Question

Future English
Johnson: Simpler and more foreign
Jul 3rd 2014, 11:53 by R.L.G. BERLIN
SEVERAL weeks ago, Johnson discussed his debate with Nicholas Ostler about the
lingua franca of the future. Johnson thinks that English has a very long run ahead of it. Mr. Ostler
sees English's time as coming to an end, to be replaced by machinetranslation tools that will
remove the need for people to leam to speak, read and write a lingua franca. But we agreed
that whatever the long run might look like, the next few decades are set. No language has
anything like a chance of displacing English.
Interestingly, about two-thirds of English-speakers are not first-language speakers of
English. To put it another way: English no longer belongs to England, to superpower America,
or even to the English-speaking countries generally. Rather, English is the world's language.
What happens to a language when it becomes everybody's? Shaped by the mouths of billions
of non-native speakers, what will the English of the future look like?


3. Based on the author's point of view, mark the correct statement about the
future of English:
□English will never grow in usage and variety.
□English may simplify because it is being used by more and more people.

4. Johnson é um jornalista que trabalha para o The Economist, um jornal
seminal. Quem é Nicholas Ostler? Faça inferências:
□He is a language specialist.
□He is an economic specialist.

5. O que eles dizem sobre o futuro da lingua inglesa? Escreva (A) se a sentença
se referir a opinião de Johnson, (B) se ela se referir a opinião de Mr. Ostler ou
(C) se a sentença se referir a opinião de ambos.
□English has a great future ahead of it.
□No language will take the place of English in the next few decades.
□People will use machine-translation tools to communicate.

​

Answer 1

Resposta:

SEVERAL weeks ago, Johnson discussed his debate with Nicholas Ostler about the lingua franca of the future. Johnson thinks that English has a very long run ahead of it. Mr Ostler sees English’s time as coming to an end, to be replaced by machine-translation tools that will remove the need for people to learn to speak, read and write a lingua franca. But we agreed that whatever the long run might look like, the next few decades are set. No language has anything like a chance of displacing English.