English as a Lingua Franca

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Half of the population speak or learn English as a foreign or native language. Do you recognize this? Do you know about as many people who do not speak English as people who do? I think English will remain to be a lingua franca in the future, which is a good thing, because so many already speak the language, it is relatively easy to learn, especially compared to the Chinese language. First of all, the English language is used a lot as first language for a lot of countries all over the world in every continent and even more people are still learning the language so the numbers will only increase. Because England and the US had a lot of colonies the language is spread all over the world. When the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English served as the lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period, some of the newly created nations which had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as an official language to avoid the political difficulties. Nowadays, we can still notice that. If you are on holiday, and you speak English, people will probably understand you, regardless where you are going. Therefore, you can easily communicate with each other, what is really important for a global language. The reason why people are able to learn it, is that you can easily get by. Especially when you think of the Chinese language, that language is a lot harder to learn, but I will discuss that later on. Secondly, the standard words of the English language are short and relatively easy to pronounce. Non-natives get by easily, even with a low level of proficiency. I do not mean it is easy to speak fluently English, but I talk about communicating and make yourself understood. You can also learn it easier than other languages, because you hear it very often on the tv, in music and in other media. Most children also learn it at
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