Learn 30+ languages online with bite-size lessons based on science. With our free mobile app or web and a few minutes a day, everyone can Duolingo. Learn 30+ languages online with bite-size lessons based on science. fast, and affordable English test accepted around the world. By integrating the latest assessment science and AI, we empower 10 Reasons to Learn English. 1. English is a global language. English is the most commonly spoken language in the world. One out of five people can speak or at least understand English! 2. Studying English can help you get a job. English is the language of science, aviation, computers, diplomacy, and tourism. It'll teach you the essential skills needed to communicate in English and if you end up passing the test, it means your English has become very strong! 3. English Is the Top Language of the Internet. English is the most-used language online, with nearly 1 billion users typing and chatting in the language. If you can understand and read The country includes the island of Singapore and 58 or so smaller islands. Because of its efficient and determined government, Singapore has become a flourishing country that excels in trade and tourism and is a model to developing nations. The capital city, also called Singapore, covers about a third of the area of the main island. Language is obviously a vital tool. Not only is it a means of communicating thoughts and ideas, but it forges friendships, cultural ties, and economic relationships. Throughout history, many have reflected on the importance of language. For instance, the scholar Benjamin Whorf has noted that language shapes thoughts and emotions, determining . Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda, a UC Berkeley graduate student from Colombia. While English facilitates discussion of science across borders, she argues, its dominance excludes from the field many people from non-English speaking countries — in particular, the global south. She is shown here on Bahía Málaga in Colombia’s Valle del Cauca. Photo courtesy of Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda English has become the de facto language of science International conferences are held in English, the world’s top scientific journals are in English and academics in non-English speaking countries get promoted based on their publications in English language journals. Even scientific jargon is in English — most non-English speakers use English terms and don’t bother inventing equivalent words in their native languages. Yet, for much of the world — in particular, the global south, where English is not a common second language — English limits entry into the the world of science and limits public access to scientific results, even when they pertain to a person’s own country. Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda, a graduate student in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, encountered this firsthand when she began writing her master’s thesis at the University of Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, her native country. While she was one of the lucky ones — growing up in Bogota, her mother had the foresight to insist she take Saturday English classes — she found it impossible to write in English. To her, Spanish felt natural, not English. “When I was writing the thesis, a lot of people told me, Just write it in English.’ And I couldn’t. It was too difficult to write it in English,” she said. “I was like, No, I have already enough pressure to finish this on time, and it is already difficult to write science — so, I am going to write it in Spanish.’” But she also wanted to submit it to a scientific journal, which requires that she translate her thesis — about how snakes adapt to eating poisonous frogs — into English. “Since then, I haven’t published that paper. I am still working on that,” she admitted. “I felt that English was kind of a handicap for me just to advance, to progress in research.” Her introduction to the “language hegemony in scientific publishing,” as she calls it, led her to ask other Colombian doctoral students about the impact this has had on their careers. The results of her survey, published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, document the negative consequences of English dominance in science. She found that more than 90% of articles published by Colombian researchers are in English, and that this has created financial burdens. More than 40% of those she surveyed reported that one of their papers had been rejected because of English grammar, forcing them to pay for a native English speaker to review the manuscript or ask a favor of an English-speaking friend. Translation and editing services charge between one-quarter and one-half of a typical doctoral student’s monthly salary in Colombia, she found. Among of the study’s findings were that the Colombian scientists surveyed had higher anxiety when presenting their research in English, and that one-third avoided giving oral presentations at meetings because of language issues. Click on the image to see a summary of other survey results. UC Berkeley image courtesy of Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda Fully one-third of the 49 respondents, recruited through Twitter with the hashtag CienciaCriolla, used between Colombian researchers, reported that they had elected to not attend a scientific conference or meeting because of the requirement that oral presentations be in English. “When I published this on bioRxiv and tweeted, a lot of people started writing to me with very emotional things like, I left science because of English,’ I cannot graduate with a master’s thesis because of English,’ I thought about studying abroad, but then I had the interview and I froze because of English,’ and I couldn’t do it.’ Super difficult things,” said Ramírez-Castañeda. “People are leaving science because of English. It is not something that is isolated.” She found, too, that colleagues with high English proficiency were more likely to have backgrounds higher on the socioeconomic ladder. In Colombia, as in the socioeconomic status is correlated with race. “Now that we in the are speaking about the Black community, in many places, including Colombia, race means socioeconomic differences, poverty,” she said. “We don’t see a lot of Black scientists from Colombia, not only because being from a political minority and being a scientist is difficult, but also because of English. At the end, it is another layer to the difficulty, and we are not talking about it. That is the thing that worries me the most, that it is something that is super-quiet and silent, as if if didn’t exist.” Even for citizens, English can be a barrier Poor English skills are even an issue for those raised in the said José Pablo Vázquez-Medina, an assistant professor of integrative biology who came to UC Berkeley three years ago. José Pablo Vázquez-Medina with his lab colleagues. He studies the physiology of sea mammals, in particular how they are able to dive for long periods of time without suffering oxygen deprivation. He says that some Latinx students have problems writing English, which hinders their participation in science. UC Berkeley photo courtesy of José Pablo Vázquez-Medina “I have friends who are Latinos, but born and raised in the They send in a paper, and they are asked to run it by a native speaker,” he said. “With students who have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, you can see that in how they write. I see it as another hurdle.” He ascribes this to poor schools that fail to teach English to students from non-English speaking families. “That comes back to segregation. Where you live is where you go to school, and if you live in a rich neighborhood, you go to a school with resources; if you live in a poor neighborhood, you go to a school with less resources,” he said. “Without fixing that problem, I don’t see us making a lot of impact.” Growing up in San Luis Potosi in Mexico, Vázquez-Medina had access to some English education. His parents were teachers. But he still has flashbacks about the writing suggestions of mentors and friends, most of them offered graciously, he said. “I remember my very first paper. I wrote it in Spanish, and I translated it into English. It was horrible,” said Vázquez-Medina, who obtained his undergraduate degree from the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur in La Paz. Luckily, a coauthor on the paper made helpful comments. “It is definitely a barrier when you want to move up and go to grad school. Even if you go to grad school in Mexico, you have to publish papers in English.” Vázquez-Medina benefitted from working with a mentor who had studied in Canada and the and provided English tips. This mentor also sparked his interest in the physiology of marine mammals, which led him to a program at UC Merced, where he studied the diving and fasting physiology of elephant seals and was supported by the UC MEXUS program. “I always thought, Why don’t more people apply to this program? This is a great opportunity,’” he said. “But I felt that English was probably one of the main reasons why people didn’t feel comfortable applying for scholarships to study abroad.” Puertorriqueña Betsabé Castro Escobar, a doctoral student in integrative biology, says that she is more expressive in her native Spanish. Photo courtesy of Betsabé Castro Escobar Betsabé Castro Escobar, a doctoral candidate in integrative biology, saw how the hurdle of English fluency affected the lives of her friends, family and even her future husband. She grew up in Puerto Rico, which, as an unincorporated territory, mandates 12 years of English in K-12 education. All other instruction is in Spanish, and it’s the language of preference for more than 85% of Puerto Ricans, both at home and in their daily activities. While some people have the privilege and access to a good education and exposure to English, she said, as a society, many Puerto Ricans still struggle with poor class curriculums in many public schools, as well as lack of exposure to opportunities to speak English, lack of interest in learning it and even resistance to learning and becoming fluent in English. Spanish, though a colonial language like English, is preferred in Puerto Rico and is, in fact, a majority language worldwide one of the top 5 languages spoken. “I see people leave their academic fields because they don’t feel like they belong, many struggling with very clear language exclusion barriers. One thing about belonging is not just being part of a community, but also, how do we communicate? And one of those factors is language. There are clear language hurdles, and some people just don’t make it through because they have been excluded from the start,” said Castro Escobar, who is studying the ethnobotany of the calabash tree in the Caribbean. “Sadly, this is a funnel, and not everyone is going to make it through, due to language and communication obstacles. Unfortunately, this is how the system has been set up in order to participate in the globalized world; against others that don’t speak the majority’ language, basically.” Language hegemony “It is very much an issue,” agreed UC Berkeley professor of linguistics Lev Michael, who studies and seeks to revitalize indigenous languages in Perú. Linguist Lev Michael interviewing two women – Donalia Icahuate, left center, and Alejandrina Chanchari, right center – who speak the endangered Muniche language in Munichis, Peru, in 2009. UC Berkeley photo courtesy of Lev Michael “If you are Dutch, the fact that the language of science is English really is not a big hurdle, since, in my experience, many Dutch people speak better English than many English speakers,” he said, jokingly. “But in Perú, for example, many people where I work — even in some universities — don’t have great access to English education. It even plays out to the level where some people at that level have a hard time reading important works in