Global language

Global language



Global language

Introduction

Every day people are surrounded by this term, when they hear it on the news, read it in the papers or talk about it them. "Globalisation" is a term which may be defined in different ways. According to the website www.globalization.com "the political and economical views describe globalisation as the process of denationalization of markets, politics and legal systems, i.e. the rise of the so-called global economy. At a business level, globalisation is about companies deciding to take part in the emerging global economy and establishing themselves in foreign markets.

Beyond that, globalisation is a reality that touches our lives in ways most us never stop to think about. International trade has made us wealthier; the internet has brought a revolution to global communications, while McDonald's has managed to spread more than 25,000 outlets across 120 countries.

It is predicted by David Graddol, author of The Future of English: English will be spoken by half of the world's population within 10 years. By the year 2015, two billion people are expected to start learning English and three billion will already speak it, says a British Council estimate. The report also showed that English was not the only language that is spreading, Mr Graddol said: "Chinese, Arabic and Spanish are all popular and also likely to be languages of the future". Now, let us investigate this phenomenon and figure out what keeps English spreading, and how this is going to affect us in the future.

Globosity of the English language

English is spoken as a first language by more than 300 million people throughout the world, and used as a second language by many more. One fifth of the world's population speaks English with a good level of competence, and it is likely that within the next few years the number of people speaking English as a second language will increase significantly. Carl Marx once said that if you could sing The Internationale, you would be able to find friends everywhere in the world. It is true of English. Crystal (1997) reports that 85 per cent of international organisations make official use of English, at least 85 per cent of the world's film market is in English, and about 90 per cent of published articles are written in English(Zai, 1999,, 114).

In addition, Zai, Zheng and Zhang (1999) report that more than 80 per cent of all scientific papers are first published in English and over half of the world's technical and scientific periodicals are in English. Furthermore, five of the largest broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC and CBC) reach a potential audience of about 300 million people through English broadcasts, computer program instructions and software are often supplied only in English, 85 per cent of the international telephone conversations are conducted in English, and English is the language of medicine, electronics, space and the Olympics.

In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, David Crystal (2007) draws attention to some astounding figures. English is present on every ...