Non Native English

Definition:
Regional and national varieties of the English Language used in places where it is not the mother tongue of the majority of the population. New English have certain formal properties (Lexical, Phonological, grammatical) that differ from those of British or American Standard of English. Examples of New English include Nigerian English, Singapore English and Indian English.

Introduction:
It is therefore not surprising to nd only a limited number of works focusing on non-native speakers (NNSs) prior to the 1990s. The rst attempt to put (non-) nativism onto the centre stage of linguistic inquiry by challenging current undisputed assumptions on the matter was Paikedays (1985): The native speaker is dead, in which it is argued that the native speaker exists only as a gment of linguists imagination (Paikeday 1985: 12). Paikeday suggested using the term procient user of a language to refer to all speakers who can successfully use it. A few years later, Rampton (1990) similarly proposed the term expert speaker to include all successful users of a language. Davies (1991, 2003) further delved into native speaker identity, and thus formulated the key question of whether a second language (L2) learner can become a native speaker of the target language. His conclusion was that L2 learners can become native speakers of the target language, and master the intuition, grammar, spontaneity, creativity, pragmatic control, and interpreting quality of born native speakers. Following a different approach, Piller (2002) noted that one-third of her interviewed L2 users claimed they could pass as native speakers in some contexts. In a similar vein, Inbar Lourie (2005) found that 50% of the non-native teachers participating in her study felt that other non-native speakers perceived them as native speakers. In other words,

Inbar-Louries data show that many self-ascribed non-native speakers can actually pass for native speakers in certain situations. Similarly, some self-ascribed NSs in Moussus (2006) study were taken for NNSs by their students. More recently, Park (2007) analyzed how NNS identities are co-constructed through interaction, and Faez (2007) confirmed that linguistic identities are complex, dynamic, relational, dialogic, and highly contextdependent.

It is necessary, then, to recognize the importance of a speakers acceptance by a community as one of its members, as it is what will ultimately be determining the social recognition of the NS/NNS identity. This social recognition is often based on judgments of the speakers accent. People typically display a fairly high ability at spotting accentedness in speech (Munro & Derwing 1994; Fledge, Munro & Mackay 1995; Munro & Derwing 1995). If the speakers accent is different from the listeners, and this listener cannot recognize it as any other established accent, the speaker will be placed within the non-native speaker category. Thus, even though a dichotomy vision of the NSNNS discussion does not appear to be linguistically acceptable, it happens to be nonetheless socially present, and therefore, potentially meaningful as an area of research in applied linguistics.

The arguments for the inappropriateness of labelling a certain group of speakers as native speakers notwithstanding, thousands of language teaching jobs, specifying that only NSs will be considered, are advertised in many different countries and educational institutions and contexts, addressing a hypothetical preference by L2 learners for NS rather than NNS teachers, and many NNS teachers are not even considered for ELT jobs (Clark & Paran 2007), in spite of recent studies (Benke & Medgyes 2005; Lasagabaster & Sierra 2005; Pacek 2005; Moussu 2006) showing that many students can appreciate the value of NNSs and do in fact prefer them to NSs in certain contexts and for certain classroom tasks.

The above situation of discrimination against NNS teachers has led an increasing number of people to raise their voices against it. Language discrimination, as is pervasively argued by Lippi-Green (1997), is rarely considered a true discriminatory practice, and judges are inclined to believe that accented speakers may objectively not be suitable for certain jobs in which language plays a key role. With regard to the language teaching profession, however, the myth of the native speaker as the ideal teacher has been deconstructed through showing the lack of substantial evidence behind such a concept. Phillipson (1992) argued that since most NNSs had learned their second

language as adults, they were better equipped to teach the L2 to other adults than those who had learned it as their L1 when they were children. Kramsch (1997) further questioned the idealization of NSs and attributed it to the great importance given during the sixties to oral communicative competence in foreign language teaching.

