Advantages and Disadvantages of English as a Global Language
According to Google, there are 6,500 languages in the world right at this moment. With all these numbers, if we did not have a way to communicate with each other, we would have faced a lot of problems. We wouldn’t be able to know about each other’s cultures, wouldn’t be able to have good friends, have diplomatic relations with one another, and so on. With that, it is evident that having an international language that most of the population can understand is a key element in having a peaceful and advanced world. As of now, it is almost unanimously agreed that English can be considered a fairly international and globally understood language. That is because the advantages of the spread of English as a global language will continue to outweigh its disadvantages. The English language is efficient and performant and it is the language of research, however, it may also be the cause of the disappearance of other native languages and cultural diversity.
The first advantage of the English language is that it is efficient and performant. Even though English is the third most spoken language in the world, most people prefer speaking English during their daily lives to communicate globally. In many nations, English is used as a second language after the native languages. The great total of English speakers in the world today derived the conformity to this language uniformity. Such uniformity means minimization of problems that may arise due to lack of communication due to the English language, making it highly efficient as an international language. Apparently, due to the English language being efficient to use, many people use this language to communicate with individuals from other nations. Hence, making the communication clear and effective, ultimately leads to better performance and the efficiency of the transfer of information from one person to the other; For instance, research was conducted on performance based on the theory of linguistics abilities in the Western part of Africa. The research revealed that English-speaking nations are reliable and are more likely to operate with much integrity. This includes all types of operations such as business ethics, organizational management, and system than non-English speaking countries.
The second advantage of the English language is that it is the language of research. In many research journals throughout the world, the English language is the primary language being used to write the articles. This is due to the fact that the English language can be used to communicate the findings and arguments of the articles to a wider range of people and scientists throughout the world, it’d be more the better. This means that more people can understand each other and participate more effectively in the generation of knowledge. Another aspect in which the English language is highly used is in the field of computer science and programming. Even though there are programming languages based on languages other than English, it is highly evident that if one wants to effectively pursue this career, they are ought to learn the English language. That is because a substantially bigger number of people are backing up the programming languages based on the English language and they have done a whole lot of development and pushed the boundaries without stop; Which is a truly magnificent work.
Even though the English language has a number of advantages, there is one disadvantage about keeping the native languages and cultures from disappearing that concern people. This is not really a disadvantage of the English language per se, it is just related to any global language. The problem arises when people in the world decide to have a single language as a global language to communicate their ideas. By this, increasingly more people will be likely to only use the English language, and this concerns people that people whose native language is a language other than English will eventually forget their native languages and cultures. The people concerned with this problem argue that even though the need for a global language is evident, it is also necessary for the people to not forget about their native language, culture, and identity. Because if they do forget about them, their language and culture will no longer continue on, and people are afraid of that.
With that, we explored two of the advantages and one disadvantage of the English language as a global language. English is highly efficient and performant and, it is the language of research, which highly outweighs the disadvantage of disappearing native languages and cultures. It is true that the native languages and cultures need to be protected. In fact, I believe that if people around the world keep using the English language as a global language to come up with ideas and solutions, they can solve this problem of native languages and cultures more easily. Because this way, more people can communicate with each other. In the end, it is evident that a society needs a highly used language as its global language, and I believe that English is a good choice for that.
