Because America is the Global Nation. Quite simply, America is the centre of the world and with the last two world-dominators being English-speaking (States/Britain)...English has spread.
English is a global language because GB used to 'own' most of the globe. Then we said sorry and gave it all back apart from the Falklands which we're keeping for strategic sheep purposes Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The US has the largest market to sell to. If you want to sell or buy then you must deliver in the native language. While I would believe the major reasons have been listed above the reason above has also contributed to the widespread use of English. Another reason is that most of the advanced manufacturing methods, scientific collaborations, and products that flow through the US requires that others communicate in English. The US has never been much on the line of learning foreign languages on the whole. The internet also encouraged the use of English as the "global language" as it originated here and in the beginning was in use for the transfer of info between scientists and think tanks, and the like. As bbcboy said, England was once the ruler of the world and they maintained it for a good period of time. Tyler also had a good point witht he fact that the last two major world influancers were English speaking. I would think that there is a large amount of driving forces that contributed to it of which these are but a few.
English has the most speakers. One of thsoe Chinese languages has the most speakers as a primary language. But half of them also probably speak English. More people speak English than any other language.
One of thsoe Chinese languages has the most speakers as a primary language. I believe it's 'Mandarin'
Mandarin is the most spoken, The next languages are English and French. French because of Canada, And certain countries in Africa, the Caribbean and a few countries that had a few nuns. There is also Spanish and Portuguese, which are pretty much up there with the French. A for other languages, well I'm going to say Russian, but there are so many provinces that it's not necessarily classed as one language.
English isn’t very common. Nearly 3 times more people speak Mandarin than English. And almost as many speak Spanish as English. English is only spoken by approximately 11% of the world’s population. Chinese Mandarin 874 million Hindi 366 million English 341 million Spanish 323 million Bengali 207 million Portuguese 176 million Russian 167 million Japanese 125 million German 100 million Korean 78 million French 77 million Chinese, Wu 77 million Javanese 75 million Chinese. Yue 71 million Web link = http://www.worldatlas.com/geoquiz/thelist.htm Cris
Note that particular list of languages refers to Native Speakers Only. A list of who speaks what as their first language. As I said, it does not take into account that a hell of a lot of them also speak English, and very few outside certain areas speak Mandarin. I have met uneducated people in the slums of Jakarta who spoke English. It is everywhere.
Adam, You may be right and personally I hope you are, but I can't find any statistical or otherwise evidence to support that claim. I suspect the vast bulk of Chinese do not speak English since they have been isolated from Western culture for much of the past century. Perhaps with the widespread use of the internet where English dominates then perhaps English is gaining a larger foothold. But at the same time technology is enabling an increase in Chinese keyboards and display characters that obviate any need for them to use English. I would love to see English become the world language, but I suspect many cultures will resist strenuously, the French for certain. I'd love to see some evidence. Cris
