# Expansion of English language



## misskelly

I've always wondered how come English has became the International Language and how it have spread so world wide. I'm making an essey about and I need help. I'm Italian.
Thank you in advance.


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## Outsider

British colonialism, followed by U.S. hegemony, may have had something to do with that.


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## SerinusCanaria3075

In other words, _imperialism_. Strange how French is also spoken in almost every continent and part of the world yet Spanish has the most number of native speakers and yet due to all the invasions that the Americans and British have done throughout centuries they have obviously left their mark, similar to the Romans leaving Latin. 
On the plus side, English can be practical and simple at times, compared to the many inflections needed in Romance languages. Also, it's great that English has no accents (sometimes, not always) since when I type in Spanish it takes me twice as long to write due to the diacritical marks needed.

(Schuma_ch_er or Schuma_ck_er, Chocolate, _Ch_olesterol or _Co_lesterol?)


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## Joca

SerinusCanaria3075 said:


> ...
> 
> On the plus side, English can be practical and simple at times, compared to the many inflections needed in Romance languages. Also, it's great that English has no accents (sometimes, not always) since when I type in Spanish it takes me twice as long to write due to the diacritical marks needed.
> 
> (Schuma_ch_er or Schuma_ck_er, Chocolate, _Ch_olesterol or _Co_lesterol?)


 
Yes, but on the other hand, English spelling and pronunciation are very confusing, even more confusing than the spelling and pronunciation of most Romance languages.


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## Athaulf

misskelly said:


> I've always wondered how come English has became the International Language and how it have spread so world wide. I'm making an essey about and I need help. I'm Italian.
> Thank you in advance.



Obviously, English is geographically so widespread as a native language because the British managed to assemble and maintain the largest colonial empire. However, the more important factor is that unlike the other large colonial empires, several of their colonies grew into powerful and prosperous states in their own right, while maintaining strong cultural, economical, military, and political ties with the British mainland and between each other, thus giving rise to the modern Anglosphere. Even the United States, which seceded from the British Empire relatively early, have maintained enough ties with the rest of the Anglosphere to remain firmly integrated into it. This largely informal, but extremely powerful global political entity has so far proven more resistant to all sorts of wars, crises, and upheavals than any other.

Now, the key moment in the development of the global dominance of English was the Second World War. If you observe the state of the world in 1945, you'll notice that just about the only developed countries that weren't devastated by the war or completely ruined economically were those of the Anglosphere. Also, when Nazis came to power and the war ravaged Europe, the elite of European science mostly ended up continuing their careers in English-speaking countries. And whether continental Europeans and others are willing to admit it or not, these countries, and primarily the U.S., have been at the forefront of all progress and innovation since then, for good or bad. Thus, almost every global novelty and initiative that affected the world since 1945 has further strengthened the position of English -- from the Marshall Plan to the television to rock'n'roll to the Internet. 

Of course once a language is established as a lingua franca, there is a positive feedback loop strengthening such a position, since more and more people find it worthwhile to learn it, which in turn increases its usefulness even further. Hence the ongoing enormous increase in the number of second-language speakers of English.



Joca said:


> Yes, but on the other hand, English spelling and pronunciation are very confusing, even more confusing than the spelling and pronunciation of most Romance languages.



And English syntax is an even worse nightmare -- it takes years of practice before one is able to produce a correct sentence that goes beyond the simplest subject-verb-object pattern, and the use of articles and prepositions will quickly betray just about any non-native speaker. There are many reasons for the dominance of English in the modern world, but its supposed (and in fact entirely mythical) simplicity is definitely not one of them.


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## sunkitty

Quote:

And English syntax is an even worse nightmare -- it takes years of practice before one is able to produce a correct sentence that goes beyond the simplest subject-verb-object pattern, and the use of articles and prepositions will quickly betray just about any non-native speaker. There are many reasons for the dominance of English in the modern world, but its supposed (and in fact entirely mythical) simplicity is definitely not one of them.

