China English, a Developing Variety of English

Abstract

Nowadays, English can be seen or heard almost everywhere in many countries including China. With the arising of the English varieties, besides British and American ones, China English is argued by some scholars that it should be regarded as a variety of English, since it takes Standard English as its core, and can be used to express certain unique things relating to the Chinese society and culture (Li, 1993). China English is different from Chenglish or Chinese English, and it carries certain culture and society characters in many aspects and hardly can be replaced. China English has some syntactic and grammatical distinctions due to the influence of the Chinese language culture (Hu, 2004).Keywords: China English, English variety, international language, culture Introduction English Becomes the International LanguageThe English language has been spreading all over the world due to the British political imperialism in the nineteen century and the American economic hegemony in the twentieth century (Crystal, 1997). English is now spoken in nearly every country and not only as a language of international diplomacy, science, business and education but also as an international language of communication in common life.Nowadays the English language is no longer the language peculiar to native speakers but a language potentially belongs to the whole of humanity (Hu, 2004). The varieties of English are increasing with the wide spreading of English in the world. British English and American English, the two major standard varieties have become two of the many varieties (Kachru, 1997); however, other varieties begin giving full play to their role with their own features of vocabulary, sentence structure and grammatical logic (Hu, 2004), such as Canadian Variety, Indian Variety, Philippine Variety etc. Just as Brutt-Griffler (2002, p. ix) suggests, "the proliferation of varieties of English is a necessary result of the development of world English". The Arise of China EnglishWith the emerging of so many more varieties of English, "China English" has been being debated more than 20 years. It was first raised in 1980 by Ge (1983), a famous Chinese linguist and lexicographer (Cui, 2006;Kirkpatrick & Xu, 2002). Ge (1983) argues that China English holds its own ground being a developing variety since China is engaged in more international issues and English is being generalized in China.Being an English lecturer in China, in this paper, I intend to discuss the inevitability and necessity of the existence of China English based on the factors pertaining to the status of English, the characteristics of China English, its contribution to English, as well as the Chinese culture and contemporary Chinese society. English in China TodayAccording to Kachru's (1997) famous three categories, presently China English belongs to the Expanding Circle, where English is learnt and used as a foreign language and is used for international communication rather than internal communication.At present, the rise of English in China is phenome...

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