We like to think that English Today provides a record of the changing fortunes of English in different parts of the world – evolving patterns of its use, changes in status and attitudes towards it, and developments in local forms. In this issue our contributors provide us with such reports from Europe to Asia.

The sociolinguistics of a small community of English users. A journalist for a local Macau English-language newspaper recently wrote to me and several other friends and asked us to describe Macau with one word. Many words came to mind: historic, multicultural, casinos, growth, etc.; but the word I chose to suggest does not necessarily come to mind until one has lived here, small. Indeed, Macau is a very small community. At the end of September 2007, the resident population was 531,400 and the territory occupied 28.6 sq km, although the largest concentration of population lives within the 9.3 sq km area of “Peninsular Macau” (DSEC, Macao, 2008). In terms of both population and land mass, then, Macau is a very small community, and this fact has influenced the status, functions and forms of English within the territory.

Rural failure in English learning and the socioeconomics of ELT. Over 24 million children learn English as a second/foreign language in primary and secondary schools in Bangladesh. These children start learning the language as a required subject in Grade 1 and continue learning it (if they don't drop out) until Grade 12, and later at the tertiary level. Officially, they are taught English communicatively using Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) methodology, as it was envisaged that CLT would develop learners' ‘communicative competence’, and thereby strengthen the human resource development efforts of the Government of Bangladesh (NCTB, 2003). Nearly a decade has passed since CLT was first introduced in the national curriculum. It now seems appropriate to ask to what extent has it developed learners' competence and improved the declining standards of English in the country (Rahman, 1991).

In 2002, Tom McArthur, then editor of English Today, visited Helsinki and asked Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta whether the use of English in Finland was becoming more like its Nordic neighbours. In an article in ET76 they answered with a cautious ‘yes’. Now the authors provide us with an update, with examples of how English is currently used in Finnish public communication.

This study aims to explore university English teachers' perceptions of the role of English today in Taiwan from two aspects – the ownership of English and acquiring target language culture in the English language classroom. The concept of English as an international language (EIL) or English as a lingua franca (ELF) has been discussed extensively in the ELT field for many years. Theoretically the concept promotes the idea that English is no longer a possession of any particular English-speaking countries and that there are many different varieties of Englishes. Since teachers are an important – if not the most important – influence in the language classroom, their perceptions are likely to affect the students profoundly. In spite of the theoretical discussion of EIL, in reality, what do university English teachers in Taiwan think about the role of English today? In the study, five experienced teachers were invited for a focus group interview to discuss these issues. The results suggest that university English teachers in Taiwan are facing a dilemma and struggle to follow the notion of EIL (or ELF) in the classroom.

The cachet of English in the Swiss press. Plurlingual Switzerland has three ‘official’ languages, standard forms of German, French, Italian, and a further ‘national’ language, the ancient Latin dialects of Romansh spoken in the eastern Alpine valleys by less than one per cent of the population. But there are problems for the Swiss in learning each other's languages. And, as in other as in other European countries, there is an increasing range of other mother tongues. Little wonder, then, that the Swiss readily resort to English in talking to each other, and little wonder at a marked role for English in the Swiss media.

A foray into an oddity of word-making. Outside the province of jokelore, this type of abbreviation appears to have escaped notice in the literature on word-formation, perhaps because its productivity, besides being quite low, can best be seen in the most informal – and therefore supposedly ‘abnormal’ and ‘disreputable’ – levels of discourse. Of course, one does not have to be a genius to be aware that most knock-knock words (KKWs) stand as much chance of surviving as a snowball in hell. However, they are to be cherished for the unique insight they provide into language play and linguistic creativity at large. In what follows, I will describe the structural and semantic features of these words and present a glossary with a sprinkling of specimens gathered from a variety of sources.

In this paper I wish to respond to the article published in ET94 by Saraceni while at the same time providing some clarifications concerning the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF). In his article Saraceni raises three main questions (and a number of related debatable comments which I will quickly deal with in my final remarks) regarding: 1) the nature of ELF and its speakers, 2) the relationship between ELF and the World Englishes (henceforth WE) paradigm, and 3) the distinction between form and function. I will address each of these questions, and in so doing consider a number of notions concerning the ELF research field.

It is such a simple word for so versatile and important a liquid. We drink it, cook with it, wash in it, sail across it, swim in it, sprinkle it on our flowers and, when the need arises, we put fires out with it. In some parts of the world there is too much of it and in other parts it is so scarce that it is more precious than gold. It is older than life itself, it predates human existence and it flowed over the land aeons before man learned to speak. So it should not come as a surprise, then, that when we start looking at the etymology of the word ‘water’ we soon find ourselves travelling back to prehistoric times and making contact with very ancient civilizations. Nor is it very long before we find ourselves going round and round in circles as the twists and turns of the word's evolution reveal connections which the vast majority of us have probably never suspected.