The English Language as of Yesterday

The first thing I thought as I watched the video and the voiceover informed me that "the English language is infiltrating the Iron Curtain from Britain and the United States" (00:32) is that language has no barriers. If it ever had, they are lost forever because of technology. As the movie advances, the narrator actually mentions this. It´s funny that I write this towards the beginning of the video and the video actually emphasizes on this.

English is used by air controllers everyday. 75% of telegrams are (or were) sent in English. More than half of the world's newspapers are in English and it dominates the world's news casts. (03:35) Now that I think about it, it´s true that most movies and songs are in American English! An example of this is A*Teens, a Swedish pop music group (used to be my favorite) that produced all their songs in English even though Sweden's official language is, well, Swedish. I hope you get the point. Everything is in English.

Stop right there. Sometimes people don't want to lose their language so they just don't learn it. Or other times they create varieties of them because the idea of a right way of speaking English is very recent. Nowadays social status is shown in the way people speak the language and a language is like an idea, you can't stop it from spreading or changing. It is unreal to expect a change if one decides on it. Indians tried to make Hindi the official language and this created a confusion that has long-lasted. I met a girl who lived in India and told me the cultural shock was mostly because everyone spoke different languages and their English had a very perceptible accent. But still, most knew English, a language "indispensable for a career" and a synonym of a good education.

Close by, in Africa, more than a thousand languages are spoken. How can one communicate in a place with such variety? It is necessary to find a common denominator and in this case it would be English. I'm writing as I watch the video and it's quite a coincidence that the video mentions a lingua franca. It's not only uncomfortable but dangerous not to have a language in common with neighboring groups. Knowing languages gives you power. I've always thought that. This may be the reason why I've tried learning French other than English but "English is everybody's second language." That's a true statement, even for me. Yesterday I visited Fundacioón Hogar San Mauricio, where neglected children reside. The woman in charge told us it was necessary for her children to learn English because it was a very useful tool, especially for work and business. 

This will seem out of the blues but I have to cite the video.

Robert, McCrum, MacNiel Robert, and William Cran. "An English Speaking World."The Story of English. BBC, 1986. Television.