How English Became The Global Language
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 พ.ค. 2024
- Why is English the international language. Is it because of invasion and colonialism or is there more? Is there something about English that makes it an excellent choice as the global tongue? We look at 1000 years of history, take a look at the stats (which are often misleading) and more.
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eepurl.com/izRKww
00:00 Lots of Statistics
01:03 Why English?
03:33 The Death of English?
07:32 The Fightback
12:07 A Side note about Scotland
12:36 Colonisation and America
16:08 Industry and Empire
18:17 Who speaks English and Wikipedia's misleading stats
#historyofenglish
CREDITS
By Flappiefh - Own work from:Natural Earth ;The origin and early spread of the Black Death in Italy: first evidence of plague victims from 14th-century Liguria (northern Italy) maps by O.J. Benedictow., CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By Hogweard - Blank topographic map of the British Isles.svgDerivative work: Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By Augustus Binu, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By Amrhelweh - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Sources
History of English Podcast
historyofenglishpodcast.com/
A History of the English Language
Baugh, Albert C,Cable, Thomas
The Adventures of English - Melvyn Bragg
Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
The Story of English Paperback - Robert McCrum
Times of India
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i...
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Funny you mention that you doubt the number of English speakers in Paris being approx 60%. I'm bilingual English/French, when in Paris many people I've met who suspect I'm British insist on speaking French only, as if they know no English, but as soon as I start speaking French they are only too willing to show off their proficiency in English! Academie Francaise lives on!
Same as living in Quebec.
Always start an inquiry in French, and as the French speaker tires of hearing your sincere broken French, they willingly switch to English.
Hahaha. This is hilarious.
French or I should say Parisian superiority complex
@@BanCommies_Fascists Yes it's a Parisian thing.
Fun topic !
All I know is that traveling the world, the one great constant is that it is always easy to find English speakers. Hotels everywhere speak English. Airports, airlines, banks, and so on, English is the language that connects.
lol I know someone who had a layover in Munich and couldn’t find the baggage claim, it was just a layover and everything and they knew zero German. Only person who would/could help her in English was an American. Don’t know if that was a situation where no one knew English, but sounds more like they just didn’t want to help.
Fascinating video, thanks.
With respect to English as a second langauage, I was in a small Italian village where I met an old chap walking his grand daughter around - amazingly, he spoke very good English. I asked him where he had learned it - he said from reading NATO technical manuals.
I told him that he had done extremely well, as English is a hard language.
He replied :"No, it is the easiest language on the planet".
I asked him how so?
He replied "You just have to learn 40 words, and then you can travel anywhere around the planet without any problem".
Unfortunately, I didn't ask him what those 40 words were. However, this third or fourth tier level of English speaking, would take the number of people who can understand rudimentary English to the many billions in number.
Regards.-
We native English speakers should not make the mistake of thinking that all the people around the world who are learning English do so because they like it, or because they like us. Some do, maybe, but that is often not the case. Many people learn English only for pragmatic reasons: It has become the dominant international language of communication and trade, and thus learning it can be advantageous.
Thanks for a great video.
My thought exactly. They don't use and learn English because of any affection for England, Britain, the UK, the USA or even English literature and culture. It's just a tool that they have found useful or essential for living their lives and interacting with other countries and other peoples.
@@wolfie854 Agree - but I think that's' why English has become so dominant. It's not seen as "owned" by anyone.
I don't think I've ever learnt this much from watching a 20-minute video before. Good job as always!
Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova of Moscow State University claims there were 3 great empires that put English forward making it the most widespread language in the world today, among them the British Empire, the USA, and the Internet. Sounds reasonable to me
Yeah, being in the forefront of digital technology really helped. Never thought of the internet as an empire, but you are right,
Hello Gideon! I apologize my comment is not about the video, I’ll check it out later though. I’m Sam, the person who said hi to you when you were in Chaingmai, Thailand. I really want to say that I was so happy to see you! Anyhow, thanks for the great videos and your TH-cam channel. I’ll keep improving my English from your vids!
@Pongthipk Thanks for stopping and saying hello in Chiang Mai. It was a pleasure to meet you. I'll return later this year. Best wishes.
Interesting video. I am a Bahai and one of the principles of the Bahai Faith is the need for an international auxiliary language, to improve communication and understanding. The fact that English is now so widely and increasingly used probably reflects this need. People want to be able to communicate. I am a scientist and in my travels around the world I have found that most scientists know English and use it in communication.
There is a Bahai temple here in Round Rock, Texas. Home of Dell Computer and thousands of Indians. Peace to you, friend.
