English as a Link Language

English as a Link Language

If today, someone would come up to you and tell you that he or she speaks English, you wouldn’t be surprised. You’d probably go “welcome to reality”, or something related to that.

English is not just an extra course you take to earn some points in the world we live in today; it’s a language we have to learn if we want to be a part of the global village.

Take India, for example, where the population of the country speak a several hundred different languages (source: Wikipedia) depending on where they live, whereas about 24 of them are used more frequently. A country like that needs a language to unite them, a lingua franca, like the rest of the world needs one to communicate, inform, trade, discuss etc.

Therefore there is not only “one English” in the world; there are just many different standards of English. In Britain we have the British and Irish standard, while we have the Caribbean standard in Jamaica.

English is the biggest international language in the world with its estimated 500,000 words and is used worldwide in politics, diplomacy, airplanes, the computer world and many other places. A little bit of everywhere.

But is this a good or a bad thing. Some people think that smaller languages that take in too many words from the English language may loose their own language and therefore their own culture.

I for one, together with others, think that the English language only enriches other languages and cultures. Our ability to express ourselves gets wider and we achieve the possibility to become more multicultural..

That is why I am happy to speak such a language.