Eli5: Why is the English language most common in this world?
In: 41
It’s not, Mandarin is the most spoken language. English is second.
The thing about English is that it has the most *non-native* speakers of any language and the third most spoken language, Spanish, has more native speakers than English does. Those non-native speakers also have a lot of different native languages and are spread all over the world. So wherever you go and whatever the local language is, there’s always a chance that you will be able to find someone who speaks some English.
So English is currently the global “lingua franca”; the language people use to communicate in situations where many people with different native languages need to communicate. French sort of filled this role for a while and still does for some situations, particularly international sports and certain aspects of diplomacy. There are some languages that fill a similar role in specific regions like Hindi in India, and Malay in southeast asia. Latin, Greek, and Frankish at times served a similar purpose in Europe and “lingua franca” is Latin for “Language of the Franks”.
So, how did English get to be in this position? Britain controlled a large part of the world and brought their language with them. Even those areas that weren’t part of the empire had to engage in trade and diplomacy with the British. The next country that everyone had to deal with after the British was the United States, which as a former British colony also spoke English so again you need to speak English to deal with them. Several significant fields that require international communication have developed under these two hegemonies like aviation, computers, the Internet, and at least the later parts of the scientific revolution. So English permeates all of those fields.
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