Mayle is a book about an Englishman who went with his wife to live in Provence, a farming region in the south of France. Guess what differences he found in the way people behaved in public.

2. Read the extract from "A Year in Provence" below to check your guesses. Do not use a dictionary at this stage.

"See that? Men kissing. Damned unhealthy, if you ask me," our lawyer friend snorted into his beer …

It had taken me some months to get used to the Provençal delight in physical contact. Like anyone brought up in England, I had absorbed certain social mannerisms. I had learned to keep my distance, to offer a nod instead of a handshake, to ration kissing to female relatives and to confine any public demonstrations of affection to dogs. The Provençal welcome, as thorough as being searched by airport security guards, was, at first, a startling experience. Now I enjoyed it, and I was fascinated by the niceties of the social ritual, and the sign language which is an essential part of any Provençal encounter.

When two unencumbered men meet, the least there will be is the conventional handshake. If the hands are full, you will be offered a little finger to shake. If the hands are wet or dirty, you will be offered a forearm or an elbow. Riding a bicycle or driving a car does not excuse you from the obligation to toucher les cinq sardines, and so you will see perilous contortions being performed on busy streets as hads grope through car windows and across handlebars to find each other. And this is only at the first and most restrained level of acquaintance. A closer relationship requires more demonstrative acknowledgement.

As our lawyer friend had noticed, men kiss other men. They squeeze shoulders, slap backs, pummel kidneys, pinch cheeks. When a Provençal man is truly pleased to see you, there is a real possibility of coming away from his clutches with superficial bruising.

The risk of bodily damage is less where women are concerned, but an amateur can easily make a social blunder if he miscalculates the required number of kisses. In my early days of discovery, I would plant a single kiss, only to find that the other cheek was being proffered as I was drawing back. Only snobs kiss once, I was told, or those unfortunates who suffer from congenital froideur. I then saw what I assumed to be the correct procedure – the triple kiss, left-right-left, so I tried it on a Parisian friend. Wrong again. She told me that triple-kissing was a low Provençal habit, and that two kisses were enough among civilized people. The next time I saw my neighbour’s wife, I kissed her twice. ‘Non,’ she said, ‘trois fois.’

(from Year in Provence by Peter Mayle)

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toucher les cinq sardines – shake hands

froideur – cold personality

‘Non,’ she said, ‘trois fois’ – ‘No,’ she said, ‘three times’

3. Read the text again and say whether the following are True or False. Try to guess the difficult words from the context and check your answers in the dictionary.

   1. From the beginning the writer found it easy to adapt to the physical behaviour of Provençal people.

   2. In Provence when people meet they always touch each other.

   3. You can sometimes get hurt in displays of physical affection.

   4. In Paris the customs about how men and women greet each other are the same as in Provence.

4. Answer the following questions about the text.

   1. What does this phrase tell you about the English: confine any public demonstrations of affection to dogs?

   2. What does this phrase tell you about Provençal people: as thorough as being searched by airport security guards?

   3. When are you sometimes offered a forearm?

   4. What kinds of more demonstrative acknowledgement are there?

   5. What kinds of social blunder can the amateur make?

The instrument of warning and argument is the index finger, in one of its three operational positions. Thrust up, rigid and unmoving, beneath your conversational partner’s nose, it signals caution – watch out attention, all is not what it seems. Held just below face level and shaken rapidly from side to side like an agitated metronome, it indicates that the other person is woefully ill-informed and totally wrong in what he has just said.

Describing a sudden departure needs two hands: the left, fingers held straight, moves upwards from waist level to smack into the palm of the right hand moving downwards.

At the end of the conversation, there is the promise to stay in touch. The middle three fingers are folded into the palm and the hand is held up to an ear, with the extended thumb and little finger imitating the shape of a telephone. Finally, there is a parting handshake. Packages, dogs and bicycles are gathered up until the whole process starts all over again fifty yards down the street. It’s hardly surpring that aerobics never became popular in Provence. People get enough physical exercise in the course of a ten-minute chat.

From: Matters Upper-Intermediate. Students’ Book;

Matters upper-Intermediate. Teacher’s Book.

By Jan Bell and Roger Gower

English round the world

In 1599, a far-sighted English poet wrote these lines:

And who in time knows whither we may vent?

The treasure of our tongue, to what strange

shores

This gain of our best glory shall be sent,

Т'enrich unknowing Nations with our stores?