I have traveled to many remote locations: Cuba, Siberia, China, the Stans. I have never had a problem finding English speakers. Some language had to emerge for our fast-paced, interconnected world. English rose to the top
As an Aussie living in Mindanao Philippines I can attest to the fact that many Filipinos speak English well. English is one of the official languages of the Philippines, along with Filipino (Tagalog). Anyone who attends school is taught English and Filipino. Most Filipinos could be regarded as native speakers of English because of that fact. Certainly, proficiency levels will vary, but business is carried out in English usually. Filipinos are polyglot as a result. My wife is fluent in English, Mindanao Cebuano (Bisaya), Tagalog, Boholano, Hiligaynon and her tribal language Higaonon Binukid. I have some degree of fluency in Bisaya, less so in Tagalog and Higaonon Binukid. Many Tagalog speakers regularly use "Taglish", where English words will at times appear in Tagalog speech. This is common in the media and is used as well by government officials. I wouldn't be surprised if the figure of 60 million English speakers in the Philippines is a bit on the low side.
What is being spoken in the home as part of normal conversation. indicates what a person's native language is. The language you learned at your mother's knee as a one-year-old is your native language.
@@lornawestlake9280 For my wife, that meant both Bisaya and Higaonon Binukid. I've also seen "native speaker" applied to those who are compelled to learn a language at school, which in the Philippines would make those who attend school native speakers of Tagalog and English, regardless of what their "mother tongue" happened to be. What is an interesting trend in the Philippines is that educated parents of young families often only speak English at home. This is especially so of middle and upper class people in the capital, Manila. I guess that would make them native speakers of English.
I am English Canadian & when I lived in Montreal 9 months, I did speak French (I had to with govt & bus drivers), but 90% of people enthusiastically chose to answer me in English, 1/2 with no accent. Preschool kids just speak French, but are exposed to English & therefore tend to pick it up well after starting school. Very rarely I met someone who tried & failed to learn English, someone who refused to learn it, or old people who just spoke French. Strictly speaking Quebecois are not native English speakers, but become so fluent, that Quebec is a subculture of English speaking North America.
They are bilingual so it is an upper culture not a subculture.
@@jeromeh7985 touché
It really is fascinating how the English language dominated the world, in Brazil it seems to me that 5% master the English language, I strive to advance. I believe that a new generation will increase this percentage, I'm here waiting for the doctor's appointment and enjoying your video, in the family there are 79-year-old English students, we have to improve... Gideon, Thanks a million, very interesting🤗🥰
I'm glad you liked the video. Best wishes to all in Brazil.
@@LetThemTalkTV Brazilians are in need of good vibes, I wish you all the best
Brazil seems like one of those countries where English isn't spoken much.
@@stevedavenport1202 Between friends and work there is no communication in English, our neighbors use the Spanish language, we don't use it either, a big failure in Education here, those who travel a lot or live outside Brazil had the chance
@@isabelatence7035 Of course not. Nobody would expect you to speak anything but Portuguese amongst your fellow Brazilians.
What I mean is that, statistically speaking, few Brazilians speak English as a second language, even if they dont use it every day.
Melvyn Bragg wrote an excellent book on the history of the English Language,one point he made was the nobility had English speaking nannys and the youngsters grew up with a knowledge of English from an early age
My brother was an executive with a company that was headquartered in Germany (it had a US presence). Their board of directors meetings were conducted in English. And since he also travelled all over and interacted with buisness peers, he though much business is being conducted in English for businesses that involve international trade. And these business speakers are quite fluent - though joked elude them.
Love your channel.
Thanks, Gideon! Another great video from you. English is not a perfect option as the international language: its orthography is notoriously unpredictable, pronunciation is difficult because it has many distinct vowel sounds while Spanish, for example, has a simple 5 vowel inventory and its phrasal verbs are hard to figure out-they're especially challenging for speakers of languages with complex morphology (like my mother tongue Ukrainian) that use many different forms of the same verb where English uses phrasal verbs.
But in spite of that it works as lingua franca. And I'm glad that I've been studying English and can understand what you're saying, Gideon. English opens many opportunities, gives access to a lot of information and allows people all over the world with completely different native languages to communicate with each other.
English is a world language due to
1-The British Empire
2-The US becoming and remaining a superpower post 1945.
It will, for the rest of this century at least, stay the world language as literacy in Chinese is so difficult, Hindi is so geographically limited (less than half of Indians speak Hindi) and the Spanish-speaking world will not be an economic challenge to the USA or China anytime soon.
you can always avoid phrasal verbs with the Latinate equivalent.
As always, very good. Nice style, excellent delivery, great historical summary, objective and very clear!
Thank you Gideon for making this video, it was so informative! Thanks to you things that I spent guessing for days, even months about the reasons of the decline of French among the upper classes on England, including the loss of Normandy, the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War. But when you mentioned that I taught "I knew it", and you cleared by doubts, thank you!
