Eli5: Why is the English language most common in this world?
In: 41
The UK dominated a lot of places for most of the 1800s and early 1900s. The US has culturally dominated since the mid-1900s. Aviation and science is pretty universally required to speak English worldwide. It makes sense to learn English for most educated people.
Four letters – UK US
Or is that three letters?
The British controlled huge chunks of the globe and brought in English as a language of government, commerce, and education. As that was waning, the US then gained dominance in technology, business, and politics in many areas and sectors and using English became beneficial for commerce, etc.
These days many entities will use English to communicate with other entities, even if it is not the native language of either party. For example a German company and a Japanese company are likely to do business in English, which is beneficial to both, rather than doing business in either German or Japanese. I say beneficial to both because their English speaking employees are also able to do business with companies from lots of other countries. A Japanese speaking German is limited to Germany and Japan, and vice versa.
Even if you just want to stick with English speaking countries, the US is the largest economy, and India is now or soon will be the country with the highest population. Investing in English capability is a good investment.
Just as a point of clarification English is the language with the most total number of speakers, but in terms of only people’s first language, it’s actually 3rd most common, behind Chinese (I believe Mandarin specifically) and Spanish.
The British formed a one of the first truly global empires, and were *the* global super power much up until WWI.
The second that war was over, the baton of the global super power was handed to the US… A country that also happens to speak English, being a former British colony.
So back to back, for centuries now, the lingua franca of most of the business world has been English.
English is super easy to learn. No noun cases, no verb conjugations, no adjective/noun agreement to name a few easy bits. 2 people from different parts of the world would be able to understand each other with just a few weeks of learning. It’s convenient.
And it’s taught as a second language in most parts of the world.
Of course more in depth studies would be required if someone wanted to be fluent and and be able to discuss more complicated topics
Because England, for lack of a better term, conquered the world by the 19th century and their influence spread world wide. The British Empire is basically gone now; the US and India are wholly independent, Canada and Australia are self governing, China fought back and installed their own (authoritarian communist) government, and right before WW1, Russia had the Bolshevik revolution which ousted the blood relative of the King of England Czar, but the use of the English language as the lingua franca (basically, the language everyone uses) of the business world stuck.
It’s not just about “control”, it’s because English was the language of liberal democracy, capitalism, business, education, etc
For a hundred years the British empire was the largest in the world, spanning the globe, and in all those areas English became the language of officials and law, so everyone higher up had to learn English for official reasons.
Then, post World War 2 American dominance meant that anyone who wanted to work with the worlds new super power, also had to learn English.
Entertainment is also a huge cause for the spread of English. Many cultures learn the language becasue the US dominates pretty much every other country in movies, tv, and music.
The British (English) empire conquered nearly a 3rd of the world land mass and the US is the number 1 world power by GDP
Latest Answers