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Once upon a time, Latin was the most important language in the world, with people across Europe, Africa and Asia desperate to learn it to improve their situation in life. Then, for nearly a thousand years, French was the international language of politics and trade. Later, depending on where in the world you lived, no matter what your native tongue, you would struggle to get ahead without speaking Russian, Spanish, German, Arabic or Mandarin.
How did English become the world’s most spoken language?
Nearly two billion people around the world speak some English. But how did this happen? Why did English become so important, all around the world? The first reason is, of course, the British Empire. All of a sudden, English became the language of government, education, business and the military in each of these countries. If you wanted to get a good job, you had to speak English. That explains why the first million or so English speakers came about, what what about the rest? Why do so many people still want to learn English?
The History of English - English as a Global Language
Well, first of all, when each of the countries in the empire won back their independence, speaking English still turned out to be very useful. Not only was it easier to trade with, work in and study in England, but people from these countries could start doing business with each other, too, using English as common language.
The next big push was the rise of another powerful English-speaking country: Meanwhile, there revolutions in Russia and China, as well as bloody civil wars in many other countries. In most of the British Empire, the main goal was trade so fewer Britons actually settled.
How English evolved into a global language
This explains why English did not come to dominate colonies in Asia and Africa, where it was the language of business, administration and education, but not the language of the people. To this day, English has a key administrative role in these former colonies. For a long time, access to English meant access to education, whether in the mission schools in Africa or the first universities in India.
Post-independence, many countries became officially multilingual for the first time, but the various groups needed a language for communication with each other and with other nations.
- Accessibility links.
- How English evolved into a global language - BBC News.
- Das Seufzen des Engels (German Edition).
Again, that was English. English is now the dominant or official language in 75 territories: In countries where large settler colonies were formed, such as Australia, Canada and the USA, native languages and cultures have been pushed to near-extinction by the presence of English. It was not the first language of European colonialism; Portuguese and Dutch left the continent earlier.
The British Empire
So something must have happened more recently to give the language its unique international status. While Europe was rebuilding in the years after , the USA boomed.
American businesses picked up where the British East India Company had left off centuries before, taking English around the world as a language of trade. The influence of American business, combined with the tradition of English left around the world by the British Empire, have made English the number one language of international trade in the 21 st Century.
English is now the most spoken foreign language in 19 of the 25 EU Member States where it is not an official language. The 6 states where English is not number one also show the importance of politics in language policy: Russian is the most spoken foreign language in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; Croatian the most commonly spoken in Slovenia; and Czech the most spoken in Slovakia.
But the cultural legacy of the post-war decades is also very important to the growth of English as a world language.
- Selected Poems – Fred Cogswell (Essential Poets Series 13).
- Chucks Welt (Boje digital ebook) (German Edition);
- Reise um die Erde in 80 Tagen: Arena Kinderbuch-Klassiker. Mit einem Vorwort von Christoph Biemann: (German Edition)?
- English in Malta!
- Learn German.
- Geheimbünde: Freimaurer und Illuminaten, Opus Dei und Schwarze Hand (German Edition).
As well as sending money across the Atlantic, the USA provided the soundtrack through rock and roll, jazz and, later, disco and hip hop. Hollywood movies became global sensations and American television series became cultural reference points. American culture was everywhere, radiating confidence and success; just the things for a world that had been ravaged by war.
The hippy movement came from San Francisco and London. Music festivals including the Isle of Wight and Woodstock became iconic for a whole generation, whether English speakers or not. Advertisers pride themselves on riding the cultural zeitgeist; creating consumer desire through making products sexy. One of the ways they do this is through using English words.
Many examples of English in advertising come from multinational companies, who wish to keep their message consistent across markets, but some examples are local firms looking for that elusive element of glamour that English can bring. Of course, this happens in English too: Bands release their work in English to reach the largest possible audience. This invisible pressure to produce creative works in English adds to the cultural momentum the language developed in the second half of the Twentieth Century.