Global English

Homework
Student name: Phạm Đường Minh Nhật
Student ID: ENENIU17023
To what extent would you describe the characteristic features you were able to identify as
representing innovations, deviations, or mistakes in the varieties of English concerned?
The short summary of Karchu’s three different categories (innovation, deviation, and mistake) is
insufficient to analyze English varieties around the globe. Therefore, I will provide some more
details about these categories and then present some prominent features of Vietnamese English
variety before concluding the nature of Vietnamese English variety.
Roshina (2007) has an in-depth analysis of the three ways to classify English varieties.
Innovation, in a simplest sense, are linguistics features that find their way to English dictionaries
in the inner circle. Bamgbose (1998) has suggest five characteristics to define innovation:
demographic, geographic, authoritative, codification, acceptance. Of all five, acceptance by the
educated class and codification in the dictionary are considered the two most important factors.
Some examples of English variety innovation are sushi from Japan, Tao from China, or dacha
from Russian. Similar to innovation, deviation is also a product of localization, which manifest
itself at a near-standard level. The only factor that can be used to differentiate these two
categories is codification. Roshina (2007) has found out some deviation found in Asian
Englishes: reduplication (hot hot tea), substitution of [l] – [r] (Lee – Rhee), using uncountables
for countables (much sweets), etc. In contrast with deviation and innovation, errors are often
found in uneducated speech due to the lack of cultural and language knowledge. Errors are vary
from language to language, so it seems unnecessary to discuss some particular language errors
here.
In my opnion, Vietnamese English characteristics are the most identifiable on lexical,
grammatical, and phonological level:
1. Lexis: “Pho” may be the only Vietnamese word that appears on Cambridge dictionary (online
version). Ly Quoc Phu found and interesting example: some Vietnamese people use the word
“serving time” rather than “business hours”, or “operating hours”. This could be the result of
word-by-word translation.
2. Grammar: Ly Quoc Phu also suggest some features of Vietnamese English grammar,
including “Wh-questions, clauses with adjectives and adverbs for comparison, exclamatory
sentences, sentence patterns, the omission of articles and auxiliary verbs, and the popular usage
of three tenses in Vietlish including simple present tense, simple past tense, and simple future
tense:. For the Wh-question, Vietnamese people may say “When you go Ha Noi?” instead of
“When are you going to Ha Noi?”
3. Phonology: Duong Thi Nu (2009) has identified the 4 most confusing sound pairs to
Vietnamese learners:
1- /ʃ/-/s/
2- /Z/-/z/
3- /dZ/-/z/ or /s/
4- /ʧ/- Vietnamese/ć/.
To be classified as innovation or deviation, these features must be commonly used by the
educated members of the society or appears in inner circle dictionaries. There is no evidence that
Vietnamese English features have satisfied one of these two requirements. Moreover, the
educated people in Vietnam are usually taught either British or American standard English,
which act as a barrier to the emergence of Vietnamese English. However, thanks to economic
growth, more and more people in Vietnam now can have access to English language learning,
which may give rise to the first-development stage of Vietnamese English.
References
Duong, T. N. (2009). Mistake or Vietnamese English.
Proshina, Z. G. (2007). The ABC and controversies of World Englishes. Хабаровск: Изд-во
Дальневост. ин-та ин. яз, 181.
Phu, Q.L. Does Vietnamese English or Vietlish exist in Vietnam?