What is a Global Language?

There is no official definition of "global" or "world" language, but it essentially refers

to a language that is learned and spoken internationally, and is characterized not
only by the number of its native and second language speakers, but also by its
geographical distribution, and its use in international organizations and in diplomatic
relations. A global language acts as a “lingua franca”, a common language that
enables people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities to communicate on a more
or less equitable basis.
Historically, the essential factor for the establishment of a global language is that it
is spoken by those who wield power. Latin was the lingua franca of its time, although
it was only ever a minority language within the Roman Empire as a whole. Crucially,
though, it was the language of the powerful leaders and administrators and of the
Roman military - and, later, of the ecclesiastical power of the Roman Catholic Church
- and this is what drove its rise to (arguably) global language status. Thus, language
can be said to have no independent existence of its own, and a particular language
only dominates when its speakers dominate (and, by extension, fails when the
people who speak it fail).
The influence of any language is a combination of three main things: the number of
countries using it as their first language or mother-tongue, the number of countries
adopting it as their official language, and the number of countries teaching it as their
foreign language of choice in schools. The intrinsic structural qualities of a language,
the size of its vocabulary, the quality of its literature throughout history, and its
association with great cultures or religions, are all important factors in the popularity
of any language. But, at base, history shows us that a language becomes a global
language mainly due to the political power of its native speakers, and the economic
power with which it is able to maintain and expand its position.

Why is a Global Language Needed?

It is often argued that the modern “global village” needs a “global language”, and that
(particularly in a world of modern communications, globalized trade and easy
international travel) a single lingua franca has never been more important. With the
advent since 1945 of large international bodies such as the United Nations and its
various offshoots - the UN now has over 50 different agencies and programs from
the World Bank, World Health Organization and UNICEF to more obscure arms like
the Universal Postal Union - as well as collective organizations such as the
Commonwealth and the European Union, the pressure to establish a worldwide
lingua franca has never been greater. As just one example of why a lingua franca is
useful, consider that up to one-third of the administration costs of the European
Community is taken up by translations into the various member languages.
Some have seen a planned or constructed language as a solution to this need. In
the short period between 1880 and 1907, no less than 53 such “universal artificial
languages” were developed. By 1889, the constructed language Volapük claimed
nearly a million adherents, although it is all but unknown to day. Today the best
known is Esperanto, a deliberately simplified language, with just 16 rules, no definite
articles, no irregular endings and no illogical spellings. A sentence like “It is often
argued that the modern world needs a common language with which to
communicate” would be rendered in Esperanto as “Oni ofte argumentas ke la
moderna mondo bezonas komuna linguon por komunikado”, not difficult to
understand for anyone with even a smattering of Romance languages.
Many of these universal languages (including Esperanto) were specifically
developed with the view in mind that a single world language would automatically
lead to world peace and unity. Setting aside for now the fact that such languages
have never gained much traction, it has to be said this assumption is not necessarily
well-founded. For instance, historically, many wars have broken out within
communities of the same language (e.g. the British and American Civil Wars, the
Spanish Civil War, Vietnam, former Yugoslavia, etc) and, on the other hand, the
citizens of some countries with multiple languages (e.g. Switzerland, Canada,
Singapore, etc) manage to coexist, on the whole, quite peaceably.

Is a Global Language Necessarily “A Good Thing”?

While its advantages are self-evident, there are some legitimate concerns that a
dominant global language could also have some built-in drawbacks. Among these
may be the following:
There is a risk that the increased adoption of a global language may lead to the
weakening and eventually the disappearance of some minority languages (and,
ultimately, it is feared, ALL other languages). It is estimated that up to 80% of the
world’s 6,000 or so living languages may die out within the next century, and some
commentators believe that a too-dominant global language may be a major
contributing factor in this trend. However, it seem likely that this is really only a direct
threat in areas where the global language is the natural first language (e.g. North
America, Australia, Celtic parts of Britain, etc). Conversely, there is also some
evidence that the very threat of subjugation by a dominant language can actually
galvanize and strengthen movements to support and protect minority languages
(e.g. Welsh in Wales, French in Canada).
There is concern that natural speakers of the global language may be at an unfair
advantage over those who are operating in their second, or even third, language.
The insistence on one language to the exclusion of others may also be seen as a
threat to freedom of speech and to the ideals of multiculturalism.
Another potential pitfall is linguistic complacency on the part of natural speakers of
a global language, a laziness and arrogance resulting from the lack of motivation to
learn other languages. Arguably, this can already be observed in many Britons and
Americans.

Is English a Global Language?

