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As we have seen,there is nothing about language as such that makes linguistic identity coextensive with national identity. "If the speaks French, he is by any means necessarily French."(1)____ French is not the private property of Frenchmen, as English of English people.(2)____ This should be obvious when one reflects that English is the mother-tongue Canada the United States, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and many other areas of the world. Yet many of us still half-consciously feel that when anyone no other than an Englishman uses English,we have a special right to criticise his usage because he has privileged to handle something that is in the Englishman's gift.(3)____ (4)____We feel that he must necessarily look us for a "standard", because it is "our" language. (5)____It is reasonable to regard any language as the property of a particular nation,and with no language is it more irrational than with
English. (6)____ This is not to say that English is used by a great number of speakers than any other language: it is easily outnumbered in this respect with Chinese.(7)____ Whereas it is the most international of languages.(8)____
To people in Africa or Pakistan or Chile, English is the obvious foreign language to master, not merely because it is the native language in Great Britain and the United States, but because it provides a readiest access to the cream of world scholarship and to the bulk of world trade. It is understanding more widely than any other language.(9)____ (10)____
