SOS school ( terza media) ENGLISH AS A LINK LANGUAGE

GLOBAL ENGLISH

In a world where financial and cultural exchanges are more and more widespread, English has become a link language, used by people from different nationalities to understand one another. Even if Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, English is the most widespread and it is the official language in most international institutions. There are about 375 million native speakers of English in the world but a quarter of the world’s population speaks some English. In fact, English has become the language of science, aviation, finance, commerce, information technology, diplomacy and tourism. People need to speak English for their studies, their job, or when they travel. The majority of the world’s letters and emails are written in English. It is the main language of books, newspapers, sport and pop music.

There are three main reasons why English has become so important. One is historical: in the 19^th century the British had the biggest and most powerful empire in the world. When the colonies became independent, many of them decided to maintain a special connection with Britain and they became part of the Commonwealth, a group of 54 countries where English is the native or official language.

The second reason is linked to the economic and cultural prestige of the USA in the world. In fact, the USA, where English is spoken in the American variety, is the leader in many fields, especially science, technology and film industry.

Another reason is probably because English has a simple grammar and contains words of different origins, which makes it a flexible language, capable of changing and adapting itself to different cultures.

English has become the language which helps overcome linguistic and cultural barriers. For example, in India, which was a colony of the British Empire and where there are 22 different regional languages, English is the link language of administration and government.

In recent years the Internet revolution has increased the importance of English. Of course it is not easy to learn a language perfectly. It takes years of study and practice. But very often non-native speakers manage to speak a simplified form of English. About twenty years ago a Frenchman, Jean-Paul Nerrière, at an international conference, discovered that he was able to communicate very well with Japanese and Brazilian colleagues whereas communication with British and American colleagues was more difficult, because their English was too complicated. Nerrière called this Globish, or Global English. Globish has only 1,500 words and 6 verb tenses, it is not a language but a sort of “decaffeinated English”.

In the near future almost everyone will speak English as a second language but this doesn‘t mean that local languages will disappear.