English as an International Language - Historical Approach

- Power - The power of the people who speak the language is the element which defines its importance.

David Crystal studied at University College London and specialized in English language. He wrote a very interesting book called “English as a Global Language” in which he tries to understand the reasons which made English Language to be spoken and studied all around the world.

There is a video at youtube in which he talks a little about the reasons that made English achieve this global status as he likes to say.

Global English with David Crystal

It is possible to learn more about David Crystal and his work on his web site and his blog. There are articles, interviews, books and etc.

David Crystal's website

David Crystal's blog

The group realized that dealing with history was essential to understand how and why English achieved the status of International Language or Global Language as David Crystal says.

We do not intend to cover all the facts which made English become an International Language, however we believe that mentioning some of them is really important.

- Industrial Revolution

Large scale production – Changing in sales

Dealing with equipment

- Industries were able to produce a huge amount of products and this made them look for more customers. At some point sealing products to British people was not enough anymore and they had to expand their market, so their start to contact people all around the world.

- After some time other countries bought machines from Britain and in order to learn how to use the machines and how to fix them, learning English was essential. User manuals were written in English, so users and technicians in order to handle the equipments were supposed to know English.

There is a very nice site by the University of Florida in which people can read academic articles, this was where we could found a good work about the Industrial Revolution.

University of Florida - Eletronic Data Information System

- British Empire – Colonies:

United States

Asia (India), Africa, Caribbean and Pacific

- According to many experts there are two different moments in British History when it comes to colonies. The first one is about United States, which was a colony for a hundred years and then conquered its independence and became a huge speaking English country. This period is about 17^th and 18^th century.

The second period is about 18^th and 20^th century in which for many different aspects for example, Britain defeating France in Napoleonic Wars, First World War, and so on, provided conditions to the British Empire to dominate many different places around the world. We can have an idea of how big was this empire looking at the map below which shows us their territories.

The website British Empire brings a huge amount of information and deals with a lot of different topics as art and culture science and technology, media and advertising and many others that are related to the British Empire.

British Empire website

- United States

World War II – The world was broken

After World War II the great Empires are broken and United States is the country which has money to reconstruct Europe and Asia. They were the ones who had money, so they had power (remember David Crystal) in this period of time. Dealing and negotiating with American people was fundamental.

Country Studies - United States History

The result of all the things we mentioned so far made the English language spread all over the world. Above there is a map where we can see in dark blue countries and territories where English is the official or primary language and in light blue countries where English is an official language but not primary.