One of the best things I learned this year (from my friend Sylviane Granger) was that a lot of teachers use our blog as a source of inspiration for lessons and assignments for their students. But this isn’t really surprising, when you look at the huge range of material contributed by so many great writers. When Kati Süle asked me to select my favourite posts from 2011, it seemed like an impossible task – there haven’t been any posts which I didn’t enjoy or learn from. But I’ll have a go at summarizing some of the highlights.

Following last year’s world tour of Englishes, our new What’s Your English? theme kicked off in February with a look at Romantic English. ‘Kick off’, of course, is originally a football term, but has broadened out to refer to starting any kind of process. It’s a reminder of the central role of metaphor in the way we communicate. We had a Metaphor Month in April, but for me this is a thread that runs through almost everything we talk about in the blog. In March, for example, Andrew Delahunty, who knows more about the language of sport than anyone I know, showed how work-related vocabulary (‘a bad day at the office’) has become part of the vocabulary of football commentators. You could see this as evidence of sports pundits’ well-known addiction to clichés – a topic covered by our guest blogger Stan Carey in one of his many entertaining posts – but it’s also a nice example of the more creative use of metaphor.  Metaphor is the single most important mechanism by which words acquire new meanings. Some are just playful exploitations of familiar uses, heard once and then forgotten; others (like Andrew’s ‘bad day at the office’) leave their mark on the language for a while; but some ‘settle in’ to become full members of the lexicon, adding new senses to older words. Martin Shovel’s post on metaphor explained how it all works, with reference to the ground-breaking ideas of George Lakoff.

A new word for me this year was ‘r-less’. As part of our month exploring the contentious subject of language and class, Ben Trawick-Smith corrected the common misconception (well, common to me at least) that all Americans had rhotic accents, sounding the r’s in words like bird or butter. Not so: non-rhoticity (or ‘r-lessness’) has a long and complex history in north America. John Wells responded with a post on rhoticity in England, and (among other interesting observations) gave us the exact citation proving that he was the one who coined the word rhotic in the first place.

This is one of the best things about the blog: when a post confronts us with hard evidence that challenges a commonly-held (and plausible) belief. Dan Clayton, writing in ‘Gender English’ month, debunked the notion that women and men – driven by evolutionary factors – use language in significantly different ways. Dan reported on the painstaking research done by Deborah Cameron, who concluded, after surveying huge amounts of conversational data, that ‘the linguistic evidence for differences between the sexes is actually very slight’. Serious research like this sits happily alongside sharp observation of language trends. Lindsay Clandfield’s thought-provoking post on the widespread use of exclamation marks in online communication offered a more subtle explanation of this trend: maybe it’s not that writers are just overexcited, but that email and other online media are, by their nature, a little impersonal (‘without affect’, as one writer put it), so an exclamation mark here and there may add a touch of friendliness.

Inevitably, most of us on the Macmillan team have a UK perspective. But the international flavour of the blog ensures we don’t focus too much on this particular corner of the linguistic world. As Brits, we’re familiar with the relationship between language and class in our own culture, but Robert Lane Greene’s piece during Class English month provided a fascinating account of the equally complex (but quite different) features of the north/south divide in the US and its linguistic impacts. In a similar vein, Vicki Hollett tackled ‘small talk’, and gave some well-observed insights into the differences in the way Americans and Brits handle this aspect of language.

It’s a measure of the range and quality of this year’s blog activity that Jonathan Marks’ comment on a recent microblog was a perfect mini-tutorial in itself: wonderfully erudite, but full of humour too. Our readers’ comments are a vital part of the whole enterprise – as revealed, for example, in the record haul of comments attracted by Stan Carey’s satire on management-speak, ‘Critical learnings going forward’. In fact, one of Stan’s popular posts from last year, on ‘man words’ (like manbag and man flu) was kept alive throughout 2011, with a string of new suggestions added in the comments (the last of these – mansplaining – coming over a year after the original post). While I’m on the subject, a big thank you to Stan for his consistently brilliant posts: whatever the subject, he has always had something interesting and original to say. Thanks too to Kerry Maxwell, whose BuzzWords help keep us up to date, as well as providing one of the best accounts you’ll find anywhere of the factors that contribute to the ongoing evolution of English.

