Why English has Become the Most Popular Language

1. English is the most commonly spoken language in the world. One out of five people can speak or at least understand English!

2. English is the language of science, of aviation, computers, diplomacy, and tourism. Knowing English increases your chances of getting a good job in a multinational company within your home country or of finding work abroad.

3. English is the official language of 53 countries. That is a lot of people to meet and speak to.

4. English is spoken as a first language by around 400 million people around the world.

5. English is the language of the media industry. If you speak English, you won't need to rely on translations and subtitles anymore to enjoy your favourite books, songs, films and TV shows.

6. English is also the language of the Internet. Many websites are written in English – you will be able to understand them and to take part in forums and discussions.

7. English is based on a simple alphabet and it is fairly quick and easy to learn compared to other languages.

8. English is not only useful – it gives you a lot of satisfaction. Making progress feels great. You will enjoy learning English, if you remember that every hour you spend gets you closer to perfection.

9. Since English is spoken in so many different countries there are thousands of schools around the world that offer programmes in English. If you speak English, there're lots of opportunities for you to find an appropriate school and course to suit your academic needs.

10. Because it's fun! By learning English, you will also learn about other cultures. Few experiences will make you grow as a person more than learning the values, habits and way of life in a culture that is different from yours.

Why English has Become the Most Speaking Language in the World

The British Empire

After developing for almost a millennium on the British Isles, English was taken around the world by the sailors, soldiers, pilgrims, traders and missionaries of the British Empire. By the time anything resembling a language policy was introduced, English had already reached all corners of the globe.

For example, English-speaking puritans were not the only Europeans to arrive in North America: Spanish, French, Dutch and German were also widely spoken. All of the languages were reinforced by waves of immigration from Europe in the following centuries.

But in the process of designing a “United” States, the USA’s founders knew the importance of language for national identity. English was the majority language and had to be encouraged. As recently as the start of the 20^th Century, several states banned the teaching of foreign languages in private schools and homes. The U.S. Supreme Court only struck down restrictions on private language education in 1923.

Even today, English is not the official language of the USA, but there is no question that it is the dominant language in practice.

And it wasn’t just America that said “hello” to English. At one point in the early twentieth century, the British Empire expanded across almost a quarter of the world’s surface, not including the USA. According to a popular saying, “the sun never set on the British Empire”.

Nowadays, the sun has set on the empire, but English remains an important language in every single former colony.

Gone but not forgotten

In most of the British Empire, the main goal was trade so fewer Britons actually settled. This explains why English did not come to dominate colonies in Asia and Africa, where it was the language of business, administration and education, but not the language of the people.

To this day, English has a key administrative role in these former colonies. For a long time, access to English meant access to education, whether in the mission schools in Africa or the first universities in India. This created an English-speaking elite in some of the world’s most populous countries, and elites are good at self-preservation.

Post-independence, many countries became officially multilingual for the first time, but the various groups needed a language for communication with each other and with other nations. Again, that was English. English is now the dominant or official language in 75 territories: a direct legacy of the British Empire.

In countries where large settler colonies were formed, such as Australia, Canada and the USA, native languages and cultures have been pushed to near-extinction by the presence of English.

It was not the first language of European colonialism; Portuguese and Dutch left the continent earlier. And, as recently as the 19^th century, English wasn’t the world’s lingua franca (as the term suggests, French was the number one language of international communication). So something must have happened more recently to give the language its unique international status.

Without the rise of the USA in the 20^th Century, the world’s language landscape would look very different.

Two world wars and the rise of the USA

While Europe was rebuilding in the years after 1945, the USA boomed. American businesses picked up where the British East India Company had left off centuries before, taking English around the world as a language of trade. The influence of American business, combined with the tradition of English left around the world by the British Empire, have made English the number one language of international trade in the 21^st Century. All of the world’s top business schools now teach in English.

English is now the most spoken foreign language in 19 of the 25 EU Member States where it is not an official language. The 6 states where English is not number one also show the importance of politics in language policy: Russian is the most spoken foreign language in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; Croatian the most commonly spoken in Slovenia; and Czech the most spoken in Slovakia.

But the cultural legacy of the post-war decades is also very important to the growth of English as a world language.

As well as sending money across the Atlantic, the USA provided the soundtrack through rock and roll, jazz and, later, disco and hip hop. Hollywood movies became global sensations and American television series became cultural reference points. American culture was everywhere, radiating confidence and success; just the things for a world that had been ravaged by war.

It wasn’t just American music that brought English into the world’s discotheques and homes. British bands including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Pink Floyd, the Police or Led Zeppelin ensured that Britannia ruled the airwaves, if not the waves.

The hippy movement came from San Francisco and London. Music festivals including the Isle of Wight and Woodstock became iconic for a whole generation, whether English speakers or not.