Some people consider that the English language has become a threat to the other languages. The supremacy of English in today's world cannot be denied. It is at the heart of business relationships and the vector of the world culture. English is everywhere, even in foreign languages through new words.
English is also seen as the language of the Internet and high tech and that definitely has a negative impact on other languages. Some people claim that the world's linguistic diversity is less preserved because of English domination and that more local languages are declining each year.
English owes its global dominance to being the language of what until recently were two of the world's most powerful nations: the US and the UK. But now, especially with the rise of China as an economic superpower, the language is being challenged.
English as a global lingua franca cannot be said to be a threat to multilingual communication and translation. Juliane House is professor emerita of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and a founding member of the German Science Foundation's Research Centre on Multilingualism.
Speaking English makes it possible to communicate with people all over the world and from many different cultures. As a result English has come to have a large influence on a multitude of other languages, especially in Europe where many words have been adopted outright.
Disadvantages of using English as a global language
Lack of innovation in a single language throughout the world would mean that innovation and growth of language would stop, there will be no more dialects. Loss of secrecy language evolved as a means of code amongst sets of humans.
Globally Speaking, English is Everywhere
English tops the list of official languages spoken around the world. While it may not have the highest number of native speakers, it is the most popular second language, spread over every continent. And the number of English speakers is growing.
Language barriers are significant because they are often an impediment to building relationships with others. They can cause misunderstandings that lead to conflict, frustration, offense, violence, hurt feelings, and wasting time, effort, money, and lives of the people.
It opens you up to new cultures and to the fruits of diversity. Speaking a second or third language will boost confidence and increase self-esteem. In a globalizing world, knowing a second or third language gives you an advantage career-wise.
English is still the number one most spoken language around the world with about 370 million native speakers and almost 1 billion second-language speakers. It is still the most international language and it is the language of the Internet, business, and science. To be blunt, English is far from dying.
The percentage of native speakers of English is declining, from nearly 9 percent of the world's population in 1950 to a projected 5 percent in 2050, Graddol wrote.
To keep it simpler, as long as America remains the world's leading producer of scientific and cultural outputs, the English we know today will stay alive and well. While it is hard to imagine a time when the USA falls from its perch as a global superpower, it could certainly happen.
Some people consider that the English language has become a threat to the other languages. The supremacy of English in today's world cannot be denied. It is at the heart of business relationships and the vector of the world culture. English is everywhere, even in foreign languages through new words.
“Good job” vs “not good enough”
In one of his misguided motivational attempts, the bandleader declares to the student, “The two most harmful words in the English language are 'good job. ' ”
1) The British Empire.
Before colonizing around a quarter of the planet (!), Britons were the only ones speaking English, and the language was confined to the British Isles. But once they started doing trade with places like Asia and Africa, colonizing and settling around the globe, the language naturally spread.
Despite numerous social, employment, and lifestyle benefits, speaking more than one language does not improve your general mental ability, according to a new study by Western's Brain and Mind Institute.
Monolingual English speakers will be passed up for jobs that pay an immense amount of money that would stabilize them in life, they won't have much knowledge about a different language that teaches them something new like tradition, religion, or culture.
A person who can speak four or more languages is multilingual. Only three percent of people around the world can speak over four languages. Less than one percent of people worldwide are proficient in many languages. If someone is fluent in more than five languages, the person is called a polyglot.
Cultural barriers can develop when workers have different native languages. They may have difficulty communicating specific ideas or picking up on the nuances of verbal cues and idioms. Even when people share the same native language, subtle differences in how we speak and express ourselves can cause misunderstandings.
Cross-cultural barriers, also known as cultural barriers, are the communicational challenges faced by people due to their differences in cultures. The main cross-cultural barriers are ethnocentrism, stereotyping, psychological, language, geographical distance, and conflicting values.
But Mandarin poses no threat to English as the world's bridge language, the second tongue people turn to when communicating and doing commerce across borders. Thanks to the British empire, native English speakers are strategically sprinkled across the globe.
"At the same time, Chinese is unlikely to become the sole global language in the short-to-medium term considering the gap between the use and status of Chinese and English at present," he says, adding any long-term replacement of English with Chinese as a global language would stem from "China either becoming a ...
English is the most widely spoken language in the world. It is the global language of communication and English is likely to retain this position for the next decade and beyond.