This year has been all about sublanguages – the forms of language we use in particular situations (when you’re online, for example, or doing ‘small talk’ at a party) or for talking about particular subjects. These have covered a wide spectrum of topics, from poker to house music, and from rhotic accents to the environment. Whether you’re ‘learning’ English, ‘living’ it (through regular use in your job or area of study), or just ‘loving’ it (or all three), I hope there has been plenty to keep you interested.

Best wishes to everyone, and we look forward to enjoying your company in the New Year.

Today we (re)introduce Dawn Nell, the second in a series of guest bloggers who are contributing to this blog over a two-week period. The first of their posts is on the subject of ‘Global English’, and the second will look at the ways that you (users) search Macmillan Dictionary. Dawn, who has written for this blog before, is an historian and blogger who works on the history of publishing. She was born in Cape Town, and these days lives mostly in Oxford and on Twitter.

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You know when a blog post begins with something really clichéd and you just have a feeling it’s not going to end well? This isn’t going to be like that at all, so stick with me despite the fact that I’m starting with one of the oldest clichés of language difference around: ‘You say tomato, I say tomato.’ Admittedly it’s kind of difficult to get this to work in text and to make any sense of this line you’ve got to know that it belongs to a song which puts it more like this: ‘You say toMAYto, I say tomAHto’. (You’re getting that feeling now, aren’t you?) The point I’m trying to make is that global English is characterized by diversity. A lot of diversity. In fact, you could even say, diverse diversity. The difference in pronunciation between ‘American’ English –(toMAYto) and ‘British’ English (tomAHto) is just one example.

Okay, let me move on to something else. Aubergines. I had a conversation with a friend recently in which she described making a brinjal curry, and I asked her a ton of questions about the aubergine curry she had made. We were talking about the same thing – just that she’s more used to using the word brinjal, and I’m more used to the word aubergine. And if one of us was American, we’d probably be using the word eggplant. The point is that it didn’t really matter, because we knew we were talking about the same thing and we understood each other perfectly.

Reflecting its global spread, English has acquired – and continues to acquire – words and turns of phrase that allow this sort of choice and flexibility. And English is diverse in other ways too. English accommodates different spellings – grey in British English and gray in American English, for example. Even within British English, there are differences – for example, with some British dictionaries preferring ‘z’ to ‘s’ in words such as criticise or characterise.

But if there is such diversity, and we can use all these different words and spellings in English, can we ever be wrong? Is the English language so flexible that we can do whatever we want and simply justify it on the grounds that it’s right somewhere, or even just in our own perception? After all, unlike the French language, there is no organizational equivalent to the Académie Française to make definitive pronouncements on correct language and spelling. The closest we have in English are dictionaries, which have their origins in efforts to record English usage rather than prescribe it. It’s because they’re recording the ever-expanding diversity of language that dictionaries are constantly growing, with new words being added all the time as they appear in common usage. Where the speakers of English lead, the dictionaries follow.

With the huge diversity that characterizes English, we are left to choose what is best according to the context in which we’re communicating. The onus is on us to understand what the norms are for any particular context. For example, I’ll talk about sending a text message from my mobile (phone) when I’m in Britain, and about sending an sms from my cell(phone) when I’m in South Africa. And I try to remember to say freeway instead of motorway and gas instead of petrol when I’m in the United States. It’s not as if I’d be completely unintelligible if I didn’t make these choices, but I understand that these are the words people in South Africa and the US normally use, and I feel it’s about being considerate to the people I’m speaking to.

So does it matter if you say tomato or tomato, or brinjal or aubergine, or freeway or motorway? Probably not, but the more vocabulary we have at our disposal, and the more we understand the distinctions between different forms of usage, the more adaptable and creative and global we can be in communicating.

