English as 'the international language'??

Just my long long standing question – and wondered if anyone could help me or share their thoughts with me: does anyone know how English has come to be recognised as 'the international language'? Has there been any official body who authorised the decision? Who constituted the committee? Apart from the fact (or my speculation) that the British had killed most people in other countries in the world, what was so special about English at that time? I understand the pragmatic benefit to have English as the ‘international language’ whenever the decision was made, but my questions concern whether the decision was made under a properly regulated organisation, and whether the decision was based on any scientific grounds rather than pragmatic ones (e,g., it seems that English seems to be the language most people speak in the civilised society now!)

I am a lecturer in psychology /psycholinguistics in a UK university. Originally from Japan (brought up as a total monolingual until 25). Having lived in the UK for more than 10 years, I can manage my everyday communication in English, including my teaching, quite well - but the more time I spend in the UK contributing to the UK education (and welfare system as a tax payer – although ironically my salary comes from tax papers), the more uncertain I become as to what's so special it is to be an English native speaker – or if not, a simultaneous/early bilingual in English, a native speaker of a language which is linguistically close to English (e.g., an Indo-European language - almost any of them, compared to my mother tongue, Japanese). Are they supposed to be more intelligent than ‘us’ lot whose mother tongue is so different from English? Is it why we all have to make so much effort (after paying so much more money (tuition fees) to study here) to get our work recognised ‘internationally’ when our colleagues who are English (or related languages) native speakers manage to produce the output of the similar quality spending by far less time?

I have no itemisation to dispute the benefits of having an international language. Or I have no intension to promote any other ‘fairer’ language to replace English. What I am trying to do is, I suppose, find out the historical contexts that made English ‘the international language’, and how people have historically justified the unfair benefits that could make English native speakers (or the likes) more advantaged than others. Any suggestions as to good readings (books, papers, web pages etc) are very welcome!

Many thanks for your help in advance (& thanks for reading this!)

Cat

if somebody want to approach the largest source of information on Internet, they must learn English.

Anybody help me to correct my sentence or grammar pls.

Cat said: >>how people have historically justified the unfair benefits that could make English native speakers (or the likes) more advantaged than others. <<

More advantaged? Honestly, I think they are more disadvantaged for the fact that everybody speaks their language. They miss so much of the fun of coping with the language and spirit of a different culture. And if you take it for granted that everybody speaks your language (by the way, it is not completely true), it may result in some nasty turns of mind I would better not like to partake of. :-)

By the way, it was nobody's official decision to make English the most widespread international language in the world, it just happened that due to extensive colonisation English came to be the language the most used as a second language by non-natives. And once this happened, it exists independently of any English-speaking culture, having a life of its own. As it happens, more and more people are likely to communicate in fluent English exclusively with non-natives, without having ever met a native English speaker.

English has become the 'international' business language as much because of the economic and cultural strength of the United States as the former colonial strengh of the British Empire.

During the period of the British Empire's greatest power the strongest international language was actually French.

English's international strength grew, first, when the British Empire was dismantled after the First World War... when a series of new independent nations emerged on the scene that used English as their language of government.

But the process really accelerated after the Seconed World War, with the U.S. rise to superpower status.

AIRPLANE...Mind you we don't say airspace or airdynamics...it's aerospace and aerodynamics...just airplane is different.

Sorry, i speak Klingon since my space ship crashed over the klingon planet.

A thread stopper if I ever saw one.

Hello Cat. I'm a native speaker of both French and English, can speak Esperanto with native-like fluency, and am currently studying Chinese, Arabic and Persian. I'm also a language teacher in China. I found your questions interesting and would like to share my ideas.

