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in saying blinds, braces, por2ridge, and tap rather than shades, sus penders, oat meal, and faucet .Australian and New Zealand English . The vocabularies ofAus2tralian and New Zealand English are very si milar . Both have beenenriched by words and concep ts from the hundreds of indigenouslanguages that p re - dated European settlers, only about fifty ofwhich continue as first languages . The line bet ween formal and in2formal usage is perhap s less shar p ly drawn in Australasian Englishthan it is elsewhere: suffixes such as - o and - ie, giving us ex2p ressi ons such as arvo ( afternoon ) , reffo ( refugee ) , and barbie( barbecue) , are freely attached t o words even in more formal con2texts .
    South African English . Since 1994 South Africa has had elevenofficial languages : English,Afrikaans ( descended fr om Dutch) , Zu2lu, Xhosa, and other largely regi onal African languages . English isthe first language of only about 10 per cent of the populati on, but thesecond language of many others . The English of native Afrikanershas inevitably influenced the ’ standard’ English of white South Afri2cans, examp les being such informal usages as the affirmative no, asin ’ How are you? - No, I’ m fine’ and the all - pur pose res ponse isit?, as in ’ She had a baby lastweek - is it? ’
    I ndian English . The r ole of English within the comp lex multi2lingual society of India is far from straightfor ward: t ogether withHindi it is used acr oss the country, but it can also be a s peaker’sfirst, second, or third language, and its featuresmay depend heavilyon their ethnicity and caste . The grammar of I ndian English hasmany distinguishing features, ofwhich perhap s the best - known arethe use of the p resent continuous tense, as in ’He is having verymuch of p r operty’ , and the use of isn’t it as a ubiquit ous questi ontag: ’ We are meeting t omorr ow, isn’ t it? ’ The first examp le rejectsanother characteristic of the language, which is t o include intrusivearticles such as in or of in idi omatic phrases . Verbs are also useddifferently,with s peakers often dr opp ing a p repositi on or object alt o2gether : ’ I insisted i mmediate payment’ ,while double possessives - ’our these p rices’ ( instead of the British English ’ these p rices of ours’ ) - are commonp lace .
   West I ndian English . Standard British English has traditi onallybeen the linguisticmodel for the Commonwealth Caribbean, althoughrecently the i mport ofUS televisi on, radi o, and t ouris m hasmade A2merican English an equally powerful influence . The many varietiesof Creole, influenced byWest African languages, are als o p r oduc2tive . A characteristic usage is that of the objective p r onoun whereBritish English would use the subjective or possessive, as in“mecan come and go asme p lease” , or“he clear he throat” .Of course, in additi on t o the maj or English varieties discussedabove, there are still others, such as Phili pp ine English, SingaporeanEnglish, etc .      However, al ongside the undoubted benefits fl owing from the ex2istence of a gl obal language, its emergence is fraught with certainrisks . First of all, there is the risk of the cultivati on of an elitemono2lingual class forwhom English is a native t ongue and who will be a2ble t o mani pulate it t o their own advantage . Second, this may als oread t o the unwillingness of native English s peakers such