During the 17th century, new shiploads of immigrants brought an increasing variety of linguistic backgrounds into the country.
Then in the 18th century, there was a vast wave of immigration from northern Ireland. The Irish had been migrating to America from around 1600, but the main movements took place during the 1720s, when around 50,000 Irish and Scots-Irish immigrants arrived. Many stayed along the coast, especially in the area of Philadelphia, but most moved inland through the mountains in search of land.
By the time of the first census, in 1790, the population of the country was around 4 million, most of whom lived along the Atlantic coast. A century later the population numbered over 50 million, spread throughout the continent.
There were increasing numbers of Africans entering the south, as a result of slave trade, and this dramatically increased in the 18th century: a population of little more than 2,500 black slaves in 1700 had become about 100,000 by 1775, far out-numbering the southern whites.
The 19th century saw a massive increase in American immigration, as people fled the results of revolution, poverty and famine in Europe. Large numbers of Irish came following the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s. Germans and Italians came, escaping the consequences of the failed 1848 revolution. Increasing numbers of European Jews flew because of the pogroms of the 1880s. In the first two decades of the 20th century, immigrants were entering the USA at an average of three quarters of a million a year. In 1900, the population was just over 75 million. This total had doubled by 1950.
Within one or two generations of arrival, most of these immigrant families had come to speak English, through a natural process of assimilation. Grandparents and grandchildren found themselves living in very different linguistic worlds. The result was a massive growth in mother-tongue use of English.
According to the 1990 census, the number of people (over 5 years) who spoke English at home had grown over 198 million- 86 per cent of the population. This figure increased to 215 in the 2000 census. This is almost four times as many mother-tongue speakers as any other nation.
But also the seeds of a conflict between the need for intelligibility and the need for identity were beginning to grow- a conflict which, by the later decades of the 20th century, had fuelled the movement in support of English as the official language of the USA.
Canada
The first English-language contact with Canada was as early as 1797, when John Cabot is thought to have New-foundland. Farming, Fishing, and further industries attracted then English-speaking settlers.
The next major development followed the US Declaration of Independence in 1776. Loyalist supporters of Britain settled first in what is now Nova Scotia, then moving to New Brunswick and further inland. They were soon followed by many thousands who were attracted by the cheapness of land, especially in the area known as Upper Canada (above Montreal and the north of the Great Lakes). Within fifty years, the population of this province had reached 100,000. Over 31 million were estimated in 20012, with two-thirds claiming English as a native of home language.
The Caribbean
During the early years of American settlement, the English language was also spreading in the south.
From the early 17th century, ships from Europe travelled to the West African coast, where they exchanged cheap goods for black slaves. The slaves were shipped in barbarous conditions to the Caribbean islands and the American coast.
By the time of the American Revolution (1776) their numbers had grown to half a million, and there were over 4 million by the time slavery was abolished, at the end of the US Civil War (1865).
The policy of the slave traders was to bring people of different language backgrounds together in the ships, to make it difficult for groups to plot rebellion. The result was the growth of several pidgin forms of communication, and in particular a pidgin between the slaves and the sailors, many of whom spoke English.
Once arrived in the Caribbean, the pidgin English continued to act as a means of communication between black population and the new landowners, and among the blacks themselves. Then, when their children were born, the pidgin gradually began to be used as a mother tongue, producing the first black creole speech in the region.
In this creole English which rapidly came to be used throughout the southern plantations, and in many of the coastal town and islands. At the same time, standard British English was becoming a prestige variety throughout the area, because of the emerging political influence of Britain.
Australia and New Zealand
Towards the end of the 18th century, the continuing process of British world exploration established the English language in the southern hemisphere.
Australia was visited by James Cook in 1770, and within twenty years Britain had established its first penal colony at Sydney, thus relieving the pressure on the overcrowded prisons in England. About 130,000 prisoners were transported during fifty years after the arrival of the ‘first fleet’ in 1788. ‘Free’ settlers, as they were called, also began to enter the county from the very beginning, but they did not achieve substantial numbers until the mid-19th century. From then on, immigration rapidly increased. By 1850, the population of Australia was about 400,000 and by 1900 nearly 4 million. In 2002, it was nearly 19 million.