J"ust my long long standing question – and wondered if anyone could help me or share their thoughts with me: does anyone know how English has come to be recognised as 'the international language'? "

England, an English speaking country is the land of the birth of the industrial revolution. That had certainly given English a headstart. And colonialism helped likewise. Colonialism allowed English to spread through the conquest of and subjugation of other peoples which therefore provided the English with an ever expanding market. The expansion of such a market has certainly contributed to the development of English language economies, thus effectively making English the world's de facto, although not de jure, international language of business today. seeing that materialistic ideology is very much a stong value today, it's only natural that those who harbour such an ideology would choose to learn the language with the most money behind it.

"Has there been any official body who authorised the decision? Who constituted the committee?

No body has ever officialized English as the international language, and isn't likely to any time soon, as language in the world today, as can be increasingly witnessed, is becomming an ever hotter political time bomb. Although many international organizations with limited funds have sometimes officialized English as their language of administration or 'working' language. The UN, however, has six official languages, and that number is more likely to increase rather than decrease as language becomes an increasingly emotionally charged political time bomb, one reason many UN ambasadors don't like to discuss the issue too often.


"Apart from the fact (or my speculation) that the British had killed most people in other countries in the world, what was so special about English at that time? "

Although I think the statement that most were killed is hyperbole, it still doesn't change the fact that, for the most part, colonialism was what drove the English language initially, though again, the industrial revolution and its aftermath must have played a role as well. There is little in the grammatical structure of the English language to suggest that it would seem to be a better language on scientific grounds. It's verb conjugation is certainly better than that of most European languages (though many non European languages beat English on that front), and its overall grammar is certainly less complex than other European languages too. Besides that, however, its phonetic spelling is atrocious and its sea of exceptions to the conjugation and other rules of grammar make such ease meaningless.

"I am a lecturer in psychology /psycholinguistics in a UK university. Originally from Japan (brought up as a total monolingual until 25). Having lived in the UK for more than 10 years, I can manage my everyday communication in English, including my teaching, quite well - but the more time I spend in the UK contributing to the UK education (and welfare system as a tax payer – although ironically my salary comes from tax papers), the more uncertain I become as to what's so special it is to be an English native speaker – or if not, a simultaneous/early bilingual in English, a native speaker of a language which is linguistically close to English (e.g., an Indo-European language - almost any of them, compared to my mother tongue, Japanese). Are they supposed to be more intelligent than ‘us’ lot whose mother tongue is so different from English?"

No native language makes one superior to another. And no, We speakers of English or related languages are certainly not intrinsically more intelligent than you. The English speaking world does have a larger military, however, but I'm not sure if that would suggest that we are more intelligent, or rather lacking in ethics.

"Is it why we all have to make so much effort (after paying so much more money (tuition fees) to study here) to get our work recognised ‘internationally’ when our colleagues who are English (or related languages) native speakers manage to produce the output of the similar quality spending by far less time? "

I'd say the reason that many non-native speaker must learn English today is due to an ingenious system of divide and rule. So maybe native speakers are smarter, at least when it comes to hegemonic language promotion (albeit ethically more devious) after all! Instead of consulting with other non-English speaking countries to find a better solution (i.e., modify English, choose an easier language, or create a new one) they'd rather compete against one another to be first past the post (i.e., learn English better and faster than everyone else does) thus meaning more money for the English speaking world as it provides the teachers, books, CDs, computer programs, etc. If these other countries (or individuals) could work towards a better language, English could fall as an international language within one generation!

"I have no itemisation to dispute the benefits of having an international language. Or I have no intension to promote any other ‘fairer’ language to replace English. What I am trying to do is, I suppose, find out the historical contexts that made English ‘the international language’, and how people have historically justified the unfair benefits that could make English native speakers (or the likes) more advantaged than others."

Many will defend such an unjust reality by simply saying that that's reality, there's nothing one can do about, so we might as well all learn English. I suppose that's just destiny.

"Any suggestions as to good readings (books, papers, web pages etc) are very welcome! "

Certainly:

In Japanese:
http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_ja.html

And in English:

http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html
http://www.esperantic.org/

Some limited information in English:
http://www.forst.tu-muenchen.de/EXT/AIS/