Editing English language (section)

=== Spread of Modern English ===

By the late 18th century, the [[British Empire]] had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication.{{sfn|How English evolved into a global language|2010}}{{sfn|The Routes of English}} England continued to form new colonies, and these later developed their own norms for speech and writing. English was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Australasia, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent nations that had multiple [[indigenous language]]s opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others.{{sfn|Romaine|2006|p=586}}{{sfn|Mufwene|2006|p=614}}{{sfn|Northrup|2013|pp=81–86}} In the 20th century the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a [[superpower]] following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the [[BBC]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Baker|first=Colin|title=Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YgtSqB9oqDIC|date=1998|page=311|publisher=Multilingual Matters|isbn=978-1-85359-362-8|access-date=27 August 2017|archive-date=20 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210120055603/https://books.google.com/books?id=YgtSqB9oqDIC|url-status=live}}</ref> and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster.{{sfn|Graddol|2006}}{{sfn|Crystal|2003a}} In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been.{{sfn|McCrum|MacNeil|Cran|2003|pp=9–10}}

As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755 [[Samuel Johnson]] published his ''[[A Dictionary of the English Language]]'', which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, [[Noah Webster]] published the ''[[Webster's Dictionary|American Dictionary of the English language]]'' to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of the prestige varieties among the middle classes.{{sfn|Romaine|1999|pp=1–56}}

In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as ''he'' and ''him'', ''she'' and ''her'', ''who'' and ''whom''), and SVO word order is mostly fixed.{{sfn|Romaine|1999|pp=1–56}} Some changes, such as the use of [[do-support]], have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word "do" as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory.{{sfn|Romaine|1999|p=2|ps=: "Other changes such as the spread and regularisation of do support began in the thirteenth century and were more or less complete in the nineteenth. Although do coexisted with the simple verb forms in negative statements from the early ninth century, obligatoriness was not complete until the nineteenth. The increasing use of do periphrasis coincides with the fixing of SVO word order. Not surprisingly, do is first widely used in interrogatives, where the word order is disrupted, and then later spread to negatives."}} Now, do-support with the verb ''have'' is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in ''-ing'', appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as ''had been being built'' are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. ''dreamed'' instead of ''dreamt''), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. ''more polite'' instead of ''politer''). British English is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the US as a world power.{{sfn|Leech|Hundt|Mair|Smith|2009|pp=18–19}}{{sfn|Mair|Leech|2006}}{{sfn|Mair|2006}}