All around the world people from different countries and races speak languages that are completely different to each other. Nowadays people tend to learn more than one language mainly for economic reasons as it can create job opportunities and help people to understand and appreciate other cultures traditions and lifestyles. Analysing this aspect more deeply, the fact that languages are treated more as economic commodities is influencing badly it’s traditional and ethnic identity. The main aim of any language is to help people communicate with each other. It helps to exchange any information which initially, before being communicated, is placed in our head as a mental representation. This mental representation is then transferred to another speaker throughout words. These words obviously need to be clear to who receives them and thus the receiver should share the same language making sure that he decodes the same mental representation of the sender. Therefore, it is indispensable that sender and recipients share matching languages. What if the whole world shared the same language?
If we were to think of a universal language, most of us would think that English is one of the most common language spoken all around the world. In fact, in 112 countries more than 508 millions of people, speak English as first or second language. While according to David Crystal, 500 years ago English was spoken only by 5 to 7 million and most of them spoke English because they were part of the English colonized countries, even though they mainly spoke their native language.
In fact, the English language developed throughout the world during the spreading of the British Empire, which occurred within the 16th and 20th century. The main aim of the British was to impose English as first language in their colonized territories. Their aim was achieved especially thanks to colonizers, soldiers, traders, commissioners and religious missionaries who brought the language with them and in this way English started to become the second language of the natives’ countries. The English colonizers had conquered more than a quarter of the earth: Oceania, North and South America, New Zealand, Australia, East and West Africa etc. Even though one of the aims of the British conquerors was to spread the English language, they plagiarized many words from the conquered countries. For example, the words: jungle, pyjamas, yoga, shampoo, bungalow and many more, are originally from the Indian language. Koala, Boomerang, Kangaroo are instead Australian origin and Banana, Zebra, Chemistry, Chimpanzee have African origins. While the English Empire continued growing, two thirds of the people worldwide who spoke English were non-natives and it’s from this that the English language is known as an “International Language”. In fact, nowadays if we were to meet a foreigner we would most likely communicate with them in English rather than any other language and this has had a great impact in the world of business, permitting to communicate easily throughout a world that is becoming more and more global. Even though more than a quarter of the world was conquered by the British colonies, the colony which suffered the impact was India, English has become the second most spoken language after Hindu. If one day English will become the main language spoken all around the world, it will have both pros and cons. Regarding the advantages, if the whole world will speak a common language this will help people who speak different languages interconnect making it easier to work with each other, it will also be radically easier to communicate with people and this would help decrease confusion while speaking with someone who speaks a different language as nowadays having a vast variety of languages makes it harder for those who work with people from different countries creating a great impact in the world of business, reducing multinational team work and collaboration. Thus speaking a common language would help people find careers all around the world, gaining respect and satisfaction. It would give the advantage of upgrading our cultural knowledge of different countries, understanding how to appreciate different lifestyles and traditions. Even though a “lingua franca” would bring many positive aspects to the planet, it would affect it negatively as well. In effect, the meaning of national identity wouldn’t exist no more because if the whole world starts to abandon their mother tongue language or even worse, start forgetting it, then this would mean cutting the relationship with their native identity, making the world a monotone and standardized place, changing that unique atmosphere of cultural diversity that we have. As said before, having a global language would increase the rate of finding jobs but by the other hand it would also drop. For example, tourist guides, whose aim is to provide information in a specific language to tourists, would not exist anymore. Another disadvantage of having a universal language is that as people start speaking only one language, as their second language, they might learn it in different accents from different local varieties and this would bring non-native teachers to teach that language in the wrong way without being aware of which parts taught are local and not professional. This would bring the world to speak different types of dialects and not making English a universal language anymore. l if Nowadays English has become the official language in 75 States and it is spreading rapidly throughout the entire world. It is considered to be one of the most know languages after Chinese and Spanish.