While I agree with you that complex sentences are no easier in English that in any other language (and probably more difficult than many), I have often suspected that the simplicity of the basic "subject-verb-object" construction makes English a language easy to learn "just enough to survive". Fluency is different, but many people learn just enough of a language to communicate their basic needs, and English is, I believe, fairly easy in this regard. There is very little conjugation (and it's usally not necessary for comprehension. Any English speaker will understand "He go to the store.") You can learn a very limited vocabulary, no ending changes, and just string your basic words together S-V-O, and you have enough verbal skill to "get by".

By the way, I'm not proposing that this is the reason for wide popularity of English (I agree with the fact that political and military events have more to do with it). But I do believe that every language has its own complexities, and many languages require you to learn very complex things just to put together elementary sentences (Russian, Hungarian, Finnish for example). English on the other hand, shows its complexity later, with the syntax of anything beyond "basic survival communication", and tends to be easier to "start" than other languages (though not continue).


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## Athaulf

sunkitty said:


> While I agree with you that complex sentences are no easier in English that in any other language (and probably more difficult than many), I have often suspected that the simplicity of the basic "subject-verb-object" construction makes English a language easy to learn "just enough to survive". Fluency is different, but many people learn just enough of a language to communicate their basic needs, and English is, I believe, fairly easy in this regard. There is very little conjugation (and it's usally not necessary for comprehension.


Well, it's true that in a weakly inflected language like English it's possible to say lots of very simple things correctly with little knowledge of grammar. But even in a strongly inflected language, such simple utterances can be made understandable even if you ignore the inflections. I've known people who survived just fine in Germany despite constantly missing, or even altogether ignoring the German cases and conjugations.  And as soon as you go above the pidgin level, the complexity of English syntax strikes you as hard as the grammar of any other language.

On the other hand, there might be a deeper reason why the simplicity of English morphology often helps the learners, and this reason is psychological rather than one of objective difficulty. Namely, I noticed that people who learn heavily inflected languages are often shy and afraid to practice speaking because they are well aware of the mistakes that they make with cases, genders, and conjugations, since such mistakes are immediately obvious. On the other hand, I've known many people who greatly overestimate the quality of their English, even though they constantly make gross syntactic mistakes with prepostitions, articles, word order, choice of words, etc. -- but they are blissfully unaware of them and think that it's enough to just translate their native language into English word-for-word, without bothering with any of that pesky morphology that many other languages have. As a result, they aren't afraid to practice self-confidently, and with time end up improving significantly. 




> Any English speaker will understand "He go to the store.") You can learn a very limited vocabulary, no ending changes, and just string your basic words together S-V-O, and you have enough verbal skill to "get by".


Frankly, I don't think I'll exaggerate if I say that I had an easier time learning the entire tables of German cases and Spanish conjugations than learning enough English syntax to be able to reliably guess the right preposition and article (_to_, _the_) even in such simple sentences as your example above. And saying, for example, _*he goes in store_ instead of _he goes to the store_ -- which would be something that a beginner-level Croatian student of English might easily say -- is not any less wrong or badly sounding than a pidgin utterance like, say, _*er gehen in Kaufhaus_ in broken German or _*el ir en tienda_ in broken Spanish, or even *_on ići u trgovina_ in broken Croatian.


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## sunkitty

You're right about "to the"  I should have said "He go store". Shows you what a native speaker takes for granted.

I think there's also something to be said for momentum. If a language, such as English, starts to become widespread and is used in many foreign countries, I think it then can "become" a language that is easier to start to learn. English morphology has decreased dramatically over the last few hundred years, and has become more adapted to being spoken as a "pidgin" language. It seems reasonable that this may have happened in part *because* it became a widely-acquired second language

Also, I can't speak for the U.K. or Austrailia, but in the United States, we are a country largely made up of immigrants. (Most of us who consider ourselves 100% American typically have roots that go back no more than 2 or 3 generations in this country).  We have become used to speaking on a daily basis with people who don't speak English well, and have developed ways to make things easier for all trying to communicate. The American dialect in particular has lost a bit of its grammatical complexity compared to other English dialects, and I think this may be in response to its adapting to a huge number of non-native speakers.

