Although McCrum, Cran & MacNeil (1986) refer rather uncritically to the spread of English as a 'remarkable success story', it has not been without many paradoxes and ironies. Robert Louis Stevenson drew attention to at least one of these when he observed that

The race that has conquered so wide an empire has not yet managed to

Assimilate the islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish

Mountains still cling, in part, to their Gaelic speech. It was but the other

Day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in

Mousehole, on St. Michael's Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking

Woman. (cited in Treglown 1988: 163)

Most English speakers take the present position and status of English for granted. Most do not realise that English was very much itself once a minority language initially in all of the places where it has since become the mother tongue of millions. It has gained its present position by replacing the languages of indigenous groups such as the American Indian, the Celts and the Australian Aborigines, and now many more.

Another paradox in the spread of English is its designation as an official language only in the outer circle and not in the inner circle of so-called native-speaking countries. No government of the major Anglophone nations has ever felt the need to declare English as its official language because English has served effectively as a defacto rather than dejure official language. Nevertheless, as the demography of both Britain and the US are changing at the close of the twentieth century due to the entry of new immigrants, the prospect of English being declared official is being discussed. A group called US English has intensified its lobby for a constitutional amendment which would make English the official language of the United States. The English Language Act, already passed in California and other states, makes English the official language for public use. US English also seeks to repeal laws mandating multilingual ballots and voting materials. It welcomes members who agree that English is and must remain the only language of the people of the United States. A similar group in Canada called APEC (Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada) has as its motto: 'One language unites, two divide.'

In Britain similar reactions occurred after a court case in 1988 involving a British man of Pakistani descent, who requested a Panjabi interpreter because he spoke limited English. The judge made taking English lessons a condition of the man's probation commenting that anyone who lived in Britain had a duty to understand the language. A community relations worker was quoted in the press as asking, Where does it say that somebody has to speak English to be a British citizen?' The answer is of course 'nowhere', but from the treatment of the case in the tabloid press it would appear that many people believe there should be a connection between language and citizenship (see Cameron & Bourne 1988: 152). While Welsh obtained legal status within Wales in 1967 through the Welsh Language Act, the newer languages of immigration like Panjabi etc. have no legal status.

While there seems to be no lack of confidence in exporting native models of English as a foreign language, it is at the same time almost paradoxical to find among all the major anglophone nations such enormous linguistic insecurity about standards of English usage. The complaint tradition stretching back to medieval times is intense on both sides of the Atlantic (see Romaine 1991 on its manifestations in Australia). Ferguson and Heath (1981: xxvii), for instance, comment on prescriptivism in the US that 'quite possibly no other nation buys so many style manuals and how-to-improve your language books in proportion to the population'. In 1989 Prince Charles angered British school teachers by complaining that his staff could not write or speak English properly. Around the same time the Times Highrr Education Supplement carried a front page article in which several Oxford professors complained about the low standards of English used by students at Oxford University and suggested the possibility of introducing remedial instruction.

It will be the task of future generations of historians and linguists to decide what in retrospect was decisive and how much upheaval there was in what we think of today as the modern period. Here I have tried to take account not just of revolutions, but also of continuity.

• Commonwealth literary studies and Eurocentrism

When in the later 1960s it first became clear that the former colonies were busy producing literatures of their own, the idea that 'English literature' was mutating into 'literatures in English' of which the literary production of England was only one - although important – example, was still unthinkable. Instead,

• Standard English was clearly conceived of as a male norm by both H. C. Wyld and Daniel Jones

In commenting on the characteristics of what he called 'Received Standard', Wyld (1934: 614) noted that it was heard most consistently at its best among officers of the British Regular Army. 'The utterance of these men is at once clear-cut and precise, yet free from affectation; at once downright and

• ENGLISH TODAY

The modern world is becoming smaller all the time. Every day distances between different countries seem less. For this reason it's becoming more and more important to know different languages, especially English. One billion people speak English today. That's about 20% of the world's population. 400 million people speak English as their

• Shifting centres of gravity and the notion of a common core

In their popular account of the history of the English language, McCrum, Cran & MacNeil (1986) mark symbolically their shift of focus by announcing their adoption of American spelling in chapter 7, which deals with American English. They (1986: 235n) predict that their decision will be greeted with 'pain or

• Technology – Computers

French is clearly the major source for recent English loanwords, as it has doubtless been since the Middle Ages. Yet various efforts to assess fluctuations in the influence of French on English, even when based on the OED, show considerable variation, depending on the methods of assessment used. Counts made