Our first guest blog in Australian English month comes from Jesse Karjalainen about the similarities and differences between Australian and British and American English. Australian Jesse Karjalainen lives in the UK and works as a writer and editor. He also edits the online English-usage website www.whichenglish.com.

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The Australian accent is famous the world over but, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of Australian English, not everyone is aware of how, exactly, it is different from other forms of English. The best way to explain this is to answer the question: how is it similar?

It is a common assumption to think that Australian English is basically British English but with a deeper tan and a more easy-going attitude. Yes and no. When it comes to spelling, then yes, Australian and British English are almost identical. Apart from the odd word, both forms match closely. We have a Labor Party but write labour everywhere else. A lot of people write color even if, traditionally, it is colour, while it is not unusual to see jail spelt gaol in the newspaper. However, the similarities end when it comes to the words we use.

Australian vocabulary is in many ways closer to American English. They share many words that are most definitely not used in the UK, such as eggplant (UK aubergine), zucchini (UK courgettes) and pants (UK trousers). Australians, too, are happy to use seemingly American words like critter, truck and gotten, which raise eyebrows in Britain. Yet Australians and Brits use words and meanings not used in the US: rubber (US eraser), jumper (US sweater) and chemist (US drug store).

Where Australian English stands alone in the world is in its rich vernacular. These are the everyday words, meanings and expressions that exist nowhere else in the English-speaking world. One of my favourites is chook, for chicken.

Many Australian expressions are completely baffling to visitors. They include: cark it (die), give it a burl (make an attempt), grouse (fantastic), ripper (great), hit the turps (get drunk), get the flick (get dumped), icy pole (ice lolly), lollies (sweets) and yewy (U-turn). We don’t say Hello, we say G’day. We don’t say Cheers!, we say Ta! Footie is never football. We don’t walk on the pavement or the sidewalk, but the footpath. We wear cozzies and togs, not swimsuits, and gumboots, not rubber boots.

Sometimes things are a little upside down: the first floor in Australia is the ground floor in the UK; the second floor in Australia is the first floor in the UK. Everyone in Australia is called mate, even when you don’t like someone. And, weirdest of all, Australians wear thongs on their feet! You might know them as flip-flops.

Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it.

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G’day mates and good on us: we’ve made it to Strine month, fair go!

OK, OK, I know Australians are not comic strip characters who walk around in cork hats and thongs, dodging kangaroos and shouting rounds … I have, in fact, been to Australia once and have been mistaken for an Australian (being South African) at least, like, a million times. Also, I have family in Oz (seriously, who doesn’t, right?), I know all the words to Waltzing Matilda and I laughed louder at The Game than I did at The Office … but in the end what do I know about Australian English? Not much. All I know is, you know it when you hear it, mate.

We’ve got a ripper (did I use that right? Feel free to set me straight) line-up of guest bloggers and we’ll add interesting links to Facebook and Twitter etc. as we go. Please get in touch if you’d like to add your Australian voice to the blog … hooroo!

Today is the final day of Indian English and we have one final guest blog for you, from Gauri, a linguist and polyglot in the USA. Gauri writes as Litterateuse at her blog, 42, and tweets as @gau3. If you liked this guest post, you might like her post on Indian English here.

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As someone fascinated by languages in general and English in particular, what interests me most is how every language develops its own version of English based on the comfort of its syntax. In fact, I’d go so far as to confess I’ve made a pastime out of guessing people’s native tongue based on what syntax they fit English in, how they articulate consonants, and what two sounds they tend to use interchangably. The endearing part is that the ‘wrongness’ – if one could call it that – is so consistent and universal, that it could well pass off as an independent (but unofficial) version of English.