English.” Michael admits to encountering a language hurdle when translating his English works — recently, a dictionary of the Iquito language — into Spanish and Portuguese. In his field, multilingualism is common, and academic meetings about South American indigenous languages are typically trilingual, he said. Speakers can deliver talks in Spanish, Portuguese or English, and most people in the audience understand. A small journal he edits, Cadernos de Etnolingüística, also is trilingual. But that is not typical in other areas of science. Few journals even publish abstracts in other languages, let alone full papers in translation. English hasn’t always been the language of science and scholarship, of course. Latin was the gatekeeper until 200 years ago, Michael pointed out, while German, French and Russian — and, recently, Chinese — have given English a run for the money. Aside from the issue of fairness, forcing people to communicate in a language other than their native tongue affects how clearly and effectively they interact with others. For Augusto Berrocal, who is from Mexico City and recently earned his from UC Berkeley in molecular and cell biology, English is a barrier to networking with colleagues at conferences, because his mind slows down when speaking English and, frankly, it can be exhausting. Augusto Berrocal, who is from Mexico, finds it easier to discuss and debate in Spanish because his mind works faster in his native language. He studies the genetics of development in fruit fly larva, seen on screen. UC Berkeley photo courtesy of Augusto Berrocal “It is my opinion that language is the main burden,” said Berrocal, who investigates the genetics of development in fruit flies. “I feel that my mind runs faster in my native tongue, which is Spanish. In a debate, for example, my conversations are more fluent in my native language. I think that has an impact at meetings or when discussing and getting ideas.” Castro Escobar says she gets more out of meetings where she can converse with colleagues in Spanish, and her field of ethnobotany has been gaining a critical mass of Spanish speakers. Spanish-speaking students and postdocs at UC Berkeley also are a growing community, a network where students and faculty members can discuss their work more naturally, or just let down their hair. “Throughout the years, there has been a growing number of us Latinx people on campus,” Castro Escobar said. “In my home department now, there are both grad students and professors I can talk to in Spanish. I find it refreshing to escape and speak my own language. I am more expressive, my ideas and connections are much faster, and my energy comes through more. I have more expressions I can use in Spanish. Sorry, I am biased, but Spanish is a beautiful language.” One of those professors is her adviser, Paul Fine, who actively recruits Latin American students to join his lab and converses with them in both Spanish and Portuguese. He studies tree diversity in the Amazon rainforest and has had students from Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Perú, Mexico and Costa Rica, not to mention Puerto Rico. Castro Escobar said that when she finishes her dissertation, she hopes — if her committee approves — to present her thesis in Spanglish that is, both in English and Spanish. “It will certainly be an interesting exercise for our department,” she said. “My slides would be in English — the idea is not to lose everyone in this language code-switching, but to actually show other people that their voice matters, too.” Solutions As Michael noted, scholarship in the past was conducted in Latin, a language that no one spoke natively. That put everyone in the same boat, assuming you were among the elite who could learn Latin. English is different, he said, having achieved ascendency because the rise of science after World War II coincided with the hegemony of two English-speaking world powers, Britain and the Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda shares this message with friends to encourage translation of research findings into Spanish. Image courtesy of Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda “When you are engaged in some type of project, like science, where you have participants from all sorts of different groups speaking all sorts of different languages, there is a tension between adopting a lingua franca which facilitates intergroup communication and the fact that that very same move creates inequities, because that language is the native language of some people and not of others,” he said. Ramírez-Castañeda noted that most of those whom she surveyed preferred English as the common language of science for its ease of communicating internationally. But she argues that scientists, universities and journals should acknowledge and address the costs to non-English speakers, in terms of time, finances, productivity and anxiety. Science could, for example, encourage more multilingualism, she said, including publishing abstracts or entire articles in multiple languages. She chose to publish her survey in PLOS ONE because the journal allowed her to co-publish the complete article in Spanish. “We need to encourage diversity, and that needs to take into account language and taking more effort to do multilingual science,” she said. “All the actors have to be involved journals, universities, governments, institutions. We need to stress more affordable or free translating and editing services at journals. Scientists can volunteer to edit papers, not just for English, but both ways. Simultaneous translation at conferences and meetings. Editing and translating services at universities and journals. Promoting annual editions in other languages.” She and many others look with hope to Google Translate or other platforms, which in the future could make Star Trek’s sci-fi “universal translator” a reality, obviating the language problem. At the moment, however, Google Translate is still “awful” for translating the