The initial interests in the non-native varieties of English such as the Indian and the Nigerian, were restricted largely to a descriptive curiosity, to the description and analysis of the variety, of the levels, the 'deviant' features, problem of intelligibility, and the like. However, more recently, in the study of non-native and 'nativised' English, the nature of emphasis has changed from being merely descriptive to that of being more prescriptive.The orthodoxy that English only belonged to Great Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa where it is spoken natively, seems to have been generally giving way to the view that asserts English belongs and is legitimate to countries where it is spoken, albeit non-natively in the classical sense, such as India, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. There is nothing new in the idea of English as an international language, but what is quite refreshing is the idea that English is a World Language, a European, and an Asian language.
