How far back do we have to go in order to find the origin of global English?

The need for an international language has always existed. Believe it or not, English is now the global language of business. “More and more multinational companies are mandating English as the common corporate language—Airbus, Daimler-Chrysler, Fast Retailing, Nokia, Renault, Samsung, SAP, Technicolor, and Microsoft in Beijing, to name a few—in an attempt to facilitate communication and performance across geographically diverse functions and business endeavors.” I’m twenty years old and obviously I wasn’t alive since English started to expand around the world, around tourism, communication and through technology. But this doesn’t implicate that I don’t know that in the past all was about religion and intellectual debate, with the evolution of technology, today it’s about communicating with others anywhere in the world. We are now experiencing a globalization era.

When people of different places meet, they need to communicate using a particular language as a lingua franca. English is now a world lingua franca. All about the global language has a little to do with the number of people that speak the language; it’s more about who those speakers are. For example, Latin became an international language throughout the Roman Empire, but it was not because the Romans where numerous but because they were more powerful. The links between language dominance and economic, technological, and cultural power, especially political and military power, all these together made English a global one. 

How far back do we have to go in order to find the origins of global English? All the English language came from northern Europe, and then arrived in England, 1500 years ago, beginning to spread and entered parts of Cumbria, Wales southern Scotland and Cornwall, and the fortress of the Celtic languages. In 1066 after the Norman invasion, many nobles from England fled north to Scotland, where they were welcome, and eventually the language spread throughout the Scottish lowlands. Through invasions and the flow of people the language became more popular. By the twelfth century, Anglo-Norman knights were sent across the Irish Sea, and Ireland gradually fell under English rule. The language as we know it, was the dominate language in Great Britain during the Middle Ages and in Ireland during the 18th and 19th century. From there, many colonists exported and spread the language to all four corners of the world.

The first permanent English-speaking colony was established in North America in the early 1600s. The group of people was very mixed, different ages, diverse regional and social economic. They landed in Virginia and New England that is above New York. They were the early English-speaking with a characteristic accent, the ones that were from the West Country brought with them an accent voicing s sounds and the r strongly pronounced after vowels. By contrast, the colonists that came from the east of England lacked and r after vowels, and proved to be the dominant influence. It never settled in one place, because of the constant movements and continuing inflow of immigrants from different parts of the world. But the Americans invented many new words to describe their lifestyles, and with this, new pronunciations of existing words emerged.

As a result of all the mixing areas, the shiploads of immigrants, and all the people moving, the divisions between regional dialects and the sense of who owned or use the correct rules of the English Language gradually began to blur. What helped to set a concept of a Standard English and for making distinct entitles between British English and American English were first USA becoming independent from Great Britain in 1776, the spelling conventions proposed by Noah Webster (1786) and An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Meanwhile all this happened the British Empire was expanding throughout the world during the 1700s.

In Australia and New Zealand, English was established as the dominant language because the European settlers were more in number than the indigenous population. In India and Africa it was necessary for the British to teach English throughout all the empire because of the need to have people in distant places to speak English so that the soldiers could understand their British officers and so that the civil service could maintain civil order under the leadership of British administrators. However, through centuries of colonial rule English was imposed, in most cases Afrikaans speakers used it as a second language. Also English was learned in mission schools, which was influenced by various language backgrounds. Like American English, English in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand has evolved such that they are now distinct from British English. In Africa and India continent is used as an official language even though countries are independent from British rule.

After the World War II many countries lost its power. The United States that was an English-speaking country, was the only big Western power that remained without any damaged, talking about education, science and politics. They then helped its allies, gaining power by reorganizing the world through the creation of the United Nation. English was then one of the four official languages spoken in the UN, which made English gain stronger status in the world. The first computer programs were written in English-like language and the output was also English. Today 80% or 85% of all scientific and technological information is written in English. All these facts help the spread of English globally.

The use of English as an international language is hugely important. It is learnt as the principal foreign language in most school in Western Europe, it’s an essential part of the curriculum in Japan and South Africa and it is desirable by millions of speakers in China. Prior to WWII, most teaching of English used to be British language because of the UK’s cultural dominance but since 1945, the increasing economic power of the USA has meant that American English has become a reference point for learners around the globe. However, India is on the spotlight because of its economic power and this might mean that Indian English will one day begin to have an impact beyond its own borders.