technical terms and prose that permeate science, Michael said. “We, as scientists, have to do the work,” Ramírez-Castañeda said. “That means translating papers with the tools that we have, so that students in these countries and local communities can read them. We don’t need to put more effort on these communities, they already have to deal with a lot of things to be a scientist. We just have to make them feel it is easy to be a scientist, not more difficult.” RELATED INFORMATION Disadvantages in preparing and publishing scientific papers caused by the dominance of the English language in science The case of Colombian researchers in biological sciences PLOS ONE The term "English" is derived from Anglisc, the speech of the Angles—one of the three Germanic tribes that invaded England during the fifth century. The English language is the primary language of several countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and many of its former colonies, and the United States, and the second language in a number of multilingual countries, including India, Singapore, and the Philippines. It's an official language in several African countries as well, such as Liberia, Nigeria, and South Africa, but is spoken worldwide in more than 100. It's learned around the world by children in school as a foreign language and often becomes a common denominator between people of different nationalities when they meet while traveling, doing business, or in other contexts. According to Christine Kenneally in her book "The First Word," "Today there are about 6,000 languages in the world, and half of the world's population speaks only 10 of them. English is the single most dominant of these 10. British colonialism initiated the spread of English across the globe; it has been spoken nearly everywhere and has become even more prevalent since World War II, with the global reach of American power." The influence of the English language has also spread globally through American pop culture, music, movies, advertising, and TV shows. Spoken Worldwide A third of the world's population speaks English as a first or secondary language, over 2 billion people. Tony Reilly noted an earlier estimate in "English Changes Lives" in Britain's The Sunday Times, "There are now estimated to be billion English speakers globally 375 million who speak English as their first language, 375 million as a second language and 750 million who speak English as a foreign language." He continued "The elites of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon have dumped French in favour of English. India has reversed its former campaign against the language of its colonial rulers, and millions of Indian parents are now enrolling their children in English-language schools—in recognition of the importance of English for social mobility. Since 2005, India has had the world’s largest English-speaking population, with far many more people using the language than before independence. Rwanda, in a move dictated as much by regional economics as post-genocide politics, has decreed a wholesale switch to English as its medium of instruction. And China is about to launch a colossal programme to tackle one of the few remaining obstacles to its breakneck economic expansion a paucity of English-speakers. "English has official or special status in at least 75 countries with a combined population of two billion people. It is estimated that one out of four people worldwide speak English with some degree of competence." When English Was First Spoken English derived from a Proto-Indo-European language spoken by nomads wandering Europe about 5,000 years ago. German also came from this language. English is conventionally divided into three major historical periods Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Old English was brought to the British Isles by Germanic peoples the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles, starting in 449. With the establishment of centers of learning in Winchester, histories being written, and the translation of important Latin texts into West Saxon's dialect in 800s, the dialect spoken there became the official "Old English." Adopted words came from Scandinavian languages. Evolution of the English Language In the Norman conquest in 1066, the Norman French dialect which was French with a Germanic influence arrived in Britain. The center of learning gradually moved from Winchester to London, so Old English no longer dominated. Norman French, spoken by the aristocracy, and Old English, spoken by the common people, intermingled over time to become Middle English. By the 1200s, about 10,000 French words had been incorporated into English. Some words served as replacements for the English words, and others coexisted with slightly changed meanings. Spellings changed as people with the Norman French background wrote down the English words as they sounded. Other changes include the loss of gender for nouns, some word forms called inflections, the silent "e," and the coalescing of a more constrained word order. Chaucer wrote in Middle English in the late 1300s. Latin church, courts, French, and English were widely used in Britain at the time, though English still had many regional dialects that caused some confusion. Structural and grammatical changes happened as well. Charles Barber points out in "The English Language A Historical Introduction" "One of the major syntactic changes in the English language since Anglo-Saxon times has been the disappearance of the S[ubject]-O[bject]-V[erb] and V[erb]-S[ubject]-O[bject] types of word-order, and the establishment of the S[ubject]-V[erb]-O[bject] type as normal. The S-O-V type disappeared in the early Middle Ages, and the V-S-O type was rare after the middle of the seventeenth century. V-S word-order does indeed still exist in English as a less common variant, as in 'Down the road came a whole crowd of children,' but the full V-S-O type hardly occurs today." Usage of Modern English Many scholars consider