English
has acquired the status of ‘global language’ because of its role, scope, and
popularity in education, computer, science and technology, aviation, tourism,
diplomacy, and so on. People of different
languages use it when they need to communicate with speakers of other languages.
Nowadays, it plays a global role as
a lingua franca – a common
language used to communicate. It is
stated by British linguist David Crystal that there are over 1.5 billion people
who speak English around the world. About 400 million more people speak it as a
second language, and an additional 600-700 million speak it as a foreign
language. But the number is increasing day by day as the language is used as
the official language in 67 countries and taught in about 118 countries. As
reported by the British Council, by 2020, there will be 2 billion English
studying people in the world. So, it can be probable that if a person meets
someone from another country, they both will have to be able to speak English.
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| The Spread of English: English as a Global Language |
Though English is now a
world lingua franca, it is not spoken by people everywhere
in the world. It has acquired global status because ‘it has repeatedly found
itself in the right place at the right time’. So, the question is – how has
this language acquired global status? The answer is easy – the language emerged
globally because it was ‘in the right place at the right time’. The rest of the
part of this paper will show how this thing has happened to spread the English
language globally.
In the earlier era, the spread of English occurred from Britain to other parts of the
world through colonization. English was the leading colonial language in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries because of the growth of the British Empire. The
British Empire covered almost a third of the earth’s surface, where nearly a
fourth of the world’s population lived in that area. It was said that the
desirable goal of the British Empire was the civilization mission anywhere in
the world, and the English language was
an essential tool for achieving that goal. A group of British settlers came to
the American continent searching for new land in 1607. After the spread of English on the American continent, it
also spread to the south, to the West Indies, and the southern part of the
mainland. On the other hand, English was spread among the black population in these
territories after shipping the first twenty African slaves to the Caribbean
Islands in 1619.
In Australia and New Zealand, the presence of the English
language started when prisons in England were overcrowded with convicts, and
they were transported gradually to these lands in 1788. In South Africa,
British control was established in 1820, and English was made the official language
in 1822. In South Asia, the English language started to spread after
establishing the first trading station of the British East Indian Company at
Surat in 1612. At the time of British sovereignty, English became the language
of administration and education throughout the region. Later most of the
countries of the Indian subcontinent made
English as their official language or associate official language.
English first became familiar with the people of this Indian
subcontinent including Bangladesh through the British Colony like the many
other British colonial countries. Although the British had left the Indian subcontinent
in 1947, this region's people still bear the legacy of British colonial norms
and values, including the language of English. Moreover, English continued to
be widely used as a recognized state language with the second language status during
the Pakistani regime. Therefore, the British Empire played a significant role in spreading the English language worldwide.
After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the father of the nation
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman adopted the ‘one state one language’ policy. Bangla
is widely used officially accepted language as the medium of instruction in Bangladesh’s
core education sector. Besides, English has been allowed to be the medium of
instruction in the certain education sector. Maintaining this issue, a
bilingual approach could be adopted, which should be developed under an appropriate
language plan and policy.
Besides the colonial empowerment, Britain had become the world’s
leading industrial and trading country at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Most of the inventions of the
Industrial Revolution were from Britain such as James Watt’s “steam
engine”, George Stephenson’s “steam-powered train”, Richard Arkwright’s “water frame”
etc. The world-famous inventor like James Watt, Thomas Newcomen, Richard
Trevithick, Matthew Boulton, George Stephenson, Michael Faraday, Charles
Wheatstone, Thomas Telford and others
lived in Britain. So, Britain was called
‘the workshop of the world’. The new inventions had an impact on the language
by adding lots of new words to the English lexicon. At the same time, most of
the world’s famous inventions were pouring out of an English-speaking country
where people from other countries needed to learn English to learn about the innovations.
So, the spread of English also happened due to the Industrial Revolution.
After the First World War, the League of Nations was created
as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 where English and French were the
official languages. Later, the League of Nations was replaced by the United
Nations in 1945 where English was selected as one of the official languages.
The selection of English as the official language of the United Nations helped
the language spread worldwide. The spread of English increased through the
medium of entertainment such as cinema, advertising, music etc. During the 1960
and 1970, the lyrics of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, John Lennon, and others spread
around the world because of the popularity, and the language of those lyrics
were obviously English. After that, the computer started where the programming
language was English and the output of different programs was also in English.
English vocabulary and syntax were automatically used in the first computer
operating systems where it was seen that the instructions were like ‘Press any
key when ready’ and ‘Volume in Drive B has no label’. When the computer was gaining
popularity, the emergence of the Internet made the popularity permanent where
the first language was English. In 1996, Michael Specter wrote an article on “World, Wide, Web: 3
English Words” in The New York Times where
he said, “If you want to take full advantage of the Internet there is only one
way to do it: learn English.” So, the spread of English also occurred by the
computer technology.
At last, it can be said that English has gained its highest status and got the opportunities to spread it all over the world because of the political and military power of Britain as well as the economic supremacy of the USA. Moreover, the spread of English has happened because of the British colonization, the Industrial Revolution, the emergence of new technologies, the spread of cinema and popular music etc. All these aspects help the English language to spread all over the world and give the language as a global language status because the language was ‘in the right place at the right time’.
References:
Ciprianová, E., and Vanco, M. (2010). English in the age of globalization: Changing ELT
models, restructuring relationships. The Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural
Press.
Rohmah, Z. (2005). English as a global language: Its historical past and its future. Indonesian
English language. Retrieved August 14, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_
Innovations of the Industrial Revolution. Retrieved August 14, 2017 from https://
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