English as a global language | Essay | Oppgave | Engelsk

Innledning
English is considered a global language because it’s the one language that the majority of our population speak, its spoken and understood in almost every region of the world.

Around 54% of the world population speaks English, more than 350 million people speaks English as their first language and around 430 million have it as a second language. But how did English become a global language?

Utdrag
As I stated earlier many billion people speak English but just a few centuries ago there were less than 7 million English speakers. It all started with the British colonial conquests.

The British empire encompassed almost a quarter of the world at one point in time. This made the English language significant in the many British colonies.

English at the time was not a global language but did indeed become the language of trade.

The English people would trade spices from India and Diamonds and much more from Africa, so to trade knowing how to speak English would be sufficient.

Eventually the various countries that made up the British empire gained their independence. They still needed to communicate with one and other while boasting a host off different native languages.

Accordingly with the economic, political and business influence English became the language to learn if you wanted to succeed.

It is for this reason many people learnt business English. It acquired a firm foothold and remains the official languages in many former colonies such as India for example.

Soldiers, traders, sailors and missionaries also contributed to spread the English language around the world.

English speaker started to migrate to North America, of course they were not the only people to settle there.

The founding fathers of the United States still recognized the importance of the English language and worked to reinforce its spot as the language of the majority.

English was not the first European language of colonization, it was in fact French. As recently as the 19th century it was more common for those with different native languages to interact using French.