Notes

The English language gradually spread out from its birthplace in England to take over the other nations of the British Isles: Scotland, Wales and lreland (although Welsh still remains widely spoken in north Wales]. The language was then brought to more distant parts of the world by sailors, merchants and colonists as Britain built up an empire. In some of these places speakers of English became predominant and the native populations and their languages were reduced to the status of minorities. This happened, for example, in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In other parts of the world, such as British colonies in Africa and Asia like South Africa, Nigeria, India and Hong Kong, English- speakers were a powerful elite in charge of government but never became more than a small minority of the total population. In these countries English is not the mother tongue of most people but it nevertheless continues to play an important role both as a means of communication across the whole country, since there COMPETENCES may be a variety of local languages and as tool for communication with the outside world.