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How Did English Become a Global Language
The rise of English is a remarkable tale as Professor David Crystal reminds us in his attractive, short book English as a Global Language.
It is certainly quite a theme. When Julius Caesar landed in Britain more than 2,000 years ago, English did not exit. Five hundred years later, English, virtually incomprehensible to modem ears, was probably spoken by about as few people as currently speak Cherokee, the language of a small North American Indian tribe and with as little influence. About 1,000 years later, at the end of the 16th century, and after the Norman Conquest, the reformation and the arrival of commercial printing technology, English was the native speech of between 5 million and 7 million people. And yet now look at it. As the second millennium approaches, English is more widely scattered, more widely spoken and written than any other language has ever been. In the title of the book it has become a truly global language. According to David Crystal, about 2.09 billion people, well over one-third of the world’s population are routinely exposed to it.
As he rightly points out, what is impressive about this staggering figure is "not so much the grand total but the speed with which the expansion has taken place since the 1950’s. In 1950, the case for English as a world language would have been no more than plausible. Fifty years on and the case is virtually won."
So what happened
Someone once said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. In other words, when the British navy set out to conquer the world, it set out an "army" of English speakers. As the British
empire spread throughout the world, English became the basis of law, commerce and education. The British empire was succeeded by another (the American), which shared virtually the same linguistic heritage. American English, which has become the rocket-fuel of the English language, has magically found its way into areas undreamed of 40, let alone 400 years ago.
The most valuable part of Crystal’s study is the section devoted to a speedy analysis of the cultural basis of this global reach, notably the influence of broadcasting, press, advertising, popular music and film. He is also up-to-date and informative in his identification of the World-Wide-Wed as a powerful reinforce of American cultural and linguistic dominance.
One of his most interesting passages concerns the role played by the League of Nations, and later the United Nations, in spreading English as an international language in the aftermath of the two world wars.
What does the future hold To this question, Crystal proposes the. recognition of a new form of English — WSSE (World Standard Spoken English) —which almost by definition rules out the possibility that English would fragment into mutually unintelligible languages as Latin once did. "English, in some shape or form, will find itself in the service of the world community forever," Crystal writes. Paragraph 6 ______