Sunday, January 13, 2013

English Everywhere

English has been widely popularized, mostly through the influence of the United States. Or, at least, so I believe. Despite this, the English language was mostly developed in England and its vicinity (or so I believe), which makes it British and automatically some of the greatest things to happen to mankind.

But seriously, what's up with English? Everything's in English these days. The first episode of the documentary The Story of English starts by showing how some Russian music has English "boogie-woogie." Similarly, it's hard to see any Korean songs these days without any English stuff, though the language skills vary among "never say goodbye", "every day I shock", and "you know what I'm saying?"

Now, the documentary mentions some of the words or phrases that have been adapted into other languages such as "rock music". This is impressive considering the documentary was made, like, 30 years ago. Again, I'll bring up Korea because nowadays, everything is in English. EVERYTHING. They think it makes them look cool and more modern, which I suppose isn't completely untrue (although it makes me cringe when doors say "full" instead of "pull").



Seeing that the title of the first episode is An English Speaking World, we can see how what I've said so far relates to the documentary. Sort of. Everything was becoming English back then, and it's more so now. As it got easy for people to communicate with other people in other countries with other cultures, English rose naturally as the main way to communicate. So far in my life, I've used English well (although I'm not entirely sure if this blogpost is an example of good usage) and love the language. I'm just bugged a bit about its relative lack of onomatopoeias compared with Korea.

I guess this is just an introduction to the other episodes. This episode mostly boasts the universality of the English language. Something about English going out to space.


The Story of English. Dir. Robert MacNeil, Robert McCrum, and William Cran. BBC, 1986. 27 Aug. 2009. Web. 13 Jan. 2013.

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