ESL Blogs

The Continuing Development of English as a Global Language

War and colonization is the primary reason why any language becomes international. Looking into the perspective of the Iberian peninsula acquiring a romantic language is due to the fact that they were once under the rule of the Roman Empire. The same happened previously with Greece and its colonies. Nowadays, Spanish is spoken in the majority of South America and Central American due to prior rule by the Spanish Empire. Even though colonization isn't a continuing factor since the countries independence, there countries continue to speak in Spanish due to it being the lengua franca. There are doubtlessly multiple languages in each country but the “business language” – if you will – is Spanish.

Throughout the years of English as a global language there has developed three distinct circles. The inner circles refers to English in long-running British colonies (UK, USA, New Zealand, and Australia). We can refer to the second circle could be attributed with countries that are developing English throughout their already established language (India, Jamaica, and Philippines). Finally, it can be defined that countries which are gaining significant economic growth by recognizing that English is a growing global language (Holland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, etc.). These three circles encompass 750 million English speakers – L1, L2, and EFL speakers of English.

The emergence of the USA as an international power began with the US civil war. After the war there was an economic boom in the early 1870's with the coming of the Gold Rush. At the turn of the century, industrialization was enforced by the development of the production line (i.e. Ford Motor Company). The expansion of treaties with countries like Mexico led our economy to surpass the rest of the world's. Through the USA's large economy English is able to maintain its world power.

What we know today is that the obvious reason to speak English is to understand American capitalism. There are certain, specific examples of English words being the vocabulary of niche jobs – information technology. For example, my friend Javi works for an IT company and he has informed me that essentially every word that he has learned in his niche is directly an English word. Therefore, that which we understand now is that English is thriving on economic prowess rather than military enforcement.