What Makes English the Global Dominant Language?

English enjoys the status of being a Global Dominant Language for many years, and continue to remain being the world's language today. Having billions of people being able to speak the language, English is without a doubt the most widely spoken language in the world. In this post, we will try to define what a "global language" is, and also aims to answer the question of  "how did English became the global language?" This post also aims to explore some of the key factors that led English to reach today's status, i.e what contributed into it, and how.
.

What makes a Language "Global"?

Some might suggest that the linguistic structure or properties might contribute to a successful status of a language, that a global language has to have a large scope, and able to cover technical terms like specific scientific elements, however, according to Crystal in the book of English as a Global Language in 2003, he noted that 'A language does not become a global language because of intrinsic structural properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary", he also suggested that the association between the language and culture, religion or great literature does not play a role in defining it the global language. 

If it is not about the linguistic quality of a specific language, nor the culture or religion association that it has, some might then think it might perhaps be the quantity of native speakers? The article Global Mandarin written by Goh and Lim had proved the contrary view, it argued that the status of a language has little or no relations to the amount of native speakers around the world, because if that is the case, Mandarin or Hindi would have long been considered the global dominant language. It is, however, the status of the native speakers that plays a big role in raising the status of their language; the political, military or economic power of the country also contributes greatly to whether  it's language will become the world's language. 

Goh and Lim suggested that there are two requirements for a language to become globally dominant, firstly the official recognition by the international community, that is largely contributed by the amount of second language speakers of the language in the world, and that could be achieved by enforcing mandatory studies as a foreign language in other countries. Secondly, as already mentioned above, the needs of expanding number of non-native speakers. 

English becoming the Global Dominant language:

Image from ABAGOND
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2006/06/10/british-empire/ 

Having to explore what factors contributes in making a language global in the above, we can now figure out how English became the most widely used language in the world today. One of the most obvious and probably the most vital reason that contributed to today's phenomenon is the British colonial imperialism in the nineteenth century; The image on the right shows the British Empire in the 1920s, English was not only simply spread out to all theses different part of the world in every continent, but it also acts as a dominant language in the country they colonized, the language of power and status. By the twentieth century, the native English speaking country America had grow substantially in power and world status, acting as a world leader in military, political and also economic side; This largely contributed and further boosted the status of English as a Global Dominant language. 

References: 

1. Crystal, D. (2003), English as a Global Language (Second Edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. Goh Y.S; Lim S.L, Globalization of Language and culture in Asia: The Impact of Globalization Processes on    Language. London/NY: Continuum International Publishing Ltd

Edited by Ron Tsui; Last update at 18th Mar, 2012