As can be seen in more detail in the section on English Today, on almost any basis,
English is the nearest thing there has ever been to a global language. Its worldwide
reach is much greater than anything achieved historically by Latin or French, and
there has never been a language as widely spoken as English. Many would
reasonably claim that, in the fields of business, academics, science, computing,
education, transportation, politics and entertainment, English is already established
as the de facto lingua franca.
The UN, the nearest thing we have, or have ever had, to a global community,
currently uses five official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian and
Chinese, and an estimated 85% of international organizations have English as at
least one of their official languages (French comes next with less than 50%). Even
more starkly, though, about one third of international organizations (including OPEC,
EFTA and ASEAN) use English only, and this figure rises to almost 90% among
Asian international organizations.
As we have seen, a global language arises mainly due to the political and economic
power of its native speakers. It was British imperial and industrial power that sent
English around the globe between the 17th and 20th Century. The legacy of British
imperialism has left many counties with the language thoroughly institutionalized in
their courts, parliament, civil service, schools and higher education establishments.
In other counties, English provides a neutral means of communication between
different ethnic groups.

But it has been largely American economic and cultural supremacy - in music, film
and television; business and finance; computing, information technology and the
Internet; even drugs and pornography - that has consolidated the position of the
English language and continues to maintain it today. American dominance and
influence worldwide makes English crucially important for developing international
markets, especially in the areas of tourism and advertising, and mastery of English
also provides access to scientific, technological and academic resources which
would otherwise be denied developing countries.

Is English Appropriate for a Global Language?

The richness and depth of English's vocabulary sets it apart from other languages.
The 1989 revised "Oxford English Dictionary" lists 615,000 words in 20 volumes,
officially the world’s largest dictionary. If technical and scientific words were to be
included, the total would rise to well over a million. By some estimates, the English
lexicon is currently increasing by over 8,500 words a year, although other estimates
put this as high as 15,000 to 20,000. It is estimated that about 200,000 English words
are in common use, as compared to 184,000 in German, and mere 100,000 in
French. The availability of large numbers of synonyms allows shades of distinction
that are just not available to non-English speakers and, although other languages
have books of synonyms, none has anything on quite the scale of "Roget’s
Thesaurus". Add to this the wealth of English idioms and phrases, and the available
material with which to express meaning is truly prodigious, whether the intention is
poetry, business or just everyday conversation.
It is a very flexible language. One example of this is in respect of word order and the
ability to phrase sentences as active or passive (e.g. I kicked the ball, or the ball was
kicked by me). Another is in the ability to use the same word as both a noun and a
verb (such as drink, fight, silence, etc). New words can easily be created by the
addition of prefixes or suffixes (e.g. brightness, fixation, unintelligible, etc), or by
compounding or fusing existing words together (e.g. airport, seashore, footwear,
etc). Just how far English’s much-vaunted flexibility should go (or should be allowed
to go) is a hotly-debated topic, though. For example, should common but incorrect
usages (e.g. disinterested to mean uninterested; infer to mean imply; forego to mean
forgo; flout to mean flaunt; fortuitous to mean fortunate; etc) be accepted as part of
the natural evolution of the language, or reviled as inexcusable sloppiness which
should be summarily nipped in the bud?
Its grammar is generally simpler than most languages. It dispenses completely with
noun genders (hence, no dithering between le plume or la plume, or between el
mano or la mano), and often dispenses with the article completely (e.g. It is time to
go to bed). The distinction between familiar and formal addresses were abandoned
centuries ago (the single English word you has seven distinct choices in German:
du, dich, dir, Sie, Ihnen, Ihr and euch). Case forms for nouns are almost non-existent
(with the exception of some personal pronouns like I/me/mine, he/him/his, etc), as
compared to Finnish, for example, which has fifteen forms for every noun, or Russian
which has 12. In German, each verb has 16 different forms (Latin has a possible
120!), while English only retains 5 at most (e.g. ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden) and
often only requires 3 (e.g. hit, hits, hitting).
Some would also claim that it is also a relatively simple language in terms of spelling
and pronunciation, although this claim is perhaps more contentious. While it does
not require mastery of the subtle tonal variations of Cantonese, nor the bewildering
consonant clusters of Welsh or Gaelic, it does have more than its fair share of
apparently random spellings, silent letters and phonetic inconsistencies (consider,
for example, the pronunciation of the “ou” in thou, though, thought, through,
thorough, tough, plough and hiccough, or the “ea” in head, heard, bean, beau and
beauty). There are somewhere between 44 and 52 unique sounds used in English
pronunciation (depending on the authority consulted), almost equally divided
between vowel sounds and consonants, as compared to 26 in Italian, for example,
or just 13 in Hawaiian. This includes some sounds which are notoriously difficult for
foreigners to pronounce (such as “th”, which also comes in two varieties, as in
thought and though, or in mouth as a noun and mouth as a verb), and some sounds
which have a huge variety of possible spellings (such as the sound “sh”, which can
be written as in shoe, sugar, passion, ambitious, ocean, champagne, etc, or the long
“o” which can be spelled as in go, show, beau, sew, doe, though, depot, etc). In its
defence, though, its consonants at least are fairly regular in pronunciation, and it is
blessedly free of the accents and diacritical marks which festoon many other
languages. Also, its borrowings of foreign words tend to preserve the original spelling
(rather than attempting to spell them phonetically). It has been estimated that 84%
of English spellings conform to general patterns or rules, while only 3% are
completely unpredictable (3% of a very large vocabulary is, however, still quite a
large number, and this includes such extraordinary examples as colonel, ache, eight,
etc). Arguably, some of the inconsistencies do help to distinguish between
homophones like fissure and fisher; seas and seize; air and heir; aloud and allowed;
weather and whether; chants and chance; flu, flue and flew; reign, rein and rain; etc.
Some argue that the cosmopolitan character of English (from its adoption of
thousands of words from other languages with which it came into contact) gives it a
feeling of familiarity and welcoming compared to many other languages (such as
French, for example, which has tried its best to keep out other languages).
Despite a tendency towards jargon, English is generally reasonably concise
compared to many languages, as can be seen in the length of translations (a notable
exception is Hebrew translations, which are usually shorter than their English
equivalents by up to a third). It is also less prone to misunderstandings due to cultural
subtleties than, say, Japanese, which is almost impossible to simultaneously
translate for that reason.
The absence of coding for social differences (common in many other languages
which distinguish between formal and informal verb forms and sometimes other
more complex social distinctions) may make English seem more democratic and
remove some of the potential stress associated with language-generated social
blunders.
The extent and quality of English literature throughout history marks it as a language
of culture and class. As a result, it carries with it a certain legitimacy, substance and
gravitas that few other languages can match.
On balance, though, the intrinsic appeal of English as a world language is probably
overblown and specious, and largely based on chauvinism or naïveté. It is unlikely
that linguistic factors are of great importance in a language's rise to the status of
world language, and English's position today is almost entirely due to the
aforementioned political and economic factors.

