Versions of English language

The article deals with one of the most significant linguistic phenomena of our time, the incredible spread of English as a global language. The author examined the phenomenon of language variation in terms of dialects and styles of English. The article focuses on a small number of selected examples in order to give a basic idea of some of significant ways in which forms of language can vary. The spread of English across cultures has two sides. One represents those who use English as their first language and the other represents those who use it as an additional one. Groups of people speaking diverse languages are often thrown into social contact. When one group becomes politically and economically dominant over another language a common language must be found to serve as a medium of communication. A language used in this fashion is known as lingua franca. In such situation pidgin languages have developed, that is a simplified language with reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure. World Englishes consist of varieties of English used in sociolinguistic context globally. Languages do not «die» or «go extinct»: they are crowded out by bigger languages. Small tongues get abandoned by their speakers, who stop using them in favor of a more dominant, more prestigious, or more widely known tongue.