Download English as a Universal Language

English as a Universal Language
by Carlos Carrion Torres - Vitoria ES - Brazil
English is without a doubt the actual universal language. It is the world's second
largest native language, the official language in 70 countries, and Englishspeaking countries are responsible for about 40% of world's total GNP.
English can be at least understood almost everywhere among scholars and
educated people, as it is the world media language, and the language of cinema,
TV, pop music and the computer world. All over the planet people know many
English words, their pronunciation and meaning.
The causes for this universality are very well known and understandable.
English first began to spread during the 16th century with British Empire and
was strongly reinforced in 20th by USA world domination in economic, political
and military aspects and by the huge influence of American movies.
The concept of a Universal Language is more significant only now, in the era of
world mass communication. Before this era Greek, Latin, French were to some
extent universal languages, though mainly in Europe.
By a lucky coincidence due to factors above, English, the Universal language, is
one of the simplest and easiest natural languages in the world. The only other
simple and easy languages are constructed ones.
Of course the concept of easiness is relative, and it depends on which language
you know already. However the concept of simplicity is undeniable: English in an
easy language to learn, understand and speak. A complex language such as
Hungarian would be a very unlikely candidate for a universal language.
First of all, English Language uses Latin alphabet, the most universal, simple
and short one (only the Greek alphabet is shorter and simpler). In addition, in
English, the Latin Alphabet presents its most "clean" form as a true alphabet
with only 26 basic letters and no diacritics;
Verb conjugation is very simple and easy. Even for irregular verbs, there is
almost no variation in person (except 3rd singular in present tense).
Regular verbs have only four forms: Infinitive + Present, Past Tense + Past
Participle, 3rd person singular Present Indicative, Present Participle.
There are almost no Inflections. No number or gender inflection for adjectives,
articles, adverbs. For adjectives there is only comparative and superlative,
almost only number for nouns. In pronouns there are gender and number
inflections and only three declension cases (Acc/Dat, Nom, Gen).
English is one of the most analytical languages, with no significant synthetic,
fusional or agglutinative characteristics.
Could be there any other alternative for Universal Language, instead of English?
There are other languages that are quite simple and synthetic, with almost no
verb conjugation, no declension, such as Asian languages like Thai and
Chinese, but they are written with complicated scripts and are tonal languages.
However if Chinese were to be written with the Latin alphabet, it could
potentially become a univeral language.
There are other strong languages that, due to population and economic power,
could be univeral languages, but they have a number of disadvantages when
compared with English.
Some examples:
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Japanese: has very regular verbs but also a very complicated script.
Chinese: no conjugations or declension, but a very complicated script and
tones.
German has many more inflections than English.
The major Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Portuguese,
have fewer inflections than most of languages, but their verb conjugation
is very complicated.
Russian has both complex verb conjugations and numerous noun
declensions.
In conclusion, it is lucky for us that our universal language is the simplest and
easiest, even though that simplicity and easiness weren't the reasons that lead
English to that condition.
WHY ENGLISH HAS BECOME THE
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF
THE WORLD
The English language is considered as a universal language, mainly because it is the most
spoken language worldwide.
Through out history, people have had the to communicate to each other, whether it be for
business, for hunting, or for fighting… From the very beginning of human civilization it
has always been the main international language used, originally established for the
dominant civilization; the Latin language was expanded by the Roman Empire, the French
language became popular for the Napoleon conquests, and finally the English language
from the UK expansion and the incursion of USA as the first world power, and it’s
basically through all the conquests, the commerce, the religion, the education and the
technology that English has became the first language worldwide.
One of the reasons why it’s the universal language is because it’s the ‘business language’.
For example if a company is dealing with a foreign company with a different mother
tongue, they will use the English, the universal language to communicate to each other.
English is the main language of these countries where there is lots of languages spoken, like
in India where more than 700 languages are spoken by their local people.
English is also one of the most studied language all across the world, most of the countries
teach it as a second language from primary school.
As per the statistics, it said that the English language is one of the easiest languages to
learn, if we compare it with languages like Chinese, German, French and even Spanish.
Worldwide we see that most of the communication sources, information and material sold
or given to us are in English, for example: films, TV shows, music, documentaries, popular
brands, etc….
It is such an important language worldwide, that 80% of the information that we find in
the internet is in English, take this into consideration because the internet is one the most
used and effective sources of communication across the world.
So if you need to learn English or improve your level of English, please visit our website or
contact us and we will find the best choice for you, totally free of charge!