Just to be clear, I don't have any solid evidence to back this. These are just some of my strong guesses. It's a very interesting topic to me.


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## Athaulf

sunkitty said:


> I think there's also something to be said for momentum. If a language, such as English, starts to become widespread and is used in many foreign countries, I think it then can "become" a language that is easier to start to learn. English morphology has decreased dramatically over the last few hundred years, and has become more adapted to being spoken as a "pidgin" language. It seems reasonable that this may have happened in part because it became a widely-acquired second language



Actually, the English morphology had already been reduced to more or less its present level by the Early Modern English period. English spoken 400 years ago had only marginally more inflections than contemporary English. Obviously, the status of English as the language of a worldwide empire (and later Anglosphere) had nothing to do with the simplification of its morphology.

On the other hand, there have been theories that the loss of inflections that happened through the periods of Late Old English and Middle English was a result of pidginization and creolization due to the contact with Old Norse and/or French. However, such theories are controversial at best. There are definitely other examples of languages that underwent similar changes despite the fact that no significant language mixing occurred through their history.

Also, note that some other languages of former intercontinental empires haven't lost any of their complex morphology. The conjugations in Latin American Spanish are every bit as complex as those used by the first Spanish colonists in the New World, despite the fact that most of these countries have also accepted many immigrants from all over the world, and their populations are to a large degree descended from speakers of native languages that have been displaced by Spanish.



> Also, I can't speak for the U.K. or Austrailia, but in the United States, we are a country largely made up of immigrants. (Most of us who consider ourselves 100% American typically have roots that go back no more than 2 or 3 generations in this country). We have become used to speaking on a daily basis with people who don't speak English well, and have developed ways to make things easier for all trying to communicate. The American dialect in particular has lost a bit of its grammatical complexity compared to other English dialects, and I think this may be in response to its adapting to a huge number of non-native speakers.


Unfortunately (or fortunately?), this isn't how things work in practice.  The scenario you describe could never happen because of the phenomenon of creolization. If a heavily multilingual community adopts a simplified language (i.e. pidgin) as the regular means of daily communication, the first generation of children born in that community will spontaneously create a novel creole language, whose vocabulary and grammar will be expanded to fill the gap between this pidgin and a full-fledged natural language. As a result, the grammar of such a creole will be every bit as complex as the grammar of any other natural language. In the concrete case of American (and other) English, none of this is happening, because the standard language is firmly holding its ground. Just about anywhere, there are enough native English speakers  that the second-generation immigrants grow up as native English speakers too (children always pick their language of their peers, rather than their parents, if there is any difference). 

Also, I really don't see any factual support for the claim that any American dialect is less gramatically complex than any other variety of English. After all, there are two obvious truths about any natural language: (1) native children learn to speak it at the same average age as any other language, and (2) it takes more or less the same time and effort for an average adult foreign speaker of an unrelated language to learn to speak it close to the native level. (Of course, here I exclude from consideration certain artificially created hurdles that exist in some languages, such as extremely complicated writing systems.)


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## sunkitty

I studied a bit of linguistics and linguistic history in college (not part of may major; i simply found it interesting and took some courses). Now you've made me want to go pick up some books and starting reading more about it again! Thank you for the huge amount of information. You're obviously well-educated on the subject.

As far as Amercian grammar simplifying, I wish I could think of more examples right now, but there is one that immediately pops into my head.

Typical English question format for simple present:

A. Statements: Subject + inflected verb
B. Questions: (conjugated "to do") + subject + uninflected verb

A.  I walk. He walks.
B.  Do I walk? Does he walk?

The only exception is the verb "to be"
(Am I on time?)

In most of British English, the verb "to have" is also an exception
(Have you a pencil?)