The British Isles provided the main source of settlers, and thus the main influence on the language. Many of the convicts came from London and Ireland (following the 1789 Irish rebellion).
In New Zealand the story of English started later and moved more slowly. Captain Cook charted the islands in 1769-70 and European whalers and traders began to settle there in the 1790s, expanding the developments already taking place in Australia.
However, the official colony was not established until 1840, following the Treaty of Waitangi between Maori chiefs and the British Crown. There was then a rapid increase in European immigration- from around 2,000 in 1840 to 25,000 by 1850, and to three-quarters of a million by 1900.
The total population in 2002 was over 3.8 million.
Firstly, in comparison with Australia, there has been a stronger sense of the historical relationship with Britain, and a greater sympathy for British values and institutions.
South Africa
British involvement in the region dates only from 1795.
British control was established in 1806, and a policy of settlement began in earnest in 1820, when some 5,000 British were given land in the eastern Cape. English was made the official language of the region in 1822.
English became the language of law, education, and most other aspects of public life. Further British settlements followed in the 1840s and 1850s especially in Natal, and there was a massive influx of Europeans following the development of the gold and diamond areas in the Witwatersrand in the 1870s. Nearly half a million immigrants, many of them English-speaking, arrived in the country during the last quarter of the 19th century.
At the same time, English was being used as a second language by the Afrikaans speakers, and many of the Dutch colonists took this variety with them of the Great Track of 1836, as they moved north to escape British rule.
English has always been a minority language in South Africa, and is currently spoken as a first language only by about 3.7 million in a 2002 population of over 43.5 million.
English was used by the remaining whites and by increasing numbers of the black population.
English was perceived by the Afrikaner government as the language of protest and self-determination. Many blacks saw English as a means of achieving an international voice, and uniting themselves with other black communities.
For the white authorities, too, English is important as a means of international communication.
The 1993 Constitution names eleven languages as official, including English and it is likely that English will continue to be an important lingua franca.
In 1993 the choice of English as the preferred language in which children should receive their education. And in the South African Parliament in 1994 the language continued to dominate the proceedings, with 87 per cent of all speeches being made in English.
South Asia
In terms of numbers of English speakers, the Indian subcontinent has a very special position, probably outranking the combined totals of speakers in the USA and UK.
The traditional view was that somewhere between 3 and 5 per cent of the people made regular use of English which would have yielded a total of some 30-50 million around the year 1999, when the population of India passed a billion. Since then, the estimated have crept up, nearly 20 per cent, for example, is written in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In real terms these estimated represent a range of 30 million to over 330 million.
South Asia holds about a fifth of the world’s population.
The origins of South Asian English lie in Britain. The first regular British contact with the subcontinent came in 1600 with the formation of the British East India Company- a group of merchants who were granted a trading monopoly in the area by Queen Elizabeth I. The Company established its first trading station in Surat in 1612, and by the end of the century others were in existence in Madras, Bombay and Calcutta.
During the period of British sovereignty, from 1765 until independence in 1947, English gradually became the medium of administration and education throughout the subcontinent. The language question attracted special attention during the early 19th century, when colonial administrators debated the kind of educational policy which should be introduced.
When the universities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were established in 1857, English became the primary medium of instruction, thereby guaranteeing its status and steady growth during the next century.
In India, the bitter conflict between supporters of English, Hindi and regional languages led in the 1960s to a ‘three languages formula’, in which English was introduced as the chief alternative to the local state language. It now has the status of an ‘associate’ official language with Hindi the official language. It is also recognized as the official language of states and eight Union territories.
English has, as a consequence, retained its standing within the government administration, secondary and higher education, the armed forces, the media, business, and tourism.
In Pakistan, it is an associated official language.
Increasingly it is being perceived by young South Asian as the languages of cultural modernity.
