By Tore Janson

From the sixteenth century onwards, a few languages of Europe have gradually become the most important ones for communications between language groups, as conquests, business, and colonization promoted them in large parts of the world.

Britain turned out to be the most successful imperial power. At the beginning of the twentieth century it wielded political power in India, in large parts of Africa south of the Sahara, in Canada, in Australia, in several trading centres in East Asia, and in a large number of smaller possessions elsewhere. The English language was strong in all these areas. At that time, English was an important European language, but hardly the leading one, and was also used more for international contacts in the rest of the world than any other language.

After the two world wars, Germany was crushed and France was much weakened. But Britain also had spent most of its resources, and the time of the empire was gone. The political and economic lead was taken by the United States, an Englishspeaking country outside Europe.

The English language was boosted all over Europe through the Marshall Plan, the presence of American troops, and so on. At the same time the new leading power took advantage of the fact that its language, English, already had a strong presence in all the countries that belonged or had belonged to the British Empire. The combination furthered the spread of English in an unprecedented way.

In the diplomatic world, English gradually succeeded French in the course of the twentieth century. At the foundation of the United Nations in 1945, not only French, but a total of five languages, of which four were European ones, became officially recognized: English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese (Arabic has been added later). The headquarters is in New York. In practice, English has become the most important language within the organization.

There are reasons other than the political ones for the success of English. The United States assumed its leading position after 1945 not only because of military strength, but also as a consequence of its very strong economy. It was based on industrial and technological progress. As early as the beginning of the twentieth century, America took the lead in a number of key industries. A couple of them have meant very much for international contacts: telecommunications and aviation. In both areas the United States got an edge, and to a large extent they retain their advantage. Civil aviation was first developed there, and the language of this large international line of business has been English from the start. The same is true for telephones, radio, and television.

The film industry is a special case.The fact that Hollywood took the lead had no great linguistic significance in the silent film era, but it became very important when sound-film was invented.The American film and television industries now convey an enormous amount of spoken English to people all over the world, especially in small and/or poor countries where dubbing is too expensive.

Popular vocal music, which constitutes another branch of the media business, also contributes to the spread of English. Singers and songwriters such as John Lennon or Bob Dylan may have reached larger audiences all over the world than any performers before them. This is not only because of their artistic qualities but also a consequence of the fact that English has been the main language in the world of commercial music since the American invention of the phonograph.

The traditional means of electronic communication, the telephone, can be used by speakers of any language. However, when international telephone calls became a reality in everyday life, which was in the 1960s in most industrialized countries, large numbers of people wanted to use this opportunity for immediate contacts in their business. But in order to talk people must use a common language, and this meant in practice that speakers of many other languages had to learn English well. More recently introduced media, especially e-mail and other data services via the Internet can be used, in principle, for all written languages (which excludes all the small languages without a written norm). In practice, the international contacts are mostly in English, and that language is also an indispensable tool for the millions of technicians, programmers, and others who maintain the net, service the computers, and so on.

In the field of science the United States became significant as early as before the First World War, and in the course of the twentieth century it took the lead in most fields. Britain also performed strongly in some areas. A result of this has been that in practice English has become the language of all published works of primary importance in one area after another. During the last few decades, and especially after the demise of the Soviet Union, English has attained such dominance that it is almost the language of science. There is no real precedent to that. Latin had a similar position up to a couple of centuries ago, but after all it was used mainly in Europe.

Another important area in which English has conquered is the world of finance. Money transactions and stock markets provide a living for many people and are important for many more.The largest international centres for those activities are New York and London, and no one in the business can well afford not to understand the language used in those places.

It would be very easy to list several other areas that already use mainly English, or are moving in that direction. As English is becoming necessary in more fields, more people have to learn the language, and when so many know it already it is becoming even easier to introduce it in yet another area. At this point in time the advance of English seems irresistible.

There is one important area, though, where English is not very prominent. It has no strong link to any of the great religions of the world. It is true that much missionary work is done by people from the United States and Britain, but it is a matter of spreading Protestant Christianity of various shades, all subscribing to the idea that the religious message is to be transmitted in people’s native language. Therefore, the missionaries do not in principle propagate the English language, even if their activities may sometimes have that effect. English is in no way connected with a faith, as Arabic is linked to Muslim religion or Latin became a vehicle of Christianity.

It should also be noted that the actual number of speakers of English as a first language is not extremely high. The latest estimate is 341 million people; this is similar to the figures for Spanish (358 million) and Hindi (366 million), and very much below that for Mandarin Chinese, a language spoken by around 874 million people. The figures are to be regarded as crude estimates, but they show the relations between those languages quite clearly. English is different from the others in that more people speak it as a second language or as a foreign language, but the total number of these is just unknown. Guesses range from 200 million to perhaps 1,000 million people. In any case, the total number of people who know some English is almost certainly lower than the number of native speakers of Mandarin Chinese.

To sum up, English has become the leading international language because of three rather different developments. First, the language acquired a strong position in large parts of the world as Britain built and maintained its empire from the seventeenth through to the early twentieth century. Secondly, the United States gained a leading position in technology, economy, and politics in the first part of the twentieth century, and still retains this status. Thirdly, industry, communications, and international relations developed in such a way in the twentieth century that a common language was much more in demand than before. English was there to fill the need, while the other European languages had been pushed aside for different reasons.