Examples and Observations:

"Most adaptation in a New English relates to Vocabulary, in the form of new words (borrowings--from several hundred language sources, in such areas as Nigeria), wordformations, word-meanings, collocations and idiomatic phrases. There are many cultural domains likely to motivate new words, as speakers find themselves adapting the language to meet fresh communicative needs."(David Crystal, English as a Global Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003)

"The pioneer in the study of New English has been, without doubt, Braj B. Kachru, who with his 1983 book The Indianization of English initiated a tradition of describing nonnative varieties of English. South Asian English remains a well-documented institutionalized second-language variety, yet the cases of Africa and South East Asia are by now also relatively well described."(Sandra Mollin, Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status. Gunter Narr Verlag, 2006)

"A term that has gained popularity is 'New English,' which Platt, Weber and Ho (1984) use to designate an English variety with the following characteristics:

It has developed through the education system (possibly even as a medium of education at a certain level), rather than as a first language of the home. It has developed in an area where a native variety of English was not spoken by a majority of the population. It is used for a range of functions (for example, letter-writing, government communications, literature, as a lingua franca within a country and in formal contexts). It has become nativised, by developing a subset of rules which mark it as different from American or British English.

"The varieties of English spoken in outer circle countries have been called 'New Englishes,' but the term is controversial. Singh (1998) and Mufwene (2000) argue that it is meaningless, in so far as no linguistic characteristic is common to all and only 'New Englishes' and all varieties are recreated by children from a mixed pool of features, so all are 'new' in every generation. These points are certainly true, and it is important to avoid suggesting that the new (mainly non-native) varieties are inferior to the old (mainly native) ones. . . . Nevertheless, the Englishes of India, Nigeria, and Singapore and many other outer-circle countries do share a number of superficial linguistic characteristics which, taken together, make it convenient to describe them as a group separately from America, British, Australian, New Zealand, etc. varieties." (Gunnel Melchers and Philip Shaw, World Englishes: An Introduction. Arnold, 2003)

Non-native accents:
Pronunciation is the most difficult part of a non-native language to learn. Most individuals who speak a non-native language fluently speak it with an accent of their native tongue. The most important factor in predicting the degree to which the accent will be noticeable (or strong) is the age at which the non-native language was learned. The critical period theory states that if learning takes place after the critical period (usually considered around puberty) for acquiring native-like pronunciation, an individual is unlikely to acquire a native-like accent.[7] This theory, however, is quite controversial among researchers. Although many subscribe to some form of the critical period, they either place it earlier than puberty or consider it more of a critical window, which may vary from one individual to another and depend on factors other than age, such as length of residence, similarity of the non-native language to the native language, and the frequency with which both languages are used. Nevertheless, children as young as 6 at the time of moving to another country often speak with a noticeable non-native accent as adults. There are also rare instances of individuals who are able to pass for native speakers even if they learned their non-native language in early adulthood. However, neurological constrains associated with brain development appear to limit most non-native speakers ability to sound native-like. Most researchers agree that for adults, acquiring a native-like accent in a non-native language is near impossible.

Brief History of English:

"We can view the spread of English in terms of the old English, the new English and English as a foreign language variety, representing the types of spread, the patterns of acquisition and the functional domains in which English is used across cultures and languages. The 'old varieties' of English, for example, might be traditionally described as British, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, etc. The new English on the other hand have two major features, in that English is only one of two or more codes in the linguistic repertoire and that it has acquired an important status in the language of such multilingual nations. Also in functional terms the new English have extended their functional range in a variety of social, educational, administrative, and literary domains. Moreover they have acquired great depth in terms of users at different levels of society. India, Nigeria and Singapore would be examples of countries with 'new English.' The third variety of English, that of English as a foreign language, has often been characterized by the fact that unlike the countries where we find the 'new English' these countries do not necessarily have a history of colonization by the users of the 'old English but use English as a necessary international language. Japan, Russia, China, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. would fall into this category."(Joseph Foley, Introduction to New English: The Case of Singapore. Singapore Univ. Press, 1988) 1. OLD ENGLISH

When England was established there were several kingdoms and the most advanced one was Nurthumbria. It was this period that the best of the Old English literature was written, including the epic poem Beowulf. In the 8th century Nurthumbrian power declined, West Saxons became the leading power. The most famous king of the West Saxons was Alfred the Great. He founded and established schools, translated or caused to be translated many books from Latin in to English. After many years of hit-and-run raids between the European kingdoms, the Norseman landed in the year of 866 and later the east coast of the island was Norsemans. Norse language effected the English considerably. Norse wasnt so different from English and English people could understand Norseman. There were considerable interchanges and word borrowings (sky, give, law, egg, outlaw, leg, ugly, talk). Also borrowed pronouns like they, their, them. It is supposed also that the Norseman influenced the sound structure and the grammar of English. Old English had some sound which we dont know have now. In grammar, Old English was much more highly inflected that Middle English because there were case endings for nouns, more person and number endings of words and a more complicated pronoun systems, various endings for adjectives. In vocabulary Old English is quiet different from