You’re analyses are fantastic. And i appreciate your cautions around estimating populations. That is a very difficult one. I live in the French part of Switzerland where most people appear to barely know English yet many in the country prefer to use English to talk across language regions bc neither wants to speak the other’s language of French or German. English predominates everywhere; even in our small medieval village boulangerie where they do not speak English at all but for some reason they keep making notes in English even though all their clientel are francophone, and they confirmed we are the only family learning french in their shop. English words are invading the language everywhere, most music is in English, many programs are translated from English into French… it is impossible to go a day without some invasion of English somehow somewhere even in the ultra local almost all native francophones area that we live in. It is so strange and fascinating to watch language bring change. Sadly, start this year especially, all of a sudden expats or whoever who are anglophones seem to have suddenly discovered our area and have started to invade here too as they will pop up at buvettes and restaurants when they were not there before, and it is causing most in service to panic and rush to start learning English and they all want to practice with us but we refuse because we must learn french! Ay chihuahua!
The world population in 1600 was about 660 million, meaning English speakers made up less than 1% of people, so the current 20% is a truly enormous change!
It is undeniably a good thing for one language to be dominant in the World. If people can understand each other better, it will create less problems.
It's a pity that some languages are dying out, I think, because we can learn from them, but it may be inevitable.
Oddly (or so I would have thought a week ago), this came up in a conversation about the war in Ukraine and Denys Davidov's curious English sentence structure. My friend whose native language is English, and who has spent a lot of time in Russia, has a Russian ex-pat wife, and whose career has included a fair amount of software development and consulting, opined that being a native speaker of English as opposed to a Slavic language, is a distinct advantage when constructing logic statements in a programming language. Perhaps that is another thing that is helping it spread.
Fantastic video Gideon!
Bless you for that super informative and useful video. You're the best
One of the advantages of English is the wide variety and easy creation of words that German has, by means of separable prefixes and suffixes. Yet, there is more restraint in English in doing so, because we often use modifiers (adverbs and adjectives) until a concept so described becomes common enough so that a new word, born from prefixes and suffixes upon the root word, is created. This gives us a much more useful and coherent dictionary than German, with much more flexibility than languages such as French provide. A friend of mine grew up speaking Russian. After 25 years in America, he says that much, but not all, of his thoughts, even his internal dialogue, is in English. As far as critique of the British Empire, its lasting legacy is the standards it has provided and the industrial competency and infrastructure as well. I am of predominantly Irish background, and am appalled at many things the British did in Ireland, but the existing knowledge of English gave the Irish a great advantage over immigrants from other countries when they immigrated to other English speaking countries.
The British also brought to much of the world the ideas of the Enlightenment. Probably more than any other country. All you have to do is look at British and French ex-colonies and those of the Spanish, No comparison.
Enriching lesson Sir G.
Great info. Thanks for sharing
The reason we Dutch speak english so very well is the fact that all forms of (English) media in Cinema's and television broadcasts are with subtitles instead of dubbing.
That's how most of us, from an early age, learn English from television series and movies.
good point since it is a different story in Germany
Yes, the French dub everything into French, and consequently their English is much worse.
In Italy we also dub everything
As a native English speaker, I much prefer subtitles to dubbed versions. Especially French and Spanish which I have some familiarity with.
very interesting / Very informative. Thank you
Hi Gideon, as usual, you make high-level content and whenever I watch your channel I grow richer intellectually. Thank you
I am half Indian (Bengali) and half Anglo-Dutch "American." I have a large family in India, most of whom speak at least two languages. They are native speakers of both English and Bengali, with neither being dominant. I assume Arundhati Roy is the same.
As for English becoming the language of diplomacy, I think that has to do with the U.S. involvement in the world wars and it's economic dominance in the 20th century. The UK spread English across the globe, the US sealed the deal.
Yes, grammatically simpler than European languages yet many people don't understand when to use 'I' and 'me' and mix them up.
Colloquialism is mostly blame for that. Most English speakers treat words that follow conjunctions as accusative, and words that precede a verb as nominative. There's also the problem of jerund forms causing confusion. This results in the phrase "you and I" essentially always sounding wrong in casual English. Those who attempt to be formal about it often overcorrect saying things like "between you and I," which is always wrong.
Methinks you are right! ;)
@@robertahlen4199 Nicely played, sir!
Gideon, one point of constructive criticism on this video: your audio seems to peak quite highly at times. Perhaps it's worth looking into your levels.
Other than that, as usual very informative and interesting video. Thank you
I've always been under the impression/heard that English was hard to learn bc of all the influences of all the other languages...love your videos!
