Wow, that’s a lot of big words! Put simply, English is a language that allows communication among a wide variety of different people. It is truly the international language.While I’ve witnessed this firsthand in many of my trips through Latin America and Europe, a recent flight from Germany to Spain serves as my perfect example of the role of English: I was flying a German airline with German flight attendants, but the majority of the passengers were Spaniards returning home. Perhaps twenty years ago, there would be little communication between these groups of people, but that wasn’t the case on this flight; there was actually quite a bit of communication – in English. The flight attendants spoke German and English while the majority of passengers spoke Spanish and English.
This was really interesting for me to observe. English is my first language and one that serves me well when I travel abroad. For these two groups, however, English was a second (and perhaps third or fourth) language, yet it was the one in which communication could be accomplished.
In many tourist destinations throughout the world, English follows the native language in announcements, instructions, and many other forms of communication. Do native English speakers benefit from this? Yes, of course, but they’re not the primary audience. The theory behind this practice is that if someone doesn’t speak the destination’s native language, there’s a good chance they might speak English. No other language currently has this type of "monopoly."
Is the intention of this post to say we shouldn’t learn other languages besides English? Absolutely not. I love language learning and have experienced myself its extreme importance and usefulness. However, I think it’s interesting to observe the unique position our language has in the world and the bonds it enables.
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