NEW ENGLISH

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NEW ENGLISH. A term in LINGUISTICS for a recently emerging and increasingly autonomous variety of English, especially in a non-Western setting such as India, Nigeria, or Singapore. Two works of the 1980s have had virtually the same title: New Englishes, ed. John Pride (US: Newbury House, 1982), and The New Englishes, by John Platt, Heidi Weber, and Ho Mian Lian (UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984). The term is sometimes used generically: ‘The first documented evidence of the New English of Sierra Leone (NESL)’ (Joe Pemagbi, ‘Still a Deficient Language?’, English Today 17, Jan. 1989). See ENGLISHES.

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