Why English as a Lingua Franca
Why English as a Lingua Franca?
Manfred Görlach, a linguist from Germany, says that structure and lexicon are important items in a language. The simpler the structure the more people like to use the language. Compared to Latin, for instance, English is much simpler. Latin has accusative, dative, genitive, feminine, masculine, or neuter, but English does not have such features. Moreover, the more vocabulary a language has the better the language. It means that the language is flexible with any other language. English is one of the most flexible languages and an easy language to understand. As it is a mix of so many languages in the world, every English user – non native – will easily get accustomed to English as he might find some similarity to his language. Besides that English is an up to date language. It can convey and explain modern people`s lives. In 1980s, English had 450.000 words. In 2007 there were 2000 new words added in the 7th Edition of Oxford Dictionary.
Uses of English as lingua franca
Number of the users
It is amazing to see how steadily English has evolved from very small ethnic groups: Angles and Saxons in the 5th century to the largest area of speaking. It is slowly but surely spreading to the whole world wide. At the end of the 16th century, there were approximately between 5 and 7 million people who spoke English in the world. 350 years later, there were more than 50 time million. Meanwhile there were another 100 million learning English as a foreign language. At the beginning of the 21st century, there are more than 300 million people who speak English as their first language. There are between 400 million – 1 billion people who use English as a second language. The British linguist, David Graddol has found that 2 billion people across the world are learning English. It is safe to say that more than 1 billion, maybe even 2 billion people are using English around the world.
Geographical diffusion
From the relatively small population of
Manfred Görlach, a linguist from Germany, says that structure and lexicon are important items in a language. The simpler the structure the more people like to use the language. Compared to Latin, for instance, English is much simpler. Latin has accusative, dative, genitive, feminine, masculine, or neuter, but English does not have such features. Moreover, the more vocabulary a language has the better the language. It means that the language is flexible with any other language. English is one of the most flexible languages and an easy language to understand. As it is a mix of so many languages in the world, every English user – non native – will easily get accustomed to English as he might find some similarity to his language. Besides that English is an up to date language. It can convey and explain modern people`s lives. In 1980s, English had 450.000 words. In 2007 there were 2000 new words added in the 7th Edition of Oxford Dictionary.
Uses of English as lingua franca
Number of the users
It is amazing to see how steadily English has evolved from very small ethnic groups: Angles and Saxons in the 5th century to the largest area of speaking. It is slowly but surely spreading to the whole world wide. At the end of the 16th century, there were approximately between 5 and 7 million people who spoke English in the world. 350 years later, there were more than 50 time million. Meanwhile there were another 100 million learning English as a foreign language. At the beginning of the 21st century, there are more than 300 million people who speak English as their first language. There are between 400 million – 1 billion people who use English as a second language. The British linguist, David Graddol has found that 2 billion people across the world are learning English. It is safe to say that more than 1 billion, maybe even 2 billion people are using English around the world.
Geographical diffusion
From the relatively small population of