American English dropped the "have" construction and made it a regular verb in this regard. Also, in an increasing number of American dialects, whether English teachers like it or not, "Do I be on time?" is becoming accepted usage in conversation. Also, (once again, not technically "correct", but it's extremely common) is the simplified form of just changing intonation, like many European languages.

Instead of "Do you go to school?"
"You go to school?"
"You go to school, yes?"

There are a few other examples like this, but they are difficult to find if you don't actually live in the U.S., because as I've said, "grammarians" and "teachers" still call them incorrect, and therefore you won't see them written, but much of the population has decided that these phrasings are OK and uses them very often.

Once again, thank you for all the information. Very interesting stuff!


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## avok

misskelly said:


> I've always wondered how come English has became the International Language and how it have spread so world wide. I'm making an essey about and I need help. I'm Italian.
> Thank you in advance.


 

....and also The "*Protestant ethic*" that dominated in British colonies especially in the USA.


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## Athaulf

sunkitty said:


> I studied a bit of linguistics and linguistic history in college (not part of may major; i simply found it interesting and took some courses). Now you've made me want to go pick up some books and starting reading more about it again! Thank you for the huge amount of information. You're obviously well-educated on the subject.



Thanks, but I guess I should include the disclaimer that I'm a complete amateur in all linguistic matters, although I do try to limit my writing to things that I know reliably.  



> As far as Amercian grammar simplifying, I wish I could think of more examples right now, but there is one that immediately pops into my head.
> [...]


Thanks for the examples. However, do they really constitute unambiguous simplification? Take the example of using intonation rather than syntax to form questions. For someone whose native language has very different intonation patterns than English, it can be much harder to master the proper way of using intonaton in English than to learn the syntactic rules for forming questions!

Furthermore, I'm sure that one could just as easily find developments in modern everyday English that add complexity. For example, off the top of my head, when various transport vehicles appeared in the last century, people started saying that you're _*in* the car_, but _*on* the plane_, and you really have to use the correct preposition in cases like this to sound right. Learning this sort of stuff is a real nightmare for foreigners -- and as various new things are appearing around us, the new expressions forming about tham aren't showing any less complexity and irregularity than the older ones. From my personal experience, I can definitely confirm that getting the modern English slang right is no less difficult than getting the academic writing in standard English right. When I came to Canada a few years ago, the phrases coming out of my mouth made the native speakers laugh or scratch their heads just as often as my written English made my supervisor reach for the red pen.


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## toolmanUF

sunkitty said:


> I  Also, in an increasing number of American dialects, whether English teachers like it or not, "Do I be on time?" is becoming accepted usage in conversation. Also, (once again, not technically "correct", but it's extremely common) is the simplified form of just changing intonation, like many European languages.


 
I have NEVER heard "Do I be on time" in any part of the United States, nor on sitcoms or even in songs. To me it sounds extremely ungrammatical, and not only in the prescriptive sense. 

I'm just curious; has anybody actually heard this in the States?


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## Bilbo Baggins

misskelly said:


> I've always wondered how come English has became the International Language and how it have spread so world wide. I'm making an essey about and I need help. I'm Italian.
> Thank you in advance.


 
The British Empire. In 1896, during Queen Victoria's 60th year on the throne, England ruled over 20% of the Earth's land mass and 25% of its population.


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## Andréstable

Para mí el inglés es interesante porque tenemos en inglés la posibilidad de decir cualquiera.  Si no hay una palabra para lo que queremos decir, la inventamos, o la robamos de otro idioma.  Si se necesita, ponemos guión entre dos palabaras para crear un adjetivo (como "no-touch" para comunicar la idea de que no se necesita tocar; hay sensor).  A mí no me parece que otros idiomas hagan eso, salvo el alemán, donde las palabras se hacen enormes.  Pero no creo que eso sea lo mismo, creo que es menos fácil usar ese sistema.  Por eso el inglés para mí es muy técnicamente útil, donde los otros idiomas fallan.

