Your Questions Answered

Penny Silva, Director of Editorial Projects, Oxford English Dictionary, and Managing Editor of the first comprehensive dictionary of South African English on historical principles, answers questions about the use of English worldwide.

Do any words mean completely different things around the world? How many people speak English as a first, or second language? Which varieties of English are spoken by the greatest number of people? How many countries in the world have English as their first language? Where else is English spoken? What was the first country outside Britain to use English as its first language? Is old-fashioned English still spoken anywhere in the world? Why does English have different vocabularies and accents? Is English affected by other languages it encounters? Are some spoken Englishes unintelligible to other English speakers? Does the Internet lead to a brand of English that suppresses local variation? Is it possible to produce a dictionary that covers all the world Englishes? Do all English-speaking countries have their own English dictionaries? Is British English better than the other kinds? Are people everywhere worried about the misuse of English? Is there ‘posh’ Australian and South African English?