English is a river. Its content is always changing and it has many tributaries. Its characteristics include impermanence. Indeed, there can be no single definition of the English language.

This conclusion applies across history and across countries. It's not only the language that's different now. So are the speakers. In the middle of the last century, around 400 million people spoke English. The total is now 1.5 billion, while the proportion of them living in Britain, North America and Australasia has declined. There is no historical parallel for this growth in English usuage and the shift in the language's center of gravity. English has become a global language not through any inherent virtues but because of the political and economic power of successively the British Empire and the United States. ~