Have you ever wondered why English is called the International language?
Why is English the second language learned in many developing countries (including Bangladesh)?
We could have been taught any other language but we are specifically learning English.
One of the reasons behind this can be for the fact that most of the powerful countries of the world, for instance, countries like the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and several Caribbean countries are among the thirty territories that use English as the first language.
But how did coincidentally most of the powerful and influential nations turn out to be English speaking?
Most of the foreign scholarship criteria have mandatory IELTS or TOEFL requirements, both of which are standardised tests to assess the English knowledge level of the applicants.
The actual cause behind the overspread influence of English as a language is, it is the world’s “Lingua Franca”.
Lingua Franca is the common intermediate language which is opted by the native speakers with a different language as their mother tongue to communicate with the whole world.
There is a complex history behind the rise of English as the Lingua Franca which is intertwined with politics and culture.
Let us get a brief overview on that!!
- The British Empire
Needless to say that the British Empire played a major role in the expansion of English as a language.
The colonisation established by the British made English a crucial mode of communication in more than a quarter of the world.
The evolution has occurred differently in different areas. The parts where the English spread not due to colonisation,
In America, the first groups of settlers from England came in search of a new land in which they expected to preach christianity. The later English speakers mostly came here for trading.
In the West Indies and the southern part of the mainland, English was spread from the American sub continent.
Australia and New Zealand were used as a new distant place for the freed prisoners when prisons in England were overcrowded with convicts.
In the colonised parts, that is, major parts of Africa (especially South Africa) and Asia (e.g. the Indian subcontinent, and Malaysia) were under the direct rule of Britain making the people to become bilingual.
In all these areas, the British entered as traders.
Then the trading changed into colonisation when the British rulers supported traders by sending them soldiers.
Afterwards, English was taught to native people in the territories they had occupied.
In later times, the spread and domination of English over other languages are mostly due to external factors.
- The United States
After World War II, when many countries lost their powers, the US, a english speaking country, was the only big Western power that remained undamaged educationally, scientifically and politically.
Therefore, the US, helped by its allies, had power in reorganising the world through the creation of the United Nation.
English was then one of the four official languages spoken by the UN which made the language gain stronger status in the world.
- The Computer Era
Coincidentally, after English gained power politically, the computer era came into being.
Most of the invention and evolution of the computer and similar technology occurred in the US, making the first computer program to be written in English type languages.
Nowadays, about 80% or 85% of all the scientific and technological information is written in English.
Thus all these factors are behind the efforts to spread English as a global language. And since English is the most influential language in the world, it is denoted as the “Lingua Franca”.
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Writer
Rifah Zakiah
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE