The Celtic Englishes

Welcome Address

It is often forgotten what a multi-lingual country the United Kingdom is. With our indigenous languages, such as Welsh and Gaelic, our community languages such as Hindi and Urdu and the quilt of immigration languages, from French to Farsi, Serbo-Croat to Swahili, more than 140 languages are spoken in the country.

But this is to neglect the diversity of the English language itself. It is all too easy to dismiss the notion of Doric Scots as simply a dialect of English, when in fact it has a different lexis and significant syntactic deviations from Standard English. The diversity of English languages is more than merely an object of academic study. I want to argue that the New Europe, and ultimately the "great conversation of mankind" (as Baroness Helena Kennedy, Chair of the British Council, describes cultural relations), depend on legislators, planners and those involved in social development, recognising that social and cultural diversity find their expression in linguistic diversity. Nowhere is this more true than in the ways in which English, as the first truly global language is written, spoken and heard.

In a sense therefore I see those involved in defining these diverse forms of English to be at the cutting edge of the debate on human diversity, which lies at the heart of Europe's ideal of subsidiarity, social inclusion and multiculturalism.

I welcome this conference because it attacks the stereotypical idea that English is a monolith, and that its growing prevalence threatens other cultures. By recognising linguistic diversity in what is widely perceived as one language form, researchers, academics and teachers are stimulating and adding value to the much bigger debate on human diversity. The Rio Conference of 1992 focussed on biodiversity as its chief objective. Your conference is doing the same for languages, and especially for the often misunderstood English languages.

Tony Andrews
Director British Council, Germany
Berlin