My native language is Marathi, spoken in the state of Maharashtra, India. You will be told that among other things, we speakers of Marathi are proud of the fact that:

“we are not making 1 any mistakes when we are speaking English language. It is only by the chance that we are sometimes using definite article 2 in an arbitrary manner. You are amused? 3 I will provide explanation.” [sic]

1 Marathi does have both present continuous as well as simple present tense. Yet, it is not uncommon for a speaker of Marathi – while speaking in English – to use the present continuous tense where one would generally use the simple present. When a Maharashtrian asks you “You are going to school?” he probably means one of two things:

Are you going to school (now)? [As opposed to going to the store.]
Do you (generally) attend school? [As opposed to attending college / work.]

How do you know which is which? Well, that’s what context is for.

2 Marathi has no articles. The correct usage of the definite article does not come instinctively to a Marathi speaker. That should explain our capricious use of the definite article:

“When you will come back from market?”
“Why you are watching the TV just now?”
“How you came here? You took bus or you came by the car?”

3 Lastly, you are noticing how we are asking “You are noticing?” and not “Are you noticing?” ?

Again, this has to do with syntax – in Marathi, there is no change in the word order or sentence structure when you change a statement to a question – it’s only marked by a rising intonation while speaking and a question mark at the end when in print e.g.:

Tula ice cream avadta? (Do you like ice cream?)
Tula ice cream avadta. (You like ice cream.)

So when your Marathi friend emails you “You like orange pants with purple frill” – the odds are she only wants to know whether you do, and forgot to add the question mark. It’s less likely she’s accusing you of questionable taste. (Although what made her ask to begin with is something to think about.)

In a more formal context, we do use the particle ‘ka’ to indicate something is a question e.g.:

Tula ice cream avadta ka? (Do you like ice cream?)

Thankfully, in the written form, this will hardly be mistaken for a statement even when the question mark is missing. But then it comes with its own quirk – “ka” by itself can mean “or”.

Marathi speakers often tend to translate this literally and ask “You like ice cream or what?”

And then of course, there are other things that people never actually say, but we love to deliberately joke about. Like the diff-different ways in which English is spoken by var-various people, but not so much when they have two-two or even three-three Master’s degrees from foreign. Well, we all come with our own bag-baggage and lug-luggage of culture, and I am really loving it!

We close Indian English month with a final guest post from Haresh Pandya. Haresh is a freelance journalist and teaches English in a college in Gujarat in India.

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English has been used in strange ways by certain sets of Indians – not just the less-than-literate – since time immemorial. It is either because of habit or sheer ignorance of the correct manner of writing and speaking in what is actually a third language for most Indians (the other two being their respective mother tongue – and there are plenty of them – and Hindi).

In India, terms like parentless children and issueless couples are as common as jam-packed bus/train. Consider this sentence from a national newspaper:

“Cricketers and officials were air-dashing to the venues during the jam-packed Indian Premier League.”

But it baffles me that you hear so many people saying round circle, study room, thin pointed needle and tall high rise building. Most Indians love to say Manomhan Uncle,  Sonia Aunt and Adwani Sir, and not the other way round.

Instead of saying going shopping, some will say going marketing; an Indian politician once appealed to farmers to plant herbs in their backsides (backyards)! I have come across scores of Indians, including teachers and journalists, who, instead of using the word letterhead, invariably say letter-pad. It is always dickey and not the boot of the car. In Indian legal jargon, meanwhile, lifer is the word both for a life sentence and a person serving it. Headlines like ‘The Accused Gets Lifer‘ aren’t uncommon in Indian newspapers.

Talking about occupations, I’ve heard burglary for burglar, but drivery for driver, doctory for doctor or professory for professor? Yet this is precisely how many professions are described. New-generation Indians reared on a diet of the Internet, when seeking agreement are inclined to end their interrogative sentences with no?, instead of a contracted negative. So you would hear: “Aishwarya Rai is stunningly beautiful, no?” instead of “Aishwarya Rai is stunningly beautiful, isn’t she?”.

