At different times in history, the dominance of a language has been connected with its military, economical, and political power. Is it different from the English language? Well, not so much, but there are more variables that we should take into consideration. Let’s discover today why English became the world’s lingua franca.
Historical lessons
During different periods of human history, different languages played the most important role. For example, the Greek language around 300 B.C. became the most powerful and influential language of the Mediterranean by the time of Alexander’s (The Great) conquest of the Persian Empire. It connected commerce, learning, and culture through different regions. This is one of the reasons why we are still so influenced by classical Greek ideas because they were spread during Alexander’s time.
Other languages were popular in the ancient world, such as Egyptian, Latin, and Arab. All of these languages mixed a bit of economical, political, and military power. Through this short visit into history, we start becoming more familiar with the reasons why English became so influential, but there’s more to the story.
Cultural and historical reasons
English has some eccentricities. For example, it has the biggest number of words of any European language, with around 600,000 words. Besides that, it has clear peculiarities in the connection between the written words and their pronunciation. Quite frequently, the words are pronounced rather differently than they are written.
Nowadays, more than 300 million people speak English as a first language, and more than 400 million speak it as a second language. There are English speakers in basically all the countries of the world. Why, if the language structures aren’t necessarily that easy, has it become so popular?
1. The British Empire
Do you remember what we discussed about the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Arab languages? All of them had in common considerable military power and political influence, with English isn’t different at all. Before colonizing a quarter of the planet, Britons were the only ones who spoke English. After the British colonization (as normally happens in colonization), the local groups continued speaking their native language, but the education, business, and politics were mainly done in the language of the conquerors, in this specific case, English. History shows us this repeating pattern. This happened with the Greek language when Alexander defeated Darius and the Persian Empire; with the Latin Language when the Romans were in control of the Mediterranean; with the Arab language when the Arabs were expanding in the middle-east, southwest Asia, and the Northern part of Africa. There are many other examples, ancient and modern, but, for brevity’s sake, we will not get into them.
2. The world after WWII
The economic and cultural center after the two world wars, especially the second world war, changed from Europe to the United States. This helped to install English as the global lingua franca in our society’s software for two main reasons: business and culture. First, the USA started doing commerce with several nations, and, second, Hollywood was creating movies that were seen on the whole planet, not to mention music, such as rock, jazz, blues, and pop that were exported as entertainment and, most obviously, lifestyle.
3. Science
By the early 19th century, French, German, and English languages participated in the main flow of scientific information, however, by the second half of the 20th century, English presented itself as clearly the dominant scientific language, as the USA was strengthening its economical, political and cultural position.
4. Technology
Beyond scientific books and articles, technology was hugely influenced by the English language. The Internet, which was created in the USA, was, and it still is a major factor in the technological revolution. Many English words became a technological lexicon, contributing even more to the widespread use of the English language. Think about it, can you think of something more influential today in our cultural lives than science and technology, more specifically, the internet? I hardly think so.
5. Global range
So, because of the internet, business, culture, the academic world, and entertainment, English continues its expansion and solidification. Mandarin, as China has recently been establishing itself as another economical center of the planet, is gaining traction, however, it’s hard to see that in any close future, the English language will lose its usefulness, prestige, and benefits.
Conclusion
We see, in a nutshell, that for a language to become so popular and widespread, it’s unlikely that there is just one specific reason for that. We should point out that the power of people who speak that language influences its direction and influence. This power can be cultural, economic, military, or political (they’re normally connected). English from a language restricted to the British islands, as they gained power, became global, and due to factors that continued feeding its expansion, today is the world’s lingua franca.
If my objective was successful, you have learned why English became so widespread and popular. If you liked this article, don’t be afraid to share it. It helps our mission to spread good content and knowledge. Thank you, and see you in our next post!
