Why Did English Become the World Language?

At an airport in Tokyo, a Japanese pilot speaks to a Korean control tower. Neither is a native English speaker, and yet they understand each other: they speak English, because it is the rule of the sky. At the same moment, in Berlin, a German researcher writes their paper in English; in São Paulo, two engineers exchange lines of code with English comments; in Lagos, a teenager watches an American series without subtitles. None of these places is originally English-speaking. And yet, everywhere, the same language circulates.

English is today the world language, the lingua franca of science, business, the internet and travel. The number of its speakers is estimated at around 1.5 billion — a large majority of whom do not have it as a mother tongue. How did a language spoken, a few centuries ago, by a few million islanders become the idiom of the planet? The answer lies less in the language itself than in history, power and money.

First wave: the British Empire#

The first engine of English's globalization is the British Empire. From the seventeenth to the twentieth century, Britain extended its dominion over a quarter of the world's land and population — an empire "on which the sun never set."

Wherever the colonial administration settled, English became the language of power, commerce, school and law: in India, in East and West Africa, in Australia, in the Caribbean, in Singapore. In many countries, after independence, English remained — not out of nostalgia, but as a neutral language among dozens of rival local tongues, and as a passport to the world.

English did not conquer the world through its beauty or its logic, but in the baggage of merchants, soldiers and administrators. It is an imperial language that became, by accident of history, everyone's language.

Second wave: the American century#

The decisive relay was taken up by the United States. In the twentieth century, the fading of the British Empire coincided with the rise of the world's leading economic, military and technological power — English-speaking as well.

This American hegemony spread English through channels other than colonization: economy and finance (the dollar, Wall Street), science and research, technology, and above all popular culture — Hollywood, music, television, then global brands. To take part in twentieth-century modernity increasingly meant going through English.

Third wave: the internet and code#

The advent of computing and the internet, largely born in the United States, locked in the position of English. The first computers, the first programming languages, the first web protocols were conceived in English. To this day, we program with English words (if, return, function), whatever our mother tongue.

Online content, social networks, global platforms have extended this domination. English has become the default language of the digital space — the one that reaches the widest audience, and therefore the one people learn.

Globish: a second-hand English#

A consequence of this success: the most widely spoken English in the world is not that of London or New York, but a simplified, functional version, used among non-natives. It has been nicknamed Globish (global English): reduced vocabulary, lightened grammar, many accents, in the service of efficiency alone.

This phenomenon has a paradoxical consequence: native English speakers are sometimes harder to understand, in this international context, than two non-natives between themselves — because they use idiomatic expressions, humor and a pace the others do not master. The world language partly escapes those who own it as their own.

English today: domination and debates#

The place of English is not without criticism. People speak of linguistic imperialism: the dominance of one language threatens diversity, advantages its native speakers (in negotiations, publications, careers) and imposes a worldview. Languages die out, untranslatable concepts are lost, and peoples must think their own culture in the idiom of another.

The future remains open. The demographic and economic weight of China, India, the Spanish-speaking world could reshuffle the cards; advances in machine translation could, in time, reduce the need for a single common language. But for now, no language seriously threatens the position of English.

To learn English today is thus not merely to learn a language: it is to acquire a key of access to the world — to science, work, travel, culture. The real question is no longer why to learn it, but how to do so efficiently, without exhausting oneself on its traps. And there, against the illogic of its spelling, a structured method is worth more than a thousand rules.

FAQ#

Why is English the world language? For historical, not linguistic reasons: the expansion of the British Empire, then the economic, scientific, technological and cultural hegemony of the United States in the twentieth century, and finally the dominance of English on the internet.

How many people speak English? The number of English speakers worldwide is estimated at around 1.5 billion, a large majority of whom do not have it as a mother tongue: it is first of all a global second language.

What is Globish? Globish ("global English") is a simplified, functional version of English, with reduced vocabulary and grammar, used as a common language among non-native speakers everywhere in the world.

Will English remain the world language? Nothing seriously threatens it in the short term. But the demographic rise of other languages and advances in machine translation could, in the long term, change the situation.

Photo credits: the images used in this article come from Pexels and Unsplash and are royalty-free.