Bueno, el inglés es feísimo, por supuesto.  Pero técnicamente, creo que es el mejor.  Me fascina.  También es interesante que usamos "R.S.V.P." (répondez s'il vous plaît), del francés, en vez de "respond please" en cartas e invitaciones.  Aquí está un buen ejemplo por qué la ortografía es tan confundida en el inglés: usamos "rendezvous" como si lo hubiéramos inventado, cuando la verdad es que la palabra original es otra vez del francés: "rendez-vous," que quiere decir "preséntense".  Hemos precisamente robado la palabra, quitado el guión, y usado ella como nuestra propia palabra por siglos.  Es interesante, sin duda alguna.

Mis dos centavos, sé que no tiene mucho que ver con el primer tema.

[EDIT] I just realized this thread is in English.  My bad. lol


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## zpoludnia swiata

Some things about English.

1.  The fact that it is a lingua franca, or that any language plays that role has nothing to do with simplicity, creativity, ability to absorb other words, etc... All these things are true for all languages to greater or lesser degree.  Spanish, too, has "borrowed" words like _alcalde, sacar, mango_, or _nocturno_ to name just a few.  Looks like it too can take on other words.  Something English is so famous for, but, alas, is not a trait of just English.  
2.  In the past, there were various languages in various parts of the world that were lingua francas, and they are not famous for having simple grammar:  Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic, Aramaic, Babylonian-Akkadian (to name a few).
3.  All these languages, including English, arrived at a state of cultural dominance for a variety of historical reasons--having to do with colonization, influence, invasion, prestige, etc...
4.  American English grammar is no less "complicated" than British grammar.  In some ways one is more complex than the other.  British may have so more irregularities in the creation of contraction, use of plurals, use of the present perfect, or some phrasal verb usage, but on the other hand American English has retained more of the present subjunctive (it's important that he be...).
5.  Basically in human language, the crux of communication is in lexis (vocabulary).  As examples have shown, you can communicate with bad grammar, but you can't communicate at all if you lack the words.  In that case you say nothing.  Which of the following two examples is better?  Which one at least tells you something, however broken it may be?

A)  I no want you talk that man.  He no good.  No!
B) Subject pronoun, negation, past tense verb, preposition, object noun.

6.  Pronunciation is also vital to communicate well; here English is regretably difficult for many learners.  The fairly large number of vowels, that are fairly indistinct from each other is not easy for many, not to mention vowel reduction.  It's a lot easier to explain verb endings, than to delve into the intricacies of English vowel reduction.  I'm just saying that it's not simple.
7.  The fact that English uses expressions like RSVP doesn't really say anything.  For the average speaker of English it is used as any other expression in English:

"I'll RSVP later."
"You should've RSVPed earlier."
"I never received your RSVP."

It behaves as any other word in English, as a verb or noun--something that depends on its place in a phrase, another intricacy of English.  I could go on and on...


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## quietsoul

I agree with what has been written already about the features of English being completely irrelevant to the question of why it became a dominant language. Any language whatsoever can be used or adapted to communicate anything whatsoever. If the required word or expression doesn't exist, you simply invent it or use other combinations. English is dominant for socio-politico-historical reasons, not linguistic ones.

As to the correctness or otherwise of English in use, this too is a complete myth, started by the likes of Dr. Johnston and his contemporaries who decided that a particular dialect should be considered 'Standard English' and all other ways of speaking would be 'ungrammatical'. Today we have a range of Englishes in the world, e.g. Singlish in Singapore, Tok Pisin in New Guinea, various creoles in the West Indies, etc. Personally, I speak 'Strine'. (Can you guess which continent I come from?)

And finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, English is changing as we speak. I'm no expert but my guess is that it is changing more speedily than ever before because of the increased worldwide contact between different language groups. The English that is spoken in another generation may bear little resemblance to what we recognise today as English. For one thing, it will probably have lots of Chinese expressions in it...

quietsoul


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## Athaulf

quietsoul said:


> And finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, English is changing as we speak. I'm no expert but my guess is that it is changing more speedily than ever before because of the increased worldwide contact between different language groups.