Gideon, your explanation of the history and scope of English was lucid, accessible, entertaining and culturally sensitive. But.... By far the best part was the costume changes. I was on tenterhooks waiting for the next outfit! Will it be casual? Will it be colourful? Will formality be back in style? Will the choice of apparel be pertinent to the subject at hand? Will it be ironed? Will he have shaved? Mesmerising! (PS. the reddy pink shirt is a good look for you😋) Thanks for putting a smile on my face!
OK, I can explain that. I made the video at home but then edited it while "on the road" I noticed some errors and omissions and then some more so several parts were filmed (or refilmed) in hotel rooms.
@@LetThemTalkTV Thanks for the explanation. Whatever the reason, made me smile. Keep'em comin' brightens my day to when a new video drops!
Another great video! Thanks.
Great video. So interesting. Thanks a lot. 👍🏻👏🏼👏🏼
Well, I am no linguist or historian, but I think the statement that English was nearly extinct sometime after 1066 is a gross exaggeration. While true 5hat the Aristocracy spoke Norman French, if the peasants spoke a forn of English, then that was the vast majority of people in England. It might have been possible, I suppose, that the French speaking elite could have forced the peasants to speak French (or, perhaps displaced them with a large number of French speakers - but that's a differnent thing entirely). That would have required the elite both to prevent the peasants from speaking English and teach them French. But they didn't really teach the peasants anything - except obediance, I suppose. I imagine doing this might have been much more possible at a later date,, but not then. So, it's hard for me to think that English was actually in danger of disappearing.
I said that written English was almost extinct. Try and find anything written in English in the 12th century and report back.
@@LetThemTalkTV I guess it depends on the definition of "extinct" wrt languages. As I said, I claim no expertise, so I ask, does lack of writing in a language suggest extinction regardless of the number of speakers?
23:33 AI can ... what?
In Swedish, Resurrection is "uppståndelse" (it means "standing up," as a man standing up from the grave).
In Swedish, Commotion is also "uppståndelse" (it means "standing up" as people standing up from their chairs).
A Swede on FB had made a comment about Easter, and can you guess how Bing translated "uppståndelse"?
Four outfits in one video? That shows your dedication!! 😂
Brilliant video as always, I’ve learnt so much, thanks a lot! I will definitely mention again that the Black Death has played a part in English’s international status (if I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say medieval English scientists contaminated rats-or the fleas they carried if I wanted to be more precise)
It is interesting that English speakers all over the world can understand each other despite the fact there is no organisation in charge of "gate-keeping" the language (as opposed to French having l’Académie Française) yet Dutch and Afrikaans are now two separate languages, and not just on the paper.
I’m being nosey here but have you read the Harry Potter books?
Yes, I had to rerecord some parts from hotel rooms when I noticed some errors and omissions. I hope it didn't distract from your enjoyment of the video. I certainly like your conspiracy theory - I've read crazier ones than that so why not? We can more-or-less understand each other that's true. As for Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter but I've just read the first book. It was great but that was enough for me.
@@LetThemTalkTVyour video was perfect - I hope you didn’t take offence out of me pointing out it wasn’t a "one shot" video; if anything it shows how how working you are
No, not at all. I always appreciate your wise comments and your interesting perspective.
I love English, It's my third language, and it's a great thing that one language slowly dominating in the world! Thank you for this insightful video
I am curious, what is your mother tongue?
How is that a great thing lol?
@@Sphinxgamingworld9942 Because it enhances communications among so many people. Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?
As well as having an in depth knowledge of his subject, this person (I don't know his name) is very widely read given a fascinating breadth of insight into language development.
Great points about Indians speaking English. I would say one can class people like me as Native speakers of English since I grew up speaking and writing in English and this was not just for school (even though the language I speak at home is Kannada). I have always used the internet quite a lot, watched a lot of American TV shows etc, so I have no trouble communicating with native speakers of English (it comes naturally, as if I was speaking Kannada), even though Scots can be challenging (I live in Glasgow now).
But there are also people who only use English for school, college and then later on, at work for communicating with people who do not speak their language. These people can certainly get by with English, but will still make a lot of grammatical mistakes (but one can still understand them) and would struggle to understand words that were not taught to them in school. So maybe these speakers can be considered L2 English speakers?
This is just my opinion.
Yes, I made that point in the video. They estimate around 200 million L2 speakers in India (in addition to the 100 million fluent speakers). Though it's difficult to get precise figures.
@@LetThemTalkTV Well, speaking of India-English is required to be taught in every school in India (except schools run by religious minorities). So everybody has at least some formal exposure to English. Of course, this doesn't make everyone an expert. There are many reasons: many children don't even attend school; others drop out, are taught poorly, or don't learn it well enough. In any case, the government's aim is to make people "functionally literate" in English, not necessarily proficient like a native speaker.