the early Modern English period to have begun about 1500. During the Renaissance, English incorporated many words from Latin via French, from classical Latin not just church Latin, and Greek. The King James Bible 1611 and works of William Shakespeare are considered in Modern English. A major evolution in the language, ending the "early" subportion of the Modern English period, was when the pronunciation of long vowels changed. It's called the Great Vowel Shift and is considered to have happened from the 1400s through the 1750s or so. For example, a Middle English long high vowel such as e eventually changed to a Modern English long i, and a Middle English long oo evolved into a Modern English ou sound. Long mid- and low-vowels changed as well, such as a long a evolving to a Modern English long e and an ah sound changing to the long a sound. So to clarify, the term "Modern" English refers more to the relative stasis of its pronunciation, grammar, and spelling than it has anything to do with current vocabulary or slang, which is always changing. Today's English English is ever adopting new words from other languages 350 languages, according to David Crystal in "English as a Global Language". About three-quarters of its words come from Greek and Latin, but, as Ammon Shea points out in "Bad English A History of Linguistic Aggravation," "it is certainly not a Romance language, it is a Germanic one. Evidence of this may be found in the fact that it is quite easy to create a sentence without words of Latin origin, but pretty much impossible to make one that has no words from Old English." With so many sources behind its evolution, English is malleable, with words also being invented regularly as well. Robert Burchfield, in "The English Language," calls the language "a fleet of juggernaut trucks that goes on regardless. No form of linguistic engineering and no amount of linguistic legislation will prevent the myriads of change that lie ahead." Additions to the Dictionary After a certain amount of usage, dictionary editors decide whether a new word has enough staying power to add it to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster notes that its editors spend an hour or two daily reading a cross-section of material looking for new words, new meanings to old words, new forms, new spellings, and the like. The words are logged into a database with their context for documentation and further analysis. Before being added to the dictionary, a new word or change to an existing word must have a considerable amount of use over time in a variety of types of publications and/or media widespread use, not just in jargon. The Oxford English Dictionary has a similar process for its 250 lexicographers and editors who are continually researching and updating language information. Varieties of English Just as the United States has regional dialects and there are differences in pronunciation and words in British and American English, the language has local varieties around the world African-American Vernacular English, American, British, Canadian, Caribbean, Chicano, Chinese, Euro-English, Hinglish, Indian, Irish, Nigerian, Nonstandard English, Pakistani, Scottish, Singapore, Standard American, Standard British, Standard English, and Zimbabwean. The benefit of a universal language English hasn’t always been the main language of science. Egyptian philosophers and stargazers told stories in hieroglyphs. Aristotle and Plato wrote books in Greek, which were then translated into Arabic by their followers. Then came the Romans – Pliny the Elder and Galen – writing in Latin. As the centuries passed, language evolved people were speaking and writing in Latin less often generally, favoring their native languages, like Italian and French. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Galileo published prolifically in Italian, translating his work into Latin to take it to a wider audience. According to Dr. Michael Gordin, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, it was never a given that English would dominate science. He said in a radio interview “If you look around the world in 1900, and someone told you, Guess what the universal language of science will be in the year 2000?’ You would first of all laugh at them because it was obvious that no one language would be the language of science, but a mixture of French, German and English would be the right answer.” In his 2015 book Scientific Babel, in which Dr. Gordin explores the history of language and science, he says German was the dominant language in 1900. “So the story of the 20th century is not so much the rise of English as the serial collapse of German as the up-and-coming language of scientific communication,” he explained. So it wasn’t until the 20th century – and World War I in particular – that English really started to dominate; the strong US influence on science had a big part to play in this rise, according to Dr. Gordin. The benefit of a universal language Before English became dominant, scientific publications were roughly equally split between French, German and English. This posed something of a problem if scientists weren’t multilingual, they would miss out on others’ discoveries. With a universal language, researchers know what to expect, and how to find information. They know what language to publish in and how to search for other people’s articles that support their own work. Beyond published research, a universal language also helps make sure everyone has access to information in presentations, guidelines, and standards. But it also gives millions of researchers a challenge if they’re not native English speakers, they need to learn a new language alongside their scientific studies. English speaking countries no longer dominate science Brazil, Russia, India, and China are fastest growing in terms of the number of research publications they produce, according to Elsevier’s book World of Research. For thousands of researchers in these countries, writing