How English became GLOBISH

MOST WIDELY SPOKEN LANGUAGES 

There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, but some 2,000 of them have fewer than 1,000 speakers. Moreover, just 15 account for half of the languages spoken in the world. Knowledge of languages makes communication possible and easier and  allows people to participate in society’s cultural, economic and social activities.

Listed below—in order by number of native speakers—are the world’s top 10 languages:

                    1.   CHINESE
                  2. SPANISH
                  3. ENGLISH
                  4. HINDI
                  5. ARABIC
                  6. PORTUGUESE
                  7. BENGALI
                  8. RUSSIAN
                  9. JAPANESE
                  10. PUNJABI (Spoken in Pakistan)

You can watch a video about the top 10 most widely spoken languages in the world HERE.

  

WHY LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE?

It is important and useful to learn a foreign language because it:

◦ is fun.

◦ is easier to travel and learn about foreign cultures.

◦ opens up a world of job opportunities.

◦ makes  you more self-confident, open-minded and tolerant.

◦ helps you better understand your own language and culture.

◦ improves your memory and multi-tasking skills.

◦ enables people to participate in a multi-cultural world and make friends.

To find out more about the importance of language learning follow this link.

The chart below shows how many people learn a language all over the world.

WORLD LANGUAGE NUMBER ONE BY TOTAL NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 

                               GLOBISH

A world language is a language spoken internationally and learned by many people as a second language. 

Major world languages are mainly of European origin. The historical reason for this is the period of European colonialism. World languages originating with historical colonial empires include English, German, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The international prominence of Arabic has its historical reason in the medieval Islamic conquests. Mandarin, which is spoken in China, is the largest language in terms of native speakers and is also considered a world language since it is spoken in many major cities around the world such as New York. 

As our world becomes more and more intertwined, English has become a language everyone has to learn to some extent if they want to travel, interact, do business or use the internet. It is dominant in a way that no language has ever been before as about one-fourth of the world's population can communicate to some degree in English.

Across the world English has developed into a simplified international form - sometimes called

Globish (Global English) or World Standard Spoken English.


                         The map of English-speaking countries

                           

                             WHY ENGLISH?

English has been established as LINGUA FRANCA in the fields of

                             -business
                             -education
                             -science
                             -computing
                             -transportation
                             -politics
                             -entertainment, etc.

WHY IS ENGLISH APPROPRIATE FOR A 

               WORLD LANGUAGE?

uThe richness of English's vocabulary sets it apart from other languages. In 2016 "Oxford English Dictionary" contained  845,318 words, which makes it officially the world’s largest dictionary. If technical and scientific words were to be included, the total would rise to well over a million. 

Many new words enter the English language every year, like for instance

the word of the year 2017, which you can find HERE.

vEnglish is very flexible. It has the ability to use the same word as both a noun , a verb or adjective (such as a drink/ to drink, a fight/ to fight, to warm/ to warm, etc). New words can easily be created by the addition of prefixes or suffixes (e.g. warmth, brightness, fighter, etc), or by compounding or fusing existing words together (e.g. airport, seashore, footwear, etc).

wIts grammar is generally simpler than most languages. 

The distinction between familiar and formal addresses were abandoned centuries ago (the single English word you has seven distinct choices in German: du, dich, dir, Sie, Ihnen, Ihr and euch). Case forms for nouns are almost non-existent (with the exception of some personal pronouns like I/me/mine, he/him/his, etc), as compared to Finnish, for example, which has fifteen forms for every noun, or Russian which has 12. In German, each verb has 16 different forms (Latin has a possible 120!), while English only retains 5 at most (e.g. ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden) and often only requires 3 (e.g. hit, hits, hitting).

English is known as  a magpie language that picks up words from almost every other language and culture it comes in contact with adopting thousands of words from them, which gives it a feeling of familiarity and welcoming compared to many other languages (such as French, for example, which has tried its best to keep out other languages).

However,  “Englishisation” – the creep of English into other languages – threatens the survival of  other languages. France, for instance, has taken steps to block the encroachment of English into French.

       FIND OUT YOUR ENGLISH LEVEL 

The Council of Europe created the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to indicate the levels of ability in a language.

You can test your level of English HERE.