It's not just the Constitution, laws, court proceedings, and universities that use English. A lot of things that affect people in their day-to-day lives are exclusively in English as well-passport, driving license, vehicle registration plates, tax ID ("PAN Card"), credit and debit cards etc. Others are bilingual-in English plus the respective state's official language-such as the national ID card ("Aadhaar Card"), Voter ID card ("EPIC"), Senior Citizen ID card etc. (Yeah, we have a lot of ID cards. A lot.) But if you travel to a different state, it's only the English portion that would be intelligible.
As you pointed out, a lot of Indians are indeed highly proficient in English. But there's a reason why those don't show up in the official Census. See, language-like religion, food, and everything else in India-is a highly divisive issue, emotionally and politically. The states in India are demarcated on the basis of language. The Census asks you to designate _one_ language as your "mother tongue" (i.e. native language). It doesn't ask about all the languages you speak, nor your proficiency in them. A language that has a large number of native speakers gets special privileges from both the State and Central governments. Which is why people vote strategically when answering census questions. The only people who list their mother tongue as English are the ones who grew up speaking English naturally with their parents. The rest of us were taught English explicitly, whether at home or in school. We'd never consider it our "mother tongue" even if we win Pulitzers, Bookers, or Nobel Prizes for our English works!
Excellent material.
Excellent video!
Great video, as always! And as a non-Brit with a past interest in British history I took no small amount of pleasure correcting in my head your claim that Richard I reigned from 1157. It was 1189 - 1199 (and I think he spent almost all of those ten years abroad).
1157 was the year of his birth. You are correct about his reign.
Fascinating!
I tried learning German in the 1970's, I understand many German Military terms as I served in the US Army active and Reserve for 27 years. My Uncle spoke 12 languages he passed as a German worker at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin as part of the US Army counterintelligence force. Part of our family came over on the Mayflower others before Ellis Island was establish. My dad traced our family back 73 generations with much of the depth coming from connections into the British royal family to those who founded Kiev and the trading route down the Dnipro River.
English as a trade language will continue to spread as others have noted programming with English as a base even with AI help will makes basic English understanding a must to ensure the point is made. Same as in all aircraft crews need to know English and use it for safety reasons. Even broken slurred English can be understood in most cases. My dad served in Papua New Guinea in WW II he used Pidgin English to recruit stretcher bearers in the Highlands working from Buna Gona area on the coast.
Great presentation.
Your videos are so informative and inspiring. I am 72 years old. I have lived in the Southern US for over 50 years so am out of touch with the rest of the world. My mother's family is from Brittany, France and emigrated to Canada in the 1920's. They spoke a Celtic French? Closer to the Quebecquois French of today? just guessing. When I visited my grandparents they didn't speak the French I learned in school living in Alsace Lorraine as a child....which was a different French again with its Germanic influence. All very interesting.
Thank you
Nice video thanks. Any thoughts on the influence of an English dominitated popular music culture has had on the general acceptance and understanding of English around the world?
Excellent video.
I think that one of the other prime reasons English is so common is to do with how "unfussy" English (as a language) accepts foreign words and phrases - we don't try to find an English word if the foreign word is acceptable in communicating the point; I mean, why bother? And as many English words derive from foreign words anyway, it seems perfectly acceptable This is in stark contract to French where finding a "pure" French equivalent is sort of a passion, even if (ultimately) the French word does not prevail in everyday speech. When I worked in Africa and the Middle East, many moons a go, I was shocked to find just about everybody I met had some (albeit limited) English. As for the Dutch, I didn't find any not able to speak English ... and better that the British themselves in most cases!
Fun video
11:52 Back in his day, he would have been equally or even more known for:
* a _Parliament of Fowles_
* and _Romance of the Rose_ (translating Lorris / de Meun into English).
Partly it is due to the history of the British Empire, and post WWII American political influence. The rest is that Bengali speakers did not want to learn Hindi, or Igbo speakers learn Hausa, or Koreans learn Japanese.
That's an interesting point. I read that English was meant to only be used temporarily in the independent India. 75 years later and they still can't shake the habit.
@@LetThemTalkTV It would seem to be as much effort for a Bengali or Tamil to learn English as Hindi, and English has value outside India. Plus ethnic tensions between language groups, and English will win out.
@@LetThemTalkTV and speak Indish
@@LetThemTalkTV Well, the current generation of Indians doesn't quite experience the same fear and hatred towards English as the earlier generations-those who had actually suffered under the brutal English-speaking colonizers. In any case, Indians made English a permanent official language way back in 1963 itself; there's no "habit" to be shaken.
