By Olakunle Agboola – English is one of the world’s most widely spoken languages. It’s used as the global language of business and is often a common link when two people that speak different languages communicate with each other. The British Council estimates that English is spoken by around 1.75 billion people – almost a quarter of the world’s population. But fewer than 400 million speak it as their first language.
It is amazing how English is commonly used on the French state-owned international news service, French 24, as well as being one of the working languages of the European Union and being spoken widely in parts of Asia. China boasts around 350 million people who have some knowledge of English while India has around 100 million.
The expansion of the language has its roots firmly in the development of the British Empire as well as the industrial expansion of the US and it’s taken a relatively short time – just over a century – to achieve international acceptance.
The global reach of America’s cultural, political, and economic influence has contributed significantly to bolstering the dominant position of the English language in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Asked Bryant Jones, Ph.D. student of language and linguistics from Oxford University the possibility of English rivalry in the 21st century and he said the English language is not eternal and there are possibilities the world experience dominating language in the next century.
“A lot of languages in History had had that status like English, albeit at a smaller scale: Koine Greek from the Empire of Alexander the Great until the fall of Byzantium Eastern Europe. What of Latin language dominating during the Roman Empire and what becomes of the language today?
As the United States are slightly driven away from their dominant position, a new lingua franca might emerge based on an already existing language: it has to possess some characteristics: great flexibility in grammar and syntax (eliminating French, German or Russian), an already widespread writing system (eliminating Chinese.) and not too many specific phonemes (eliminating Arabic.) In my opinion, only Spanish today has all the resources to compete with the English language”
Brandy Rock, a lecturer of English Language is of a different opinion while she said, it will be difficult for any other language to compete with English or with its popularity.
“As long as the US has its status of being a global technological superpower, I don’t see any other language replacing English as the worldwide lingua Franca. In this digital era, it’s just impossible for any other language to take that position given as most of the world’s innovations are from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Even if China ever took over the world power from United State, Mandarin can’t and won’t replace English because it’s difficult to read and write.
Unless there is a strong motive and/or incentive for a future generation to move to a different language they would just continue with the English language legacy”
It is debatable if English will relinquish its importance if there is deliberate action from other countries to stop the usage of English and start with their local language. On the other hand, some people have attested that with the continuing rise of China as a global economic and trading power, there might be no barrier to prevent Chinese from becoming a global language like English. What is your thought?
Kindly follow us on twitter:@AfricanVoice2
