Why English?

The English language is used by more people in the world than any other living language today. This may seem surprising at first. After all, the population of the United Kingdom is one of the smallest in the world. But of course the UK is not the only country whose native language is English; the majority of people in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are also native English-speakers. However, even if you add up the populations of these countries the total only comes to about 400 million, which is less than one-tenth of the population of the world.

Who else speaks English? Well, if we count all the English-speakers in India, Singapore and some other countries, that adds another 700 million to the total. Add all those people who speak English elsewhere and the total English-speaking population of the world comes to an impressive one and a half billion!

This figure shows that there are more non-native speakers of English than there are native speakers. Why is this? There is one important historical reason: the influence of the British Empire—the Empire that stretched across the globe. Although the Empire no longer exists, the English language is firmly rooted in its former colonies—in Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and North America.

Other important reasons for the spread of English language are economic. English is the language of international business and commerce. It is also the native language of the United States. So, any country wanting, for example, to trade with the United States, or to take advantage of its technology, must be able to operate in English. Also, most scientific and technological developments have been made by English-speaking societies. To keep up with such developments, to talk about them in international conferences, or write and read about them in scientific journals and books, scientists, scholars and students must be able to understand English.

These are obvious reasons for the spread and interest in the English language. But there is a rather less obvious reason. English is also the language of a popular culture. All over the globe millions of young people listen to pop music and watch pop videos. The stars who perform in English are by far the most famous. The songs of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Police, Sting, Michael Jackson, and hundreds of other American and British singers can be heard all over the world. English has become an international language.

English is well suited to this role. Unlike many other languages, it has a built-in flexibility that allows constant adaptation and assimilation. In English, vocabulary from other languages is often used, new words and combinations of words can be coined easily, nouns can be turned into verbs and vice versa.

Furthermore English does not suffer from having an academy (as does France) which monitors the language and sets the standards of "correctness". What is correct in English is often, simply, what is accepted as appropriate and understandable by those who speak it, whether they are native or non-native speakers.

This flexibility helps to explain why English has survived so well, why it can vary so much from speaker to speaker and why it has become a world language.