English - the language that brings people together.

History is replete with random events that create consequences for the world. The British Empire which at its zenith encompassed a vast area enabled the English language to spread around the world. And the British were followed by another superpower a former colony of the British Empire, the United States of America. As a result, English became an important way people around the world communicated with each other.

Sometimes perceived negatively, as a colonial legacy, in my opinion the English language has enabled the world to share a common way to speak with each other. A Brazilian uses English to communicate with the Chinese. It is very difficult for everyone to learn several languages and using one common language helps the world to communicate. English is taught as a second language in the majority of countries of the world.

Some interesting facts about English. English is spoken as a first language by 339 people and as a second language by 603 million people. So almost a billion people speak English. It is the only major language that doesn’t have any organization guiding it – like the French Académie Française that guides French. It is an open source language where about 4000 new words are added every year. After new words become commonly used, Oxford University Press includes it in the Oxford English Dictionary. Over 80% of the information stored on computers worldwide is in English.

More than other languages, the evolution English has remained somewhat fluid, allowing for new words to be invented or accepted into the official lexicon. The influence of other languages on English is especially visible in the number of borrowed, or loan words. Borrowed words are words that are adopted from one language into another with little or no alteration. In fact, Dictionary.com suggests that about eighty percent of the words in the English dictionary derive from words of non-English origin.

Whilst the European Union has 24 official languages and the UK has left the EU, English remains the de facto working language for the EU. The European Central Bank uses English as it’s working language. Most large multinational companies use several languages, but English is often a common factor even when the company is not headquartered in the United States or the UK. It is just a fact of modern commerce that English has become the globalization enabler.

While the world needs several languages and each of us should be proud of our own mother tongue, English provides an important bridge to build understanding around the world. With increasing globalization and open trade and travel, it is a fortunate accident that English has evolved as the one language that can help the world communicate.