On the contrary, I have the impression that the standard English has been changing at a slower and slower rate ever since the Early Modern English period. The English of writers from 200-250 years ago is almost as easily intelligible to a modern speaker as the books written today, and texts from a century ago are often indistinguishable from those of today as far as the language itself goes (except for the terminology related to new inventions, of course). Even things written some 400 years ago are intelligible pretty easily. This is a natural consequence of a having a large corpus of literature that is widely read and quoted -- and during the last few decades, this effect has been further strengthened by the mass media. 

Furthermore, the regional dialects of English are losing ground to the standard English. At almost any place in the English-speaking world, you'll find that the speech of older people is much harder for a non-local to understand than the speech of youth (I witnessed this myself when I was in Texas a few years ago). This is of course not happening just in the case of English; the standard languages of education, government, and media are displacing the local dialects and minority languages just about everywhere.



> The English that is spoken in another generation may bear little resemblance to what we recognise today as English.


Do you really expect that the classic movies from the past few decades will become unintelligible to an average English speaker within the next several generations, let alone one? I certainly have no problem understanding the language of the 1930s movies, spoken by people born _three_ generations before me. Sure, there will be many words for technical gadgets that don't exist today, while they probably won't know the words for today's gadgets that will be no longer used, and each generation will have its own slang -- but the non-technical English will change very little. 



> For one thing, it will probably have lots of Chinese expressions in it...


I wouldn't bet. Here in Toronto, almost every other person in the street is Asian -- mostly Chinese -- and yet I can't think of a _single_ Chinese word that has entered the everyday English spoken here. The influence of Chinese on English will likely remain near-zero in the foreseeable future.


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## Adolfo De Coene

Just putting in my two-bit. Both French and Spanish have "academies" that function somewhat like cultural watchdogs making sure of the purity of the language. To French ears few things are worse than anglicismes and the Spanish speak derisevely of spanglish and other derivatives. I know of no such institutions for English. Maybe this has an influence.


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## quietsoul

Athaulf said:


> Furthermore, the regional dialects of English are losing ground to the standard English. At almost any place in the English-speaking world, you'll find that the speech of older people is much harder for a non-local to understand than the speech of youth (I witnessed this myself when I was in Texas a few years ago). This is of course not happening just in the case of English; the standard languages of education, government, and media are displacing the local dialects and minority languages just about everywhere.
> 
> Yes there is certainly the phenomenon of Standard English 'taking over' from regional dialects and other vernacular forms - what I Bakhtin (Russian linguist/philosopher, I think) referred to as the centripetal force in language - but there is also a trend in the opposite (centrifugal) direction, the de-stabilising influences that lead to diversification rather than standardisation.
> Take the case of Welsh making a comeback in Britain. Who would have thought, a generation ago, that anyone would bother with Welsh any more? And yet today, it has regained the status of a national language, with Welsh-speaking schools, etc.
> Also, with the racial mix in Britain, there are other dialects gaining ground, eg Patois, some Northern or Scottish dialects, some Indian-English expressions (e.g. 'isn't it?' as an all-purpose tag - this has really caught on amongst the young!)...
> 
> Do you really expect that the classic movies from the past few decades will become unintelligible to an average English speaker within the next several generations, let alone one? I certainly have no problem understanding the language of the 1930s movies, spoken by people born _three_ generations before me. Sure, there will be many words for technical gadgets that don't exist today, while they probably won't know the words for today's gadgets that will be no longer used, and each generation will have its own slang -- but the non-technical English will change very little.
> 
> Quite right, I also expect that there will be continuity. Perhaps it will depend on what becomes prestigious. However, unlike you, I do have trouble understanding the way some young people speak.  I have great difficulty understanding rap, for example, whereas my nephews and nieces have no problem with it whatsoever!
> 
> quietsoul


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## Sepia

I could think of one more reason than colonialism that made English one of the two most important "second languages". GB was, at the time that various other powerful nations became industrialized also an important industry nation with lots of resources and connections with other strong nations in Europe. So those parts of the world that did not have the English language forced upon them generally chose to teach English as a foreign language because it was practical. Somebody from a smaller nation with 3-6 Mill. people would rather have to learn English than to expect that the English trade partners would learn his language, and those of the neighbouring countries. Don't forget that lots of parts of the world had (and still have) French as the most important foreign language, but back in those days when the USA was only an ex-colony the most progressive nations what industry was concerned and therefore becoming the most financially strong nations were in Northern Europe and therefore under strong influence of the British. 

