How English Became a Global Language

English has evolved naturally as a global language over time, despite attempts to create artificial languages such as Esperanto, as global languages.

One important argument in favor of English as a global language is its effectiveness. Chinese has more native speakers, however, it also has simplistic grammar, and it lacks articles, prepositions, verb conjugation and tense, singularity and plurality of nouns making it less effective than English at expressing complex meanings. It is also tonal, which limits the speaker's use of tone for emotional and conceptual expression. Furthermore most Westerners find the Chinese writing system difficult to grasp, whereas the Chinese and other groups tend to learn the Roman alphabet easily. The Roman alphabet is already the most widely used alphabet in the world today, and is shared by many disparate and seemingly unrelated languages, such as English (which has Germanic and French roots) and Spanish (which derives from the Vulgar Latin.) Since the Roman alphabet is phonetic (representing sounds) rather than character based (representing concepts) it is a more effective method of describing the actual sounds of words and phrases. The primarily difficulty with learning English is getting over irregularities.For example, the "gh" in through and laugh representing no sound and f respectively, whereas "g" alone can represent the hard "g" in get or the soft "g" in George, and "h" alone can represent the aspirated sound in hat or no sound at all as in honor. Unfortunately, the only solution to this problem is memorization and practice.

In 1887, L.L. Zamenhof published his treatise on Esperanto, an artificial language which he had constructed for the purpose of international communication. Today it is the most widely spoken artificial, constructed language, and even has native speakers. English appears to be more commonly used than Esperanto in global commerce, becoming a lingua franca (a common language spoken by people with different native languages). Esperanto, on the other hand, seems to have found its place as a cultural, educational and literary language.

Since English is so widely spoken, many non-native speakers have found that they've been required to learn it to stay in business. English has approximately 375 million native speakers, born in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries. However, it has been estimated that there are over a billion non-native speakers of English.

Some people mistakenly think that English is a Romance language. It is rather a Germanic language which was heavily influenced by the Normans upon their conquest of England in 1066. The Normans eventually went on to become the French. The early Britons adopted many of the Norman word roots, which has resulted in many similarities between French and English today.

Today, English is widespread largely due to the fact that it is used so heavily in television, film and music. Hollywood's global spread has contributed strongly to the international popularity of English. It is also the predominant language on the Internet. Web pages in other languages often tend to have an English translation. The British Empire and the dominant nature of American popular culture have contributed overall to the spread of English across the planet.

There are still significant language barriers between people of different countries. If more people learn English, and come to speak it fluently, these barriers could be broken down. A person in Holland would not need to learn Chinese in order to communicate with his friends in China. Instead, he could use English as a neutral language. Then, if he wished to learn Chinese for his own purposes, he could do so at his leisure, rather than being forced to learn it in a crash course just to be able to communicate with his friend.

There is a strong push in this country to establish English as the official or only language. However, Spanish is the second most widely spoken and taught language next to English. There is a significant minority of Hispanic Americans who speak only Spanish, and the majority have only a limited proficiency in English. However, English is spreading rapidly through the Hispanic population, favored by the young and by Hispanics born in this country.

There has been some talk of attempting to establish Spanish as an official second language of the U.S. Since neither the Federal Government nor the states have established a national official second language, this is unlikely. Certain states, such as Alaska, have attempted to establish English-only laws which have been blocked in the courts. Also, it's unlikely that English-only will ever be established the official language of Texas, since there are so many Spanish speakers living here.

While English can be very difficult to learn, learning it can be very rewarding. A knowledge of English makes it possible for natives of non-English speaking countries to enjoy English-language film, television, music, magazines, novels and nonfiction, among other things, without the need for any translation. English makes communication with people of other countries and cultures possible. More importantly, English offers a wide range of possible expressions for similar concepts. For example:

I am sad.
I am unhappy.
I am miserable.
I'm in a rotten mood.
I am down in the dumps.
I am blue.

These all have effectively the same meaning, but each reflects a different nuance of expression. Esperanto, which has been proposed as an international language, offers comparatively limited expression.

Mi estas malgaja.
Mi estas tiel malgaja.
Mi estas malfelic^a.
Mi estas trista.

The language offers terms for "unhappy" and a term for "sad". However, Esperanto does not have the wide range of synonyms that English offers. Worse, Esperanto is almost devoid of idiomatic expressions. This ultimately makes it a colorless language with a limited range of expression. Since terms in Esperanto tend to retain their original meaning, attempting English idioms in Esperanto would tend to cause the listener to interpret the speaker literally. That is to say, if I said "Mi estas blua," the listener might tend to think I was claiming to actually be blue in color.

While Esperanto is effective at communication it is simplistic and doesn't lend itself toward poetry. English in its modern form has been used for poetry, sonnets and songs for nearly five hundred years, and thus allows the speaker much more freedom to express himself.

Another thing in favor of English is relative simplicity of conjugation of verbs. Every language has its conjugation nightmare, especially for the irregular verbs. However, English dispenses with complex prefix and suffix arrangements for tenses such as the future tense and moods like the conditional in favor of a simpler auxiliary verb conjugation.

Perhaps the existence of English as a global language of commerce is a byproduct of imperialism. It's very likely that it is. However, English has become an international language which bridges cultures and language barriers. Hopefully, someday English will eliminate all communication boundaries worldwide.

Sources:

R. R. Mehrotra, "ESPERANTO: The Answer to the Diversity of World Languages" Yabaluri.org
Eric A. Anchimbe, "The native-speaker fever in English language teaching (ELT): Pitting pedagogical competence against historical origin" Linguistik-Online.org
Deborah Sharp, "Those who don't speak Spanish may be left behind" USAToday.com
Stephen Baker, Inka Resch, with Kate Carlisle and Katharine A. Schmidt; "The Great English Divide" BusinessWeek.com