"Anglophone"

[Damon Allen Davison]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Lyle,

"Anglophone" sounds acceptable to me as well, especially as an
adjective: "the anglophone minority in India".  

The OED (OED2 on CD-ROM, 1992) has anglophone as a noun and adjective:

anglophone (___________), n. and a. Also with capital initial.
[f. Anglo- + -phone 2.]
A. n. An English-speaking person.
B. adj. English-speaking.
1900 [see francophone n. and a.].
1965 Punch 24 Nov. 775/2 His intimate knowledge of affairs in Africa
(Francophone as well as Anglophone)_equips him outstandingly to point
out not only what has gone wrong in West Africa_but what should be done
to put it right.
1967 Saturday Night (Toronto) Oct. 19 It is because our fizzy Canadian
cocktail has intoxicating qualities, because a dazzling future lies in
wait for francophones and anglophones_that we should hold together,
along with the valuable New Canadians.
1971 Times 12 June 15/2 It is significant that the same development did
not take place in Anglophone Africa.
1974 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 26 Feb. 1/1 Now it is the Anglophone
spokesmen who have rushed to the political front lines to defend what
they see as a fundamental right.
1978 Nature 23 Nov. 425/2 Occasional lapses grate a little to
anglophones (_...the Protestant minister David Fabricius') and some
analogy requires a good knowledge of Italian geography.
1984 Newslet. Amer. Dial. Soc. Sept. 6/1 Multilingual Switzerland is not
an anglophone country.

>From the entries we see here, "anglophone" seems to refer to English in
a linguistic contact setting.  Perhaps someone with access to a large
English corpus could have a look at that.  Here are the results from a
completely unscientific search on Alta Vista:

http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/web?q=anglophone&pg=q&avkw=tgz&kl=en

Best Regards,


Damon Davison


On Wed, 2002-05-15 at 02:57, Lyle Campbell wrote:
    ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
    Hi,
    
    A terminological question:  What about "anglophone"?
    
    I ask because I find myself reacting against the term when I see it in
    contexts where I would expect something like "English speakers", as for
    example in something like, "
 there where X number of anglophones in New
    Zealand in the 1850s", meaning presumably "English speakers" and used so
    as not to confuse Maori speakers in the number.  I see the term, I
    believe, mostly in writings from English Anglicists, and I wonder how
    general usages are such as, for example, "
 among the anglophone
    dialects of the British Isles 
", where, if the goal is to include only
    English and exclude Welsh, Irish, Scots Gaelic, and so on, I would
    expect to see just "among English dialects 
" or "among dialects of
    English speakers" or some such thing.   The term feels too much like a
    French loan that would only be useful in writing about French topics
    where English speakers might come to be mentioned, but even in that
    context I personally would probably avoid it. 
    
    My question then is, what is the reaction of others?  Are there
    conventions or information that I am missing? 
    
    Lyle
-- 

Damon Allen Davison
http://allolex.freeshell.org
PGP ID: 067E933C491815EAE
15EAE