Asian governments were playing a major role in the spread of English, which now had as many speakers on the continent as in America, Canada and Britain put together, Professor Amy Tsui Bik-may told the conference.
But they were appropriating the language to serve their own efforts to boost national identity, according to the chair professor of the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Education.
China, Korea and Japan had all adopted drives to encourage people to learn English as a national mission, while Malaysia had reintroduced English as a medium of instruction for universities and for science and maths in schools.
The language had also displaced French as the preferred medium of instruction in Cambodia and as the second language of Vietnam. More than 100 academics, researchers and university administrators from 15 countries and regions attended the two-day HKU symposium on Language Issues in English-medium Universities Across Asia.