The winds of change have also affected the Hindi film industry, popularly known as Bollywood, where producers churn out Hindi-English titles to attract cinema-goers. Movies like Jab We Met (When We Met), Love Aaj Kal (Love Today Tomorrow), You Me Aur Hum (You I And We) and Love Sex Aur Dhokha (Love Sex And Betrayal) immediately come to mind.

Call it Indian English, Indianised English, Hinglish or the Indianisation of English, as some people do, it has its own charm. You may love it, laugh at it or even loathe it, you just cannot ignore the fact that it is here to stay. Ask the millions of Indians living all across the globe.

A short video in which Professor David Crystal discusses Indian English:

The video has been prepared for Global, Macmillan’s new course for adult learners of English.

Once more, we turn to Haresh Pandya for insight into Indian English. Haresh is a freelance journalist and teaches English in a college in Gujarat in India.

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Gujarat is one of the many Indian states where English survives against the odds in the 21st century. There seems no end to the debate over whether young students should study via the medium of Gujarati (the state’s official language) or English. Many educated Gujjus (slang for natives or inhabitants of Gujarat) either find English very difficult or simply do not take it seriously.

Ironically, in a state where English is treated almost as the wicked stepmother by hardcore Gujarati supporters, most people regularly use words like cup, glass, table, school, college, court, cycle, engine, bus, train, driver, pilot, professor, doctor and hundreds of others. They have become part of the vocabulary, simply because they are easier to remember than the rarely-used Gujarati words.

Even uneducated Gujjus say things like “I’m sorry”, “Excuse me” and “Thank you” at the drop of a hat. They, like the Gujarati newspapers, employ many an English word in their own peculiar, often innocently funny, way.

Many Gujjus, for example, seem to believe that the word lady does not exist, but that ladies does. In other words, a single woman is not a lady but a ladies – you might hear a Gujju say: “I didn’t go to that bookstall because the shopkeeper was a ladies”. You might wonder what, then, is the plural of “ladies“? Well, it is ladieso (written and pronounced as “ledizo“). With a mere addition of the suffix ‘o‘ most of the commonly-used English nouns in Gujarati become plural. For instance, a school and two schoolo, a bus and two buso, and so on. Take this example: “Ghani trucko na drivero aaje hadtal par chhe”; literally translated, it means: “Drivers of many trucks are on strike today”. Notice the plural forms of truck and driver in the Gujarati sentence.

In English cricketing parlance, innings is both singular and plural. But in Gujarati, they speak – and write – one inning, two inningo. So you  have “England ni pratham inning ma fakt Kevin Pietersen  j zadpi bowlero no samno kari shakyo” (in England’s first innings, only Kevin Pietersen could face the fast bowlers) but “Sachin Tendulkar banne inningo ma saras ramyo” (Sachin Tendulkar played very well in both innings).

These are just a few examples of the odd manner in which English is sometimes used in India. Gujarati and its users may appear strange or amusing to those well-versed in English but, make no mistake, it is a very sweet language with its own rich literature.

Indian English month continues with a guest post from freelance writer, blogger and movie critic Amodini Sharma.

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The many dialects of Indian English are as varied as the country itself. In my own family, there’s my Punjabi uncle who will ignore verbs, and vowel sounds will disappear down his throat never to be heard of (or from) again, as in “Trnto good” (Toronto is good). Then there are other relatives of mine who are verbose and unfailingly flowery in their emails, generally ending with “Kindly do the needful”, and I have to restrain myself from letting them know that needs are subjective.

Verbosity in the English language is a disease which affects many Indians. I have listened to speeches by elderly gentlemen who droned on and on, heaping praise upon individuals, comparing them to various parts/types of a flower, e.g. “her countenance is like a lotus”. Do note that such phrases will generally serve to bring up already digested-food, and as such, must never be repeated within earshot of another human!

The younger folk have understandably rebelled. They shorten things. Nieces and nephews email and sign off with a cheery “luv”, because apparently vowels cost money now. When I am in India, my ears are subjected to, and scarred by, the spoken “OMG” (Oh my God) and “TTFN” (Tata Tata for now). Yes, I want to tell them, life is short, but it’s not that short.

