Why english?.

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On the other hand, to have a global language, in this case English, it should be a danger. One of the negative aspects should be to copy the wrong cruel and violent model of colonialism and war using by British and North American. Citing David Crystal, there are two main risks around, which are: “a global language might cultivate an elite class with native speakers, who take advantage of the possibility to think and work quickly in their mother-tongue”, and also, “Perhaps a global language will make people unwilling or unable to learn other languages and make other languages unnecessary” (Crystal 2003). Resulting as a threat of future dominance.

But, in contrast, has occurred a phenomenon, other languages has not disappeared, if not English has suffered changes according to the places where it is spoken, so as a result, nowadays we often hear about “American-English”, “South African-English” or other “Englishes”, that means “the different types of English are based on the British English but have developed grammatical and vocabulary differences because of influence and “loanwords” from other languages”. (Trudgill 2000).

Analyzing these advantages and disadvantages about English as a global language I could conclude that English is a good option to be “global” cause it is easy to learn and it has been taught as a foreign language in every country from lots of years ago, and it is something not easy to change, moreover it is a well-developed language with millions of speakers. Even if it is important to have a lingual Franca, the rest of the languages keep having the same importance, because they are full of culture and represent the development of their native speakers. Also it is important to say that we must learn English as a skill of communications without copying English or North American culture and their economic system or manner of life. In other words, languages are all important and make the world more interesting and more alive, for that, although we share a language to have communication every single nation must keep on practicing their own languages and cultures.

References:

Crystal, David. English as a global language. 2nd Ed. United Kingdom. University Press, Cambridge, 2003.

Trudgill, Peter. Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society. 4th Ed. London. Penguin Books, 2000.