in English is difficult. With tough acceptance criteria, journal editors and reviewers look at submissions critically, so the language needs to be good. This is a stumbling block for some, but with professional translation and editing support, researchers from anywhere in the world can have an equal chance of getting published in English. Will the language of science be the same in 100 years? We don’t know that yet. China is outpacing the world in its published research output and, just like the rise in US science did a century ago, this could have a big impact on how we communicate about science. If you are learning English right now, chances are it’s probably something to do with getting your degree, advancing in your career, or maybe for personal reasons like having an English-speaking partner. Nowadays it seems like everyone is learning English, and it is becoming the world’s most widely spoken language. It is used in business and trade all over the world, and in places like Europe, it is spoken widely outside of business. But why? What makes English the magic catch-all language that everyone wants to speak fluently? How did it become so important and widespread? The answer lies not just in the history of the language, but politics, culture and technology! Here are 5 Reasons Why English Has Become Today’s Global Language 1 The British Empire. The first, and most obvious reason that English became widespread in the first place is because of the British Empire. Before colonizing around a quarter of the planet !, Britons were the only ones speaking English, and the language was confined to the British Isles. But once they started doing trade with places like Asia and Africa, colonizing and settling around the globe, the language naturally spread. However, it was mainly used in administration and business dealings—locals were still speaking their native languages for the most part. But when it came to getting an education, that was done in English. So English then became an elitist language of sorts, spoken by those who were educated in literature, philosophy and poetry, much like French was back when it was the most widely spoken language. So how did English take over French as the most spoken language? Well there’s more to the story than the Brits. 2 Post-war USA. The world after the first two world wars was a vulnerable and changing one. American businesses were booming and started doing trade all over the world, much like Great Britain had done in the previous century. This bolstered the use of English as the language of global trade. But at the same time, American culture was being exported heavily through music and film. The advent of jazz, rock n’ roll and other popular music from both the USA and UK infiltrated the culture of people everywhere, making English more than just the language of business, but the language of entertainment for the masses. Hollywood was also booming with popular films exported worldwide, and then in the 1960’s the counter-culture movement arrived with social change and the hippie movement sweeping across the USA and Europe. Which brings us to the next point 3 The coolness factor. English is used across the world to signify a certain lifestyle or culture linked to American-style success or entertainment, or sometimes to signify a certain British quality. Advertisers use it all over the world in multi-national markets to sell their products in this way. But, it is also the most common language used in the film and music industry. Big-budget movies and everyone’s favorite classic films are mostly produced in English. In music, if a band wants to become popular or famous, they will produce their work in English as well. Maybe it’s because English will reach a wider audience, or maybe because English is taken more seriously as an element of good pop music. And then there are sports—American-invented sports today like BMX and skateboarding, and even basketball, have an entire vocabulary in English, and many of the best athletes in those fields are English-speaking—even if they have been recruited from abroad! 4 Technology. At the same time that the USA was becoming the world’s business superpower, the internet was also invented in the USA. This created an entire lexicon for computers and technology that was invented in English. Computer keyboards are suited for writing languages using the Latin alphabet, and the hardware for all our smart technology uses English words that have become commonly used around the world, as there was no other alternative in place when the technology spread like fire to the corners of the Earth. The world of science is also dominated by English for much the same reason historically, universities publishing important research were doing so in English, and as a scientist today, any serious publication must be done in English. With science and technology playing such a big role in our lives today, English won’t be going anywhere soon. 5 The snowball effect. Now that English is so widespread across the internet, on the radio, in schools and in the business world, it is hard to escape. It is well known that in order to get a good job in today’s global market, speaking English is becoming a requirement more often than not. That’s why students and more adults than ever are taking private lessons, taking language immersion holidays and studying English to become as fluent as they can. It is not a guarantee of success, but it certainly does help! Some people cite other reasons for the popularity of the English language, such as that it is “easy to learn” or that is evolves with our changing times. Some people long for the days when every country spoke their own language, and English was an eccentricity for language experts. But one thing is fairly certain English will continue to grow as the world’s dominant language. But for how long? ***** Are you learning English for work or pleasure? Have you noticed an increase in the use of English in your country? We