This in addition to colonies having no choice at all made English so important.
I think that if Germany at that time had colonized equally vast parts of the world as Great Britain had, German might have gained the same importance. However, English is much easier to learn than German is. At least to most people in Europe.


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## zpoludnia swiata

Ease or difficulty has nothing to do with languages becoming important, or international or whatever. Really, I think that for most people (who haven't had exposure as children to other languages) all languages are difficult.


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## Athaulf

Sepia said:


> However, English is much easier to learn than German is. At least to most people in Europe.



From my personal experience, this is definitely not the case. Neither was English any easier for me to learn to a comparable level, nor is the broken English spoken by many immigrants here in Canada any better than broken German spoken by many immigrants and _Gastarbeiter_ in Germany (I've had the opportunity to hear plenty of both). 

The reason why you have this impression is probably that as a native German speaker, you perceive broken German as sounding worse than equally broken English. (People often overestimate the relative difficulty of their native languages for this exact reason.) But in reality, the level of proficiency one reaches in English and German with equal time and effort is the same.


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## Athaulf

quietsoul said:


> Yes there is certainly the phenomenon of Standard English 'taking over' from regional dialects and other vernacular forms - what I Bakhtin (Russian linguist/philosopher, I think) referred to as the centripetal force in language - but there is also a trend in the opposite (centrifugal) direction, the de-stabilising influences that lead to diversification rather than standardisation.
> Take the case of Welsh making a comeback in Britain. Who would have thought, a generation ago, that anyone would bother with Welsh any more? And yet today, it has regained the status of a national language, with Welsh-speaking schools, etc.


But Welsh is a totally foreign language. Its revival is no more significant for the development of English than the revival of any other local language that had been largely displaced by English at some point in history. 




> Also, with the racial mix in Britain, there are other dialects gaining ground, eg Patois, some Northern or Scottish dialects, some Indian-English expressions (e.g. 'isn't it?' as an all-purpose tag - this has really caught on amongst the young!)...


On the other hand, Toronto, where I live, is one of the most ethnically diverse places on Earth, and around 50% of its population was born outside of Canada. There are literally hundreds of languages spoken on the streets here, and at least a dozen with large native speaker communities, which you're likely to hear spoken if you just take a ride on the public transit. And yet, I really fail to see any influence of this vast linguistic diversity on the English spoken here. Of course, many people have noticeable foreign accents, and many also speak broken English, but the language you're expected to use in a professional setting and the language that kids who grow up here end up speaking is the same old plain English, without any unusual words or grammatic constructs. Thus I don't believe that ethnic diversity can be a significant agent of English language change in the future.



> However, unlike you, I do have trouble understanding the way some young people speak.  I have great difficulty understanding rap, for example, whereas my nephews and nieces have no problem with it whatsoever!


Some sort of youthful slang comes and goes with every generation, but the standard English remains largely unchanged. Just like you have problems understanding today's kids, you would also probably have problems understanding the English slang from any other historical period, even though you'd understand the standard language from the same time perfectly well. In a way, English slang has been moving in circles around the standard language for the past few centuries, constantly being somewhat distant, but never evolving into a really different language. This of course doesn't hold for all languages, but it seems to me that it has been the case in English for quite a while. 

As for the rap music, there is an additional complicated factor that a lot of its lyrics are written in a specific English dialect, which happens to be quite resistant to the general trend of English dialects losing ground to the standard language. Many of its differences with the standard language are actually quite old.


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