Native English speakers have the privilege of not needing to learn any foreign language. Not sure if it's a good thing
We are bilingual. English and bad English.
My country of Sri Lanka, even though isn't a native English speaking country, has a quite a lot of people who speak English as their first language.
Excellent video
Yeah, Romance language verbs are kind of a pain 😮
Thank you very much for mentioning catalan language!
Hello beloved teacher Gideon 🎉
I had wondered how the Norman era ended and we got back to ... normal. BTW I'm American.
This is the best of your work, Gideon.😊
Thank you for such an informative programme but may I respectfully suggest that in a piece about language you should change the spelling of permanent! Warm regards
Excellent Video
There are 4 big international languages in the world, that are spoken widely across multiple countries; English, Spanish. French and Arabic. Russian and Portuguese are probably the next two but are slipping for different reasons in world usage.
If you don’t speak one of the big 4 as a native speaker you need to learn one of them to open up the world beyond what speaking Slovenian or Bulgarian provides. Of the big 4, English is by far the best choice globally, though Spanish wins in much of the Americas, and French in Sub-Saharan equatorial Africa. And Arabic as the language of the 2nd biggest faith on the planet has adherents beyond North Africa and the Mid-East.
Thanks for this gift. It`s an excellent video! I learnt so much, opened my mind and I think right now that the fantastic´s goal is how the english language was hold up by peasant class and ignored by the king and currently it has become the main language around the world. E. P Thompson wrote some books about the history of the working class in England and Raymond Williams too wrote in the same mainstream. Congratulatión!!!
Italian is the international language of musical notation. 🎼🎶🎷🎻🎹
Long may it continue to be so.
Apreciate you used the current number of Catalan speakers to make a comparison point
English verb conjugations are easier than many languages, but English pronunciation is difficult. We love our schwas and butchering our vowels, and we don't use accents to help people speak written English correctly. When it comes to pronouncing vowels in English, it's a free for all. I love learning Spanish because the vowel sounds are consistent, but yes the verb conjugations are more difficult.
Perfect explanation and remarkable neutral stance. Bravo!!
I think you should also have mentioned printing, although It is true that other languages were also in print. Once a certain level was reached, the economies of scale added impetus. Typesetting and translation was costly. This appears to have been strongest in non fiction such as text books, encyclopedias and scientific literature.
I think a big part of the spread of English as a second language - after the British Empire and the dominance of English in Science, Technology, Aviation, Computers and the Internet - has been American Cultural Influence, especially Hollywood, Jazz, Rock and Pop Music.
Great video! I was surprised that you didn’t mention American hegemony and Anglo-American media as being significant contributing factors to the global pervasiveness of English.
Not surprising if you know the English.
Hi Gideon. Love your videos. Keep it up. English is my mother tongue. My personal experience living in China for 18 months is many people i have come across have learnt english but very few have any basic proficiency beyond hello, bye and thank you. But this is in lower tier cities. This may rise in top tier cities amongst younger people. It may trend down in future due to government ban in western english teaching materials, nationalism and censorship. Oddly a lot of people do say bye to each other instead of zai jian. hmmm... Shorthand? AI may also reduce the need to learn english in future too.
Interesting, why have they banned western English teaching materials?
One of the strengths of English is it's adaptability. New foreign words pour in all the time without translation. Microfiche, facsimile, uber, pharmacy, lanai, khaki, siesta, all become accepted as is, with no "language academy" to keep the language "pure".
The historical changes and export of English has abounded. More information can be found in the " Mother Tongue" book. Another vessel of exporting language is the movie/tv industry since the 1920s. And the two world wars shook things up also.
Very interesting. As to whether English will continue to prevail as an international language: as they say in English, "only time will tell." Thanks for posting.
Muchas gracias.
I am 68 and widely travelled. In my lifetime l have experienced the increase in English speaking. Italy is a good example. When l first went 40 years ago there were very few people who could speak English. That is not the case now. Schools around the world teach it and there are strong motivations to learn. It also has cachet so that individuals and businesses give themselves English names. There are also many varieties of English so that Euro English for example is distinct from British English.
It's an interesting point. Although English seems to have improved in Italy at the expense (at least to some extent) of French which is less widely spoken there now.
@@LetThemTalkTV In Italy neither French and English were or are spoken at a good level by a significant part of the population. Italians generally are monolingual as much as the Brits,the only thing that differentiates the two is that the Brits can afford it and Italians way less. Italians always had difficulties in learning foreign languages mostly because of the way languages are taught and the Education system.
