O trecho a seguir, extraído do livro English as a global language de David Crystal [1997], 2003, é referência para a questão.

What is a global language?

“A language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. This might seem like stating the obvious, but it is not, for the notion of ‘special role’ has many facets. Such a role will be most evident in countries where large numbers of the people speak the language as a mother tongue – in the case of English, this would mean the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, several Caribbean countries and a sprinkling of other territories. However, no language has ever been spoken by a mother-tongue majority in more than a few countries (Spanish leads, in this respect, in some twenty countries, chiefly in Latin America), so mother-tongue use by itself cannot give a language global status. To achieve such a status, a language has to be taken up by other countries around the world. They must decide to give it a special place within their communities, even though they may have few (or no) mother-tongue speakers.

There are two main ways in which this can be done. Firstly, a language can be made the official language of a country, to be used as a medium of communication in such domains as government, the law courts, the media, and the educational system. To get on in these societies, it is essential to master the official language as early in life as possible. Such a language is often described as a ‘second language’, because it is seen as a complement to a person’s mother tongue, or ‘first language’. The role of an official language is today best illustrated by English, which now has some kind of special status in over seventy countries, such as Ghana, Nigeria, India, Singapore and Vanuatu. This is far more than the status achieved by any other language – though French, German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic are among those which have also developed a considerable official use. New political decisions on the matter continue to be made: for example, Rwanda gave English official status in 1996.

Secondly, a language can be made priority in a country’s foreign-language teaching, even though this language has no official status. It becomes the language which children are most likely to be taught when they arrive in school, and the one most available to adults who – for whatever reason – never learned it, or learned it badly, in their early educational years. Russian, for example, held privileged status for many years among the countries of the former Soviet Union. Mandarin Chinese continues to play an important role in South-east Asia. English is now the language most widely taught as a foreign language – in over 100 countries, such as China, Russia, Germany, Spain, Egypt and Brazil – and in most of these countries it is emerging as the chief foreign language to be encountered in schools, often displacing another language in the process. In 1996, for example, English replaced French as the chief foreign language in schools in Algeria (a former French colony).

In reflecting on these observations, it is important to note that there are several ways in which a language can be official. It may be the sole language of a country, or it may share this status with other languages. And it may have a ‘semi-official’ status, being used only in certain domains, or taking second place to other languages while still performing certain official roles. Many countries formally acknowledge a language’s status in their constitution (e.g. India); some make no special mention of it (e.g. Britain). In certain countries, the question of whether the special status should be legally recognized is a source of considerable controversy – notably, in the USA.” (. . .)

(CRYSTAL, David. English as a global Language. Cambridge: CUP, [1997] 2003, p. 03-05.)

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Fizzy drinks ‘disrupt children’s sleep’

It is something parents have long suspected – now scientists have confirmed that fizzy drinks affect children’s behaviour.

Teenagers who drink more caffeinated soft drinks sleep less, are more likely to wake during the night and tend to be sleepier during the day, a study has found.

And with one in eight teenagers now drinking more than 22 cans of cola a week, the findings will add to concerns about the effects on their health.

It will also lead to calls for schools to withdraw their lucrative drinks vending machines.

The experts tracked nearly 200 teenagers, aged 14 to 16, for two weeks, recording their sleep patterns and daily intake of caffeinated drinks and foods.

The average daily intake of caffeine was just 63mg, equivalent to half a cup of coffee, but some of the teenagers in the study were taking in up to 800mg.

Boys tended to consume more caffeine than girls – about 70mg daily, compared with 55mg.

Those who reported higher intakes of caffeine had disrupted sleep patterns – being more likely to wake during the night and to sleep for less time. But during the day, the same teenagers tended to be sleepier. The experts say the result means that even small amounts of caffeine can affect children, and soft drinks vending machines should be banned from schools.

The study, published in the journal Paediatrics today, was led by Dr. Charles Pollack of Ohio State University in the U.S.

He said: “The increasing availability of soft drink dispensing machines in schools is apparently welcomed by students and is profitable to school boards, but our findings suggest that it may be interfering with the night-time sleep of teenagers”.

Dr. Pollack said the time may come when soft drinks manufacturers would be forced to either limit the caffeine content in their products or not target children with them.

The research adds to the findings of a UK study published in October, which concluded that additives used in hundreds of children’s foods and drinks can cause disruptive behaviour.

The Government-funded report involved 227 three-year-olds from the Isle of Wight.

It found that colourings in products such as Jammie Dodgers, Smarties and Jelly Tots as well as in fizzy drinks could spark behavioural changes in up to a quarter of children.

(Retrieved from: newspaper Daily Mail, January 8, 2003, p. 19).

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