— Samuel Daniel, 'Musophilus'

But not even he could have guessed that in the following four centuries English would have spread from one small island and perhaps seven million speakers to become a mother tongue in every continent, the official language of the Com monwealth and the lingua franca of the world. Other languages –Greek and Latin, Spanish and French, Turkish and Arabic – have spread beyond their original homelands in the wake of political, cultural, or religious expansion; but no language in the history of the world has spread more widely or been used more extensively than English.

The distribution of English

It is difficult to put a figure on the number of English speakers in the world today. Are we to include as mother-tongue English speakers those who speak pidgins and Creoles? And those who 'know' English as a foreign language – how proficient do they have to be before they are counted as 'English speakers'?

If we choose to allow fairly generous entrance-qualifications, then the worldwide community of English speakers must number at least 1000 million, a quarter of the world's population. If moderately rigorous standards are applied, then 700 million seems a fair figure, about half of them mother-tongue English speakers.

In terms of sheer numbers, English is rivalled or perhaps surpassed by Guoyu, the form of Mandarin Chinese promoted in the People's Republic of China as a national language, and now understood by about 800 million Chinese, four-fifths of the country's population. It is by no means the mother tongue of this number, however; and those Chinese living in communities outside China speak quite different dialects for the most part, notably Cantonese.

Next in the league table of mother tongues are Spanish (about 250 million), Hindi (about 200 million), and Arabic, Bengali, and Russian (about 150 million each).

English may be rivalled by Guoyu in respect of numbers, but in its geographical distribution and international usefulness English is in a class of its own.

There are four main categories of English in the world today: English as amother tongue; English as a second language; English as a foreign language; and the family of pidgin and Creole Englishes.

English as a mother tongue

English as a mother tongue is dominated by the North Americans (about 220 million in the United States, and a further 20 million or so in Canada). What is more, the regional dialects within North America are far less diverse than they are within the British Isles. There are about 56 million English speakers in Great Britain and about four million in Ireland. Scottish English and Irish English might fairly claim to be considered separate varieties, however, as might several dialects within England itself – these are all in many ways more distinct from the 'standard' English of England than American English is Nevertheless, 'British English' remains a convenient label, and is often used too, as in this book, to cover the varieties of mother-tongue English in Australia (about 14 million speakers), New Zealand (about three million) and South Africa (about two million).

English, ranging from standard to Creole, is the sole official language of many countries in the Caribbean, and in various small islands and territories in other parts of the world.

Many other countries, though not typically having English as a mother tongue, do have a considerable number of mother-tongue English speakers nevertheless. India is the foremost example, with several million mother-tongue English speakers.

English as a second language

The English of India is for the most part English as a second language. So too in the other Commonwealth countries not already mentioned, in Africa and Asia alike; and also in Pakistan, the Philippines, and various other countries. (And so too for French-speaking Canadians and for Afrikaans-speaking and many black South Africans.) In all these areas, English as a second language (sometimes as an alternative official language) enjoys great prestige, and fulfils an essential role in the educational and economic life of the nation.

It tends to be the language of much of the country's broadcasting, many of its newspapers, and often novels and other works of literature too; of secondary and higher education, the higher courts of law, and the civil service; and of international business contacts, of course.

For reasons of national pride, various Commonwealth countries have made official attempts to reduce the role of English in national life and to promote an indigenous language in its place. This policy has perhaps succeeded to some extent in Tanzania, where Swahili is widely understood. In a country such as India, however, where Hindi has to compete with so many other local languages, English has remained fairly resilient. Malaysia, after independence, attempted to promote Bahasa Malaysia as a national language, introducing it as the medium of primary education in the mid-1960s, and of secondary education in the mid-1970s. It is used to some extent in the universities too (and plans are afoot to substitute it for English in the federal and supreme courts). But the short-term effect has been a decline in examination performance, with the result that Malaysian students are now at a greater disadvantage than previously in securing university places in Britain or North America. An intensified programme of English-teaching is the planned remedy, though many educationalists, more radically, would prefer a return to the use of English as the medium of instruction.

English as a second language has traditionally been modelled on British English (understandably enough, since most of the countries using it were once part of the British Empire). The major exception is the Philippines, where American English is adopted as the model.

English as a foreign language

After mother-tongue English and English as a second language, there is the category of English as a foreign language. English is easily the most widely taught foreign language in the world. All those African countries that use French rather than English as their established or official second language have a policy of teaching English as a third language. An estimated ten per cent of China's enormous population have some mastery of English. Some 51 per cent of foreign-language courses taught in the Soviet Union are English courses. Everyone is familiar with the wide range of abilities displayed by foreigners –from the enthusiastic but virtually unintelligible efforts of taxi-drivers or shopkeepers in far-flung centres of tourism, to the quiet and effortless fluency of so many Scandinavians, Dutch, Israelis, Germans, and so on.

