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Concept
International English
Summary
International English is the concept of using the English language as a global means of communication similar to an international auxiliary language, and often refers to the movement towards an international standard for the language. Related and sometimes synonymous terms include: Global English, World English, Common English, Continental English, General English, and Engas (English as associate language). Sometimes, these terms refer to the actuality of the situation, where English is spoken and used in numerous dialects around the world. These terms may acknowledge the diversity and varieties of English spoken throughout the world.
Sometimes however, these related terms refer to a desired standardisation (i.e., Standard English), but there is no consensus on the path to this goal. There have been many proposals for making International English more accessible to people from different nationalities; Basic English is an example, but it failed to make progress. More recently, there have been proposals for English as a lingua franca (ELF) in which non-native speakers take a highly active role in the development of the language. It has also been argued that International English is held back by its traditional spelling. There has been slow progress in adopting alternative spellings.
History of the English language
The modern concept of "International English" does not exist in isolation, but is the product of centuries of development of the English language.
The English language evolved in England, from a set of West Germanic dialects spoken by the Angles and Saxons, who arrived from continental Europe in the 5th century. Those dialects became known as Englisc (literally "Anglish"), the language today referred to as Anglo-Saxon or Old English (the language of the poem Beowulf). However, less than a quarter of the vocabulary of Modern English is derived from the shared ancestry with other West Germanic languages because of extensive borrowings from Norse, Norman, Latin, and other languages.
Official source
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