What About The Future?

Although English currently appears to be in an unassailable position in the modern
world, its future as a global language is not necessarily assured. In the Middle Ages,
Latin seemed forever set as the language of education and culture, as did French in
the 18th Century. But circumstances change, and there are several factors which
might precipitate such a change once again.
There are two competing drives to take into account: the pressure for international
intelligibility, and the pressure to preserve national identity. It is possible that a
natural balance may be achieved between the two, but it should also be recognized
that the historical loyalties of British ex-colonies have been largely replaced by
pragmatic utilitarian reasoning.
The very dominance of an outside language or culture can lead to a backlash or
reaction against it. People do not take kindly to having a language imposed on them,
whatever advantage and value that language may bring to them. As long ago as
1908, Mahatma Gandhi said, in the context of colonial India: “To give millions a
knowledge of English is to enslave them”. Although most former British colonies
retained English as an official language after independence, some (e.g. Tanzania,
Kenya, Malaysia) later deliberately rejected the old colonial language as a legacy of
oppression and subjugation, disestablishing English as even a joint official language.
Even today, there is a certain amount of resentment in some countries towards the
cultural dominance of English, and particularly of the USA.
As has been discussed, there is a close link between language and power. The USA,
with its huge dominance in economic, technical and cultural terms, is the driving
force behind English in the world today. However, if the USA were to lose its position
of economic and technical dominance, then the “language loyalties” of other
countries may well shift to the new dominant power. Currently, perhaps the only
possible candidate for such a replacement would be China, but it is not that difficult
to imagine circumstances in which it could happen.
A change in population (and population growth) trends may prove to be an influential
factor. The increasing Hispanic population of the USA has, in the opinion of some
commentators, already begun a dilution of the “Englishness” of the country, which
may in turn have repercussions for the status of the English language abroad.
Hispanic and Latino Americans have accounted for almost half of America’s
population growth in recent years, and their share of the population is expected to
increase from about 16% today to around 30% by 2050. Some even see the future
possibility of a credible secessionist movement, similar to that for an independent
Quebec in Canada, and there has been movements within the US Republican party
(variously called "English First" or "Official English" or "US English") to make English
the nation’s official language in an attempt to reduce the significance of Spanish.
Official policies of bilingualism or multilingualism in countries with large minority
language groups, such as are in place in countries like Canada, Belgium and
Switzerland, are an expensive option and fraught with political difficulties, which the
USA would prefer to avoid.
A 2006 report by the British Council suggests that the number of people learning
English is likely to continue to increase over the next 10-15 years, peaking at around
2 billion, after which a decline is predicted. Various attempts have been made to
develop a simpler "controlled" English language suitable for international usage (e.g.
Basic English, Plain English, Globish, International English, Special English,
Essential World English, etc). Increasingly, the long-term future of English as a
global language probably lies in the hands of Asia, and especially the huge
populations of India and China.
Having said that, though, there may now be a critical mass of English speakers
throughout the world which may make its continued growth impossible to stop or
even slow. There are no comparable historical precedents on which to base
predictions, but it well may be that the emergence of English as a global language
is a unique, even an irreversible, event.