Europe Battles English Invasion

Continental concerns

Elsewhere in Europe, the invasion of English and its possible replacement of national languages has raised concerns as well.

Queen Elizabeth II, a fluent French speaker, and Chirac

"Nothing would be worse for humanity than to move towards a situation where we speak only one language," French President Jacques Chirac has been quoted as saying.

Although words such as "le week-end" have slipped into daily French usage, outside of the classroom virtually the only exposure to the language of Shakespeare comes from pop culture.

"The irony is that an awful lot of the words that the French people complain about coming into French from English like 'le computer' came from French in the first place," Crystal said, noting the word originated from Latin.

Outside the EU, the onslaught of English has raised eyebrows as well.

Russia's first lady, Lyudmilla Putin, the wife of President Vladimir Putin, is a leading opponent of change in the Russian language.

Chicago in Moscow

English has widely entered the Russian language since the fall of communism, especially in emerging capitalist sectors. Business language such as "distributor" and "consulting" are transliterated into Cyrillic and advertising executives refer to "slogans."

In tiny but multilingual Switzerland, the "Defense of French" foundation put up an impassioned plea recently arguing the Swiss had no need for a fifth official language.

Swiss French-speakers, who make up a fifth of the population, are up in arms as schools in the majority German-speaking areas can now teach English from about the age of nine and start French or Italian lessons two years later.

English's openness key to success

But Crystal said English has in fact "borrowed" words from 350 other languages over the last 1,000 years, including up to 60,000 words from French during the Middle Ages, as well as from Latin and Greek, Italian and Spanish.

This openness is one of the reasons for the success of English, Crystal said.

"The range and depth of Shakespeare's vocabulary comes from the way in which he employs Germanic words, French words and Latin words to characterize the different people that he has in his plays," he added.

Young Germans are taking no chances and get an early start with English

Crystal said about 800 million people now speak English either as their first language or as a second language in countries where English has an official status such as India and Ghana.

But he pointed out the backlash against English was not a new trend.

The influx of Latin stoked huge controversy in the 16th century and even protest marches, he said, adding people always reacted to any internationally dominant language whatever it was.

"It just happens to be English's turn at the moment to influence these other languages."