Beyond English

ENGLISH

There are approximately 350 million people in the world who speak English as their first language. It is the third most spoken language. The first one is Mandarin with about 1.2 billion native speakers and the second one is Spanish with 400 million in South and Central America, Spain and in many areas of the USA.

The UK government considers the following countries as majority native English speaking:

English is easy to learn so it has become the lingua franca of business, travel and international relations.

Sulez raz, Countries with English as Official Language, CC BY-SA

Listen to the countries

IRISH

Irish, also called Gaelic, is a Celtic language mainly spoken in Ireland. It is similar to Scottish Gaelic (spoken in Scotland) and Manx (spoken in the Isle of Man).

Between the 17th and early 20th centuries, Irish was replaced by English. During the 1950s and 1960s a movement in favour of the Irish language managed to develop a standardized form of Irish (The Official Standard), which combined elements of the three main dialects: Munster (spoken in Kerry), Connacht (spoken in Connemara) and Ulster (spoken in Rosses).

Today Irish is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland and around 1.7 million people speak it daily in the areas known as Gaeltacht.

NAVAJO

Nowadays there are 154 indigenous American languages which are still spoken in the USA. However, the prediction is that by 2050 only twenty languages will remain because most of them have got few speakers and they are quite old.

The one that has the greatest number of speakers is Navajo (148,000) followed by Ojibwa (35,000), Dakota (20,300), Choctaw (17,800), Apache (12,700) and Cherokee (11,900).

Navajo is spoken in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, mainly in the Navajo reservation. After some decay in its use in the nineteenth century, the language has been revitalized. Today there is a Navajo school in Arizona where Kindergarten and first grade are completely taught in Navajo language.

After reading the texts, in pairs, decide if the following sentences are true or false and correct the false ones.

1. There are approximately 350 million people in the world who speak English as their second language. Espazos (1): JXUwMDFl

2. There are Spanish speakers in the USA. Espazos (2): JXUwMDBj

3. English is the first language in Trinidad and Tobago. Espazos (3): JXUwMDBj

4. A lingua franca is the first language people speak in a country. Espazos (4): JXUwMDFl

5. Scottish and Irish are very different languages. Espazos (5): JXUwMDFl

6. Less than 2 million people speak Irish in Ireland nowadays. Espazos (6): JXUwMDBj

7. By 2050 there will be more than 154 indigenous American languages. Espazos (7): JXUwMDFl

8. Choctaw is the most spoken indigenous language. Espazos (8): JXUwMDFl

Now look at these sentences and decide which part of the letter they correspond to. Write the numbers from 1 to 7.

It is time to use a formal letter. We are going to make contact with other schools round the world using English. The purpose is to explain who we are, to send them a book in our language and ask them to send us a book in their own language. It is a way to learn something about the languages other people speak. 

                                                                                                            Time to write!