Middle English. Most of the Old English words are native English which werent borrowed from other languages. On the other hand Old English contains borrowed words coming from Norse and Latin. 2. MIDDLE ENGLISH

Between 1100-1200 many important changes took place in the structure of English and Old English became Middle English. The political event which effected the administration system and language was the Norman Conquest. In 1066 they crossed the Channel and they became the master of England. For the next several next years, England was ruled by the kings whose native language was French. On the other hand French couldnt become the national language because it became the language of the court , nobility, polite society, literature. But it didnt replace as the language of the people. English continued to be the national language but it changed too much after the conquest. The sound system grammar wasnt so effected but vocabulary was effected much. There were word related with government parliament, tax, averment, majesty; church word: religion, parson, sermon; words for food: veal, beef, mutton, each, lemon, cream, biscuit; colors: blue, scarlet, vermilion; household words: curtain, chair, lamp, towel, blanket; play words: dance, chess, music, leisure, conversation literary words: story romance, poet, literary; learned words: study, logic grammar, noun, surgeon, anatomy, stomach; ordinary words for all sorts: nice, second, very, age, bucket, final, gentle, fault, flower, count, sure, move, surprise, plain. (Clark, V.P.& Eschholz, P.A. &Rose ,A.F.; 1994;622 ) Middle English was still a Germanic language but it is different from Old English in many ways. Grammar and the sound system changed a good deal. People started to rely more on word order and structure words to express their meaning rather than the use of case system. This can be called as a simplification but it is not exactly. Languages dont become simpler , they merely exchange one kind of complexity for another( (Clark, V.P.& Eschholz, P.A. &Rose ,A.F.; 1994;622 ) For us Middle English is simpler that Old English because it is closer to Modern English.
3.

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH:

Between 1400-1600 English underwent a couple of sound changes. One change was the elimination of a vowel sound in certain unstressed positions at the end of the words. The change was important because it effected thousands of words and gave a different aspect to the whole language. The other change is what is called the Great Vowel Shift. This was a systematic shifting of half a dozen vowels and diphthongs in stressed syllables. For example the word name had in Middle English a vowel something like that in the modern word father;...etc. The shift effected all the words in which these vowels sounds occurred. These two changes produced the basic differences between Middle

English and Modern English. But there are several other developments that effected the language. One was the invention of printing. It was introduced to England by William Caxton in 1475. After this books became cheaper and cheaper, more people learned to read and write and advanced in communication. The period of Early Modern English was also a period of English Renaissance, which means the development of the people. New ideas increased. English language had grown as a result of borrowing words from French ,Latin, Greek.The greatest writer of the Early Modern English period is Shakespeare and the best known book is the King Jones version of the BIBLE. 4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

In order to establish the language they develop a dictionary. The first English Dictionary was published in 1603. Another product of the 18th century was the invention of English Grammar. As English is replaced with Latin as the language of scholarship, it was felt to control the language. The period where English developed most in the Modern English. In that period the people speaking that language increased too much. Now, English is the greatest language of the world spoken natively and as a second language.

Conclusion:
For many decades, it has been believed that native English speaking teachers are superior to Non-native English teachers especially in teaching oral production. However, I am convinced that the statement above is merely a myth in English language teaching profession. This essay will examine why having native English speakers as a teacher is not always advantageous in the field of language teaching. One of the possible reasons is that native English teachers are less likely to put themselves into students' shoes. That is, unless they have ever had a chance to learn second language, it can be hard for them to understand how difficult it is to learn a new language. On the other hand, non-native teachers are more aware of how students feel towards learning a language since they actually go through the process of learning before. They are probably better at predicting what potential linguistic problem students may encounter, and give them more productive treatments. In addition, different cultural both native English teachers and norms can be a big challenge students. Native English teachers enter for the

classroom with their own cultural mores or patterns which are gained from their home country. For instance, being quiet unless students are allowed to talk in the class is regarded as a good behavior in most parts of Asian cultures. However, not talking in the class can be seen as a lack of class participation by teachers from English speaking countries. Accordingly, they could give the silent students bad credits even though those students are in fact taking part in the class. It is true that, native English teachers are in the advantageous places in that they give more authentic pronunciation and richer expressions to students than nonnative teachers do. Regarding students' affective area and cultural matter, however, non-native teachers can have more positive influence on students' language learning journey.