In Europe, it has traditionally been British English that teachers have tried to teach for the most part. The tendency seems to be shifting slowly towards American English now. In Latin America, with the partial exception of Argentina, American English is the favoured variety. The teaching of English as a foreign language, and the publication of course-books and tapes, are now considered major industries in both Britain North America.

Two other aspects of English as a foreign language – English for special purpose English as a world language – are discussed below.

Pidgins and Creoles

The fourth category of English is pidgins and creoles. Pidgin English is a simplified language, drawing on English vocabulary (but very little on the соmplicated grammar of English), and used as a medium of communication between two people or communities (one of whom would, of course, originally have been English-speaking, but this soon ceases to be necessary). A pidgin that becomes a mother tongue is called a creole, and invariably acquires a more sophisticated structure. English-based pidgins and creoles, serving many cultural and economic functions, are found throughout the British Caribbean in countries such as Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago; in coastal West Africa from the river Gambia to Rio Muni; and in the South Pacific, in Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomons, and even parts of Australia.

Typically, the educated people in these countries speak and write standard English, at least in formal and professional contexts, either as a mother tongue or as a second language.

The spectrum of English

In all countries where English is spoken, there is a spectrum or continuum, though the type of spectrum differs according to circumstances. At one end of the spectrum is always the influential 'standard' variety of English. In countries such as Jamaica and Samoa, the other end of the spectrum is Creole. In countries such as Canada and Britain, the spectrum may be one of regional dialect or of social dialect. In countries such as France and China (English as a foreign language), or India and the Philippines (English as a second language), the spectrum is one of competence – with standard English as a prestige norm, and with any number of approximations to it, each affected by the pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax of the speaker's own first language.

Although each spectrum has its unique characteristics, it is possible to make some generalisations about them. Varieties of English as a second or foreign language or in creolised form do tend to have some systematic differences from standard English.

In pronunciation, first of all, they tend to have a smaller set of vowel contrasts than either RP (the 'received pronunciation' of educated people in southeastern England) or General American pronunciation. In particular, the vowel sounds in bit and beat are pronounced alike, as are those in full and fool; diphthongs are often replaced, so that day might sound like dare and go like gore. The words bud and bird are often made to sound like bed (and sometimes like bet).

Typical consonant changes include the replacement of /th/ and /th/ by /t/ and /d/ or sometimes by /s/ and /z/ – so this thing might sound like dis ting or sometimes zis sing. And where consonant clusters are difficult to pronounce, an extra or 'epenthetic' vowel is often inserted to break the cluster up: school might be pronounced as though it were eschool or sechool, and speak as though espeak or sepeak.

The stress system of standard English is also altered: there are fewer reduced vowels and hence fewer slurred and unstressed syllables, and there is a greater number of secondary stresses.

In vocabulary, these varieties of English all tend to draw on words borrowed from local languages, and on loan translations or 'calques' – that is, on metaphors, phrases, or compound words in the local language that are translated literally, component by component, into English. Such vocabulary items are especially common in the domains of local culture, food, clothing, and kinship.

In grammar, these varieties of English reveal many similarities: the tendency to use fewer prepositions, articles, and auxiliary verbs; the use of prepositional verbs such as cope up with that are not found among mother-tongue speakers; the use of unvarying question-tags: They're just married, isn't it?; the recapitulation of the subject: That man he is not good; and the non-inversion of the verb phrase in a question: What you are doing tonight?

English for special purposes, and English as a world language

English is the international language of science, the way that Latin and then perhaps German used to be: it is estimated that two-thirds of all scientific papers today are first published in English.

Since the end of the Second World War, aircraft pilots and sea-captains on international routes have required proficiency in radio English. (Even pilots flying only within their own country tend to use international English expressions nowadays, such as Roger, Negative, and How do You Read?)

English is clearly now the language of inter national diplomacy, in the way that French was in the 19th century. It is the official or alternative official language of more countries than any other; it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and one of its two working languages (the other being French). It is also the language used by the International Olympic Committee.

It is the language of international pop culture (many young people in Europe, Japan, and so on seem to learn more English from pop records than from schoolteachers).