love to hear your comments! *much of the information in this article originally appeared here, in the ESL Languages Blog. Five hundred years ago, between five and seven million people spoke English, almost all of them living in the British Isles. Now, anywhere up to billion people around the world speak English, it’s no wonder why so many students choose to study English abroad! How did this happen? The growth of English has nothing to do with the structure of the language, or any inherent qualities, and everything to do with politics. The British Empire After developing for almost a millennium on the British Isles, English was taken around the world by the sailors, soldiers, pilgrims, traders and missionaries of the British Empire. By the time anything resembling a language policy was introduced, English had already reached all corners of the globe. For example, English-speaking puritans were not the only Europeans to arrive in North America Spanish, French, Dutch and German were also widely spoken. All of the languages were reinforced by waves of immigration from Europe in the following centuries. But in the process of designing a “United” States, the USA’s founders knew the importance of language for national identity. English was the majority language and had to be encouraged. As recently as the start of the 20th Century, several states banned the teaching of foreign languages in private schools and homes. The Supreme Court only struck down restrictions on private language education in 1923. Even today, English is not the official language of the USA, but there is no question that it is the dominant language in practice. And it wasn’t just America that said “hello” to English. At one point in the early twentieth century, the British Empire expanded across almost a quarter of the world’s surface, not including the USA. According to a popular saying, “the sun never set on the British Empire”. Nowadays, the sun has set on the empire, but English remains an important language in every single former colony. Gone but not forgotten In most of the British Empire, the main goal was trade so fewer Britons actually settled. 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. This created an English-speaking elite in some of the world’s most populous countries, and elites are good at self-preservation. 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. Again, that was English. English is now the dominant or official language in 75 territories a direct legacy of the British Empire. 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. And, as recently as the 19th century, English wasn’t the world’s lingua franca as the term suggests, French was the number one language of international communication. So something must have happened more recently to give the language its unique international status. Without the rise of the USA in the 20th Century, the world’s language landscape would look very different. Two world wars and the rise of the USA While Europe was rebuilding in the years after 1945, 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 21st Century. All of the world’s top business schools now teach in English. 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. 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. It wasn’t just American music that brought English into the world’s discotheques and homes. British bands including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Pink Floyd, the Police or Led Zeppelin ensured that Britannia ruled the airwaves, if not the waves. 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. This “soft power” continues today… English is “cool” 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. Check out Der Spiegel’s German examples, French ones, and La Repubblica’s Italian ones. 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 haute couture and Eau de Toilette sound much sexier untranslated. Bands release their work in English to reach the largest possible audience. Film-makers too. 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. The style-conscious language of extreme sports is English snowboarders ollie, fakie and rodeo whether they are Canadian, Swiss or Japanese. The word “cool” itself has been assimilated into various languages. Science & Technology The global power of the USA coincided with the birth of popular computing, and English is the language of the technological revolution and the internet. Consider a keyboard for example; they are designed for Latin characters, so speakers of Asian languages particularly use complicated techniques to enter words. What happens inside the devices is also dominated by English. The USA remains the most innovative technological nation and, because of the language policy of the nation’s founders, English is the dominant language. Pull not push Apart from the efforts of some early colonisers, hundreds of years ago, the success of English has more to do with “pull” than “push”. People in British colonies who wanted an education would receive that education in English. Artists who want to reach the largest audience for their work can do that in English. If you want to trade internationally, you will need to speak English. And you don’t have to speak English to have a successful career, but it certainly helps. Will English remain number one? Some people suggest that English has become ubiquitous because it is “easy to learn” or especially flexible, but a glance backwards suggests that this is irrelevant. Despite a devilishly complex case system, Latin was Europe’s most influential language for over a thousand years and its descendents are still going strong. People learned Latin then for the same reasons they learn English now to get ahead in life and have access to knowledge. Yet now Latin is only spoken by priests and scholars. Languages and borders change over time, but English is likely to remain the world’s number one language during our lifetimes.

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