I have never understood the Wikipedia number of 380 million native speakers of English. If you add up the populations of the countries mentioned, this is what you get:
332 Million - Unites States
67 Million - United Kingdom
38 Million - Canada
26 Million - Australia
5 Million - New Zealand
I rounded the numbers above to the nearest million, but that brings the total to:
468 Million
Of course not everyone in all those countries speaks English as their native language, but the vast majority do. Then you have around 5 million native English speakers in South Africa along with the other smaller countries that were mentioned. I don't care where English ranks among the list of most native speakers and Wikipedia might be way off on the number of Spanish speakers as well. It does seem odd, however, to hear people constantly throwing out the 380 million number when, by using the method of adding together the population of every English speaking country, it is nearly 100 million speakers short. The US and the UK by themselves are almost 20 million more the wikipedia number.
There are a lot of residents of America who do not speak English. I am in daily contact with many Spanish speakers who absolutely refuse to learn English. Why should they? EVERYthing is in both languages and then all the Spanish TV stations. Some of them are actually annoyed that I don't speak Spanish to them and don't know the language. Well, I actually do, a little bit, but I refuse to go along with their arrogance.
@@frequentlycynical642economically they won’t do as well if they only know one language. They’re probably missing out on better job opportunities. At least a study I saw last year seem to highlight that.
@@Allaiya. Of course they are, but that's a "maybe" benefit to a "definite" pain of learning English. I've certainly noticed that the bilingual guy in a work crew is the boss.
Republic of Ireland ??
One key to the spread of English after the 2nd World War, and up to the present day, is prevalence of the use of English in popular music, tv, and film. As I've traveled, when I asked non-native but fluent english speakers how they learned the language they have frequently replied that that they listened to song lyrics and watch english (frequently American) tv, and film.
A moment of silence to French and Latin, the past lingua franca of the Western world... 😔🇫🇷🇻🇦
I wonder which is the dominant language on TH-cam, Wikipedia and internet in general. Would also be good to analyse global email traffic, again general but also in particular business conversation. Although in recent years effizient translator apps and AI may distort the results, it may be better to review around 5 or 10 years back.
English
The short inserted video sequences (those with the charm of any convenience product or of glasses ads), which have had an increasing presence in uploads for quite some time, are associated, at least by my side, with a sort of video production I don't take seriously, and which I actually tend to avoid or turn off. The snippets are mostly (in other use) accompanied by computerized voices. I strongly doubt they add anything to the content. I'm putting this out here because I dearly find this channel to be one (of rather only a few) with the highest quality and consistency.
Some of the videos that you refer to are nowadays made entirely from AI. Including the script
Thanks for this highly interesting video . I go on in french, my english is too bad . Je comprends bien le développement de l'anglais dans le monde, du fait du développement économique de l'Angleterre, de l'empire britannique et de la puissance économique américaine . Mais je suis toujours étonnée de voir que l'anglais est parlé par tant de locuteurs dans le monde , car , bien que la grammaire soit assez simple, le vocabulaire est très étendu (davantage que le vocabulaire français par exemple) et surtout la prononciation est vraiment "impossible" ! Je reste convaincue que seul un anglophone de naissance peut parler anglais correctement, et encore les prononciations locales sont innombrables . Malgré tout , une bonne partie des gens de cette planète parlent ce "globish english" qui n'est pas de l'anglais, qui est un sabir incroyable et qui permet aux non anglophones de se comprendre entre eux . Je me demande quel effet cela produit sur des anglophones de naissance ! Quant aux Français, vous qui vivez à Paris avez une bonne idée de la prétention des gens à parler anglais , alors qu'ils devraient être plus modestes (à commencer par le premier d'entre eux ! ) . Pour évoquer une publicité "my tailor is rich, but my english is poor" . Thank you so much ,Gideon, for all your videos . I'm 70 years, have been learning english during seven years when I was a teen-ager, had pen-friends in England and it's still difficult for me . Fortunately , 40% words have the same latin and greek roots and your videos help a lot in improving english .
Merci beaucoup. It's not necessarily to speak with perfect pronunciation or grammar. I've taught many people in France who have reached an extremely high level of proficiency in English.
I barely speak French, but I understand yours as well as I do English. The two languages have so much in common.
As a Dutchman I do agree that most of us do speak English as a second language.
It goes a bit fast. When I was young, somewhere in the last century, hardly anybody spoke it. But since we do not synchronize English shows but subtitle them and schools have a lot of emphasize on English, German and French we are now very proficient in it.
It is a good thing and a bad thing, I see how slowly Dutch is dying.
The simplicity of English grammar can certainly be an explanation for English's spread, but then again, our spelling is nuts. Why doesn't our spelling get in the way of anyone trying to learn it?