In some ways, then, English is already an international language – and not just among scholars, the way that Latin was during its period as an 'international' language in Europe in the Middle Ages and after. If business negotiations, or arrangements for a football match, were to be conducted between a Yugoslav and a Brazilian, say, the language of discussion would be English. It is most unlikely ever to gain official recognition as the world language, but it is as close to being one as any language ever has been. And if an official world language ever were to be adopted – in the cause of world peace, for instance – it might well be English, rather than any of the artificial world languages. (Over a dozen of these have been devised, mostly at the end of the 19th century. Esperanto is the best known and most successful: its speakers have been estimated at as many as a million, and as few as 100,000.)

English, in a simplified form at any rate, would be a fairly good choice on linguistic grounds: it has few inflections – that is, complicated changes to the form of a word according to its grammatical functions – and is free from the confusing gender-system that characterises most other European languages. Its vocabulary, with a large Latin-based component, is reasonably familiar to most western Europeans. On the other hand, its spelling is, for historical reasons, rather troublesome; and its pronunciation system has subtleties of contrast that many foreigners find very difficult to master (though it has nothing to compare with the tricky clustering of consonants involved in Russian, or the tone-changes that characterise Chinese). All in all, English is a relatively easy language to acquire communicative competence in – and that is all that a world language should be expected to provide. To acquire mastery of English is another matter, of course: its large vocabulary and its vast stock of idioms (jump the gun, to go great guns, to stick to one's guns, to spike someone's guns) and phrasal and prepositional verbs (to put someone down, to put someone up, to put up with someone) are an endless headache to foreign students trying to approach full proficiency in English.

One unintended effect of the pervasiveness of English in non-English-speaking countries is the infiltration of English terms into foreign languages –a development many find distressing. Pop records, Hollywood films, and American culture generally are largely responsible for this. France in particular has long been worried by the English invasion. Over 2000 glaring English expressions have apparently been recorded in French: some are quite established now – le weekend, le sandwich, le parking, le camping, le smoking (a dinner jacket). Increasingly, too, le drugstore, le gangster, le gadget, le striptease, and le cocktail seem to be settling in, often, presumably, for want of an efficient French equivalent. Whether le businessman, le bulldozer, and le baby-sitter will stand the test of time is uncertain.

The late President Pompidou urged the abolition of anglicisms, and pressed for a policy of French 'linguistic integrity'. In official documents, the phrases hot money, fast food, and jumbo jet were to be referred to by French expressions instead: capitaux 'febriles, pret-a-manger, and gros-porteur. (But the Parisian public, one suspects, will continue using the English terms.)

Here are some British or American exports to other languages:

• to German: das Baby (fully established now), der Bestseller, der Computer, der Teenager, das Teeshirt, and again, der Babysitter, der Cocktail, der Gangster.

• to Italian: jeans, la spray, la pop art, il pop corn, il supermarket, and, once again, il weekend.

• to Spanish: jeans again, and pancakes, suete (sweater), and the sporting terms beisbol (baseball), boxeo (boxing), and nocaut (knockout).

Many English words seem to be in worldwide use – the pioneers perhaps of a new world language. Some, like cigarette, hotel, passport, post, and sport might at first have been adopted internationally under French influence, but the impetus today is clearly American: OK, jeans, Coca-Cola, program, soda, dollar, and so on. Other 'international' terms (many from Greek, Latin, or French sources) are airport, bank, bar, bus, camera, football, goal, golf, menu, salad, steak, stop, taxi, telephone, television, tennis, whisky.

An independent parallel development is the coining of many scientific terms by combining Latin and Greek elements to form an International Scientific Vocabulary, with results known to specialists in many lands: telespectroscope, polyvinyl, and so on.

What does the future hold for World English? Some scholars are pessimistic. Dr. R.W. Burchfield, when chief editor of the Oxford Dictionaries, expressed the view that some varieties of English are in danger of diverging to the point of mutual incomprehensibility – British, and American English might, in 100 years time, be as different from each other as French is from Italian. English already exists in a number of dialects; these could become languages – ratherin the way that Latin split into French, Italian, Spanish, and so on.

In fact, however, the evidence suggests that mother-tongue varieties of English are converging rather than diverging. With second-language varieties, it is true, English could suffer from its own success, and become fragmented in the way just suggested. But working against such a fate is the function of English as a lingua franca. Its popularity is largely because of its international intelligibility – it is the first language likely to reverse the chaos of Babel. Education and the increasingly international character of the media and communications are likely to ensure that no variety of English strays too far from a standard internationally comprehensible form.

WHOSE ENGLISH IS IT ANYWAY?