College-speak has resulted in some very interesting interpretations of English words. A “cutting” of chai or tea, has come to mean a small amount of it. An intelligent person would be “fundoo” or the “one with fundas” as in the “the one with the knowledge”. Anything “time-pass” is entertaining, so if a film is “time-pass” you’d better go into the theatre with plenty of popcorn.

Since Hindi and English co-exist, they have spawned the very popular Hinglish. It’s Hindi with a smattering of English or vice-versa. An easy way to speak it is to end each Hindi verb with “ing”, as in “are you khana pakao-ing?”. Khana in Hindi means food, and pakana means to cook, so that would mean “are you cooking food?”. Of course that is very different from “I am so pakao-ed”. The phrase, if taken literally, would mean “I am so cooked”, but is generally taken to mean “I am bored out of my skull”. In Hinglish one has a choice of suffixes, so -fying is also added, as in, “stop funda maro-fying” (stop going on about your “fundas” or knowledge).

Now, I am in the US; I have parents who speak in strongly-accented Indian English, and kids whose English is as Yankee as it gets. Conversation between my parents and my kids is generally a great source of entertainment for me and my husband. When the weekly phone call goes through and it is time for the grandkids and grandparents to speak to each other, we switch on the speakerphone, lay back and listen (and laugh). We would get popcorn too (because really, these conversation are so “time-pass”), except for the fact that we are split as to who should do the actual popping!

My son is now also developing his own brand of English; I call it “less is more”. Conversations with him go thusly:

Me: “Why haven’t you finished your broccoli?”

Him: “Because.”

Haresh Pandya is a freelance journalist and teaches English in a college in Gujarat in India.

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Of all nations, India can boast of having the richest and most diverse literature. This is not a recent phenomenon. It has been so since time immemorial – long before the written word came into existence. The tribe of Indian writers writing exclusively in English has been flourishing by the day. But that is hardly the point. What is important is the scores of others who write in a variety of regional languages.

Even without considering the 2000-odd dialects in use in various Indian states, the country has 20-odd officially recognised languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil, Gujarati, and Marathi.

Good English translations of the works of regional writers would not only enrich India’s national literature, but also contribute substantially to world literature. As the poet and critic Vinay Dharwadker has rightly remarked:

“Indian-English literature by itself is inadequate to represent who we are to the rest of the world. Only a broad representation of the full range of Indian literatures, translated into a world language such as English, can do what is needed.”

But Indian literature remains surprisingly short on quality translations of works from its own rich repertoire of regional languages into Hindi and English. Consequently, the goldmine of India’s literature remains largely unexplored.

Hindi is unofficially India’s national language, and is gaining ground even in southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where people take pride in speaking their own regional languages. But how many quality literary works written in other Indian languages are translated into Hindi, let alone English?

Not many people are aware that when Arundhati Roy approached a renowned Indian publisher with the manuscript of The God of Small Things, she was offered a pittance – for the book which eventually won her The Booker Prize when she got it published in England. Roy was not unknown even at that time and, more importantly, her novel was in English. If a writer of Roy’s standing had to face such a problem in her own country despite writing in English (and coming up with a masterpiece), one can imagine the plight of lesser mortals when it comes to publishing their translated works from regional languages into Hindi or English!

So we need both Hindi and English translations of good works from a wide range of Indian languages. It is the only possible way to bridge the multi-lingual India, and bring her literature to an international audience. This is not always easy. A translator may be well-versed in the original language as well as the one into which he or she is translating. But he or she may not necessarily be aware of the cultural background of the work at hand.

But despite these problems and shortcomings, it is heartening that slowly but steadily, Indian translation work has been building up to a state of critical mass. We now need more talented translators to come forward and help India’s outstanding regional literature emerge from its cocoon and reach not just a majority of Indian readers, but also a global audience.