I don’t doubt that your numbers are more or less correct. Language is so fluid that it makes sense that the numbers would be fluid as well. What comes to mind is the cross-cultural things in languages that catch my attention. A lot of Spanish is spoken here in California, where we are at. I was amused to find That our word in Spanish for cheese is the same used in German. Similarly visiting our friends in Scandinavia they use the British word “lorry” for what we call delivery trucks in the U.S. it always seems to me that as English has become more global it’s taken on linguistic, elements of the areas in which it spreads.
Very interesting video. Will rewatch to try and retain some of the key points. I go often to Paris and concur with your comments on their English proficiency. However, I live in Burgundy and am also faced with the risible efforts of some UK expats here. I do emphasise some as many cope very well in French.
Thanks for you comment. We agree there is room for improvement not only for the French speaking English but also English speakers learning French in France - myself included.
The English language has always had an impatient, "full speed ahead, get on with it somehow, time is money," vibe to it. In contrast, the arrival of movable type mass publishing elsewhere in Europe was mostly met with horror and banning as rulers/ purists clamped down and took decades to carefully "standardize" the proper spellings and grammar needed to "protect" their cultures.
I think it was in the 70s that much of the Latin American and Arab world switched from French to English as the language to learn. The educated people of the 60s knew French and could read Camus or Sartre or any other notable Frenchman of the mid xxth century. Even May 68 had a big influence in university students because people still looked at France. Paris became the Rome of the Latin world in the 1800s, the place people would look to for inspiration and imitation, from architecture to literature to philosophy. The 60s were the last time that was still true. Some time between May 68 and the OPEC oil crisis of 1973, young educated people switched from learning French to learning English.
I think there has been a decline of the international cultural influence of Continental Europe since the 70s. That has hurt the position of French in the rest of the world.
I attended elementary school near Chicago starting in 1967. Oddly, we began learning French in the first grade because French (we were told) was “the international language”.
I'm more interested in the effect technology/travel has on the spread of the English language. The explosive growth of the internet has been the single greatest spreader of English. For the most part Windows is in English (not counting translations). Software and training for computers is basically English. Ironically, the ease of Chrome translating languages into your language of choice is reversing this and balkanizing people again.
Hi Gideon, how's your spoken French.? I used to speak it 60 years ago, now I just read.
er !!!!!!!!!!!!!! nice video and lots of interesting points but I think you dropped a big one at 15:05 - James 1st and 6th didn't become king of both countries in 1707 (with the Act of Union) but in 1603, after Elizabeth 1st
yes, I misspoke there
Thanks.
It's said that they who have the guns and the gold have the language, while all others just have dialects. The guns and gold bit was certainly true for Britain in the days of the Empire while it's still mostly true for the USA. Little wonder then that English is the dominant global language. It's even my own strongest language though I'm not a native speaker.
History by itself is so fascinating; but history of a language is delicious! 😋😀👍
I think it would be great if we had a really global language that is spoken and taught on a serious level in EACH country in the world. The communication would've been so damn easier. Furthermore, it would lead to economic rise since everyone could deal with everyone worldwide.
Esperanto anyone?
Would love to read a book written by you,Sir Gideon.
Stay tuned...
@@LetThemTalkTV Can’t wait!
I'm really glad English became the world's business/science language. It's definitely an easy one. Much easier than any other germanic language or romance language.
I think Norwegian and Swedish are easier
@@kangaroo4847 with the little knowledge I have about them (correct me if I'm wrong) verb conjugation is more varied and they have genders in the language.
its not that easy maybe better than French and German but the spelling rules in English are just random and they have too many words with multiple meaning
@@belstar1128 like any other language. I can't think of an easier one.
@@luizarthurbrito Indonesian Dutch Hindi swahili Italian. at least if you ignore the issue with having to learn a lot of vocabulary. but people in Asian and African countries learn English quickly too.
I expect English will continue to strengthen its grip as the international linking language. With every generation in an increasingly connected world, more young people will learn English than their parents generation, and it will be the only practical choice for more and more people. I can't see Mandarin, Hindi or Spanish growing fast enough to catch up. Automatic translation technology will certainly be powerful, but i expect English speakers will use it to not learn any other languages, while people still will have a desire to use and Learn English too.
In Finland most of the people speak English and very many a good English, concerning written English it is more difficult to estimate. In China a lot of people want to learn English, In big cities Peking ,Shanghai most of the people speak English, in Hong Kong they refused to speak mandarin they prefer to use the English language or Cantonese.The numbers ? but it should be very important. Of course in rural areas not only it might difficult to find many English speakers but even putonghua standard mandarin is not always spoken or if it is spoken sometimes the intonation might be strange and not so easy to understand