TEFL Nashua Montana

english as a global language (18) english is a global language, and could be widely regarded as the língua franca of the 21st century. Although english is not the language with the largest population of speakers (the prize for the language with the largest population of speakers goes to the chinese language with an estimated 1.2 billion speakers), it is the second most spoken language in the world when adding the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker populations of the english language (approximately 508 million people). Not only does english have one of the world's largest population of speakers, but it is the language that is used by the largest number of countries as an official language (english was considered the official language in 60 sovereign states and 28 non-sovereign states in 2012). The second runner up in this category is french (which is used as an official language of 29 countries worldwide). The countries that use english as their official language span across many cultures and continents, such as england, ireland, the united states, Jamaica, Ghana, india, australia and New Zealand – just to name a few examples. The cause for english to become one of today's leading global languages is a direct result of Great Britain's legacy of empire and global colonialism. During the hight of its reign, the British Empire rose to become the world's foremost global power for over a hundred years. The British Empire became the largest empire known in world history, and left not only heavy linguistic influences worldwide, but also heavy cultural, legal and political influences worldwide as well. This explains why so many people today speak english – whether as their native language or as a learned language – and why so much global trade, education, commerce and global politics takes place in english as well. A personal experience I've had in which I witnessed english being used as a língua franca is from when I lived and studied abroad in both france and spain. In the cases of both countries in which I studied, one of the main languages that I found continuously used as a go-to language, both in business, recreation and education (besides, of course, the native language of that particular country), was english. I was fascinated to find that english was the fall-back language in a multitude of diverse multicultural and poliglot circumstances in which I found myself during these times. These experiences showed me to what extent english is used as a língua franca. Another example I have is that of my father, who is a japanese businessman who works for a Belgian company, and who frequently travels between Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He is bilingual in japanese and english. In all the continents and sea of languages through which he continually transits, english is the language that he uses for international business purposes. There are multiple ways in which to draw the conclusion that english is a global language, or a língua franca. Not only does this involve having large populations of speakers, but also involves the economic powers of countries that speak english (example: ex-empires and colonies), and the number of major fields that use english internationally (example: education and business). It is notable to add here that english is used by the Commonwealth of Nations as the sole official language, and as one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union as well as the International Olympic Committee. To conclude, english is one of the leading global languages of the world. Based on the facts that english is spoken, used and learned by such a broad range of people for such diverse reasons worldwide, as we have seen, it can even be contested that it is currently THE leading global language. Otherwise put, it would be fair to say that english is the língua franca of the 21st century. References: 1) http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm 2) http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/most_spoken_languages.htm 3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca 4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_english_is_an_ official_language 5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire