- Hey guys, what's up?
It's Gabby Wallace from gonaturalenglish.com.
I don't know about you, but when I do something,
I wanna know why I'm doing it.
I don't wanna just do it because
somebody told me to do it, like my teacher or my mom.
I wanna know the reason why I'm doing something,
and so, in this video, today, we're going
to find out why we speak English.
I don't mean why you're learning English
for personal reasons, I wanna know
why is English a global language?
Why is English the language of aviation,
the sea, an official language of the United Nations,
and many other international organizations?
Why is English a global language in technology,
scientific research, entertainment, like music and movies?
Why is English everywhere?
Why is English so popular, but it's
not even an official language of the United States?
Weird.
Anyway, I have done some research.
I took about a week to put together
some research to find out the reasons,
the top 10 reasons, why English is spoken
by 1.5 billion people in the world,
and only 25% of those people are native speakers.
So let me share with you the top 10 reasons
why English is a global language.
Now, if you are an English learner,
I suggest that you turn on the captions.
You can click on CC, and turn on the English subtitles,
because I'm gonna be speaking pretty quickly,
to get through all the 10 reasons very fast, in this video.
Now, if you have not subscribed yet
to Go Natural English, then I suggest that
you subscribe, because we're about
to hit one million subscribers,
and I'd love for you to be part of this amazing moment.
All right, quick disclaimer, before we jump in.
I have a master's degree in education,
but not in history, and a lot of
these reasons are historical reasons,
why English is a global language today.
So if you wanna suggest something to add,
if you are a historian, please do so in the comments.
And speaking of comments, I wanna ask all of you a question.
Do you think that English should be our global language?
Yes or no.
Give me reasons, tell me in the comments.
All right, let's go reason number one, is war.
So for better or worse, war has
certainly shaped the languages that we speak in the world.
So the 100 Years' War, that's
when the Normans invaded Britain,
and they spoke French, and then the English won,
and so they took back English language,
and they said, "Ha!
"We're gonna speak English in Parliament."
Now, it's 1363, and English is the language of Britain.
So if the English hadn't won the 100 Years' War,
I would probably be giving this lesson to you in French.
(speaking French)
Then I would probably be doing this video in Spanish.
(speaking Spanish)
Now, fast-forward to World War I.
The Allies win.
Two of the Allies are the United States and England,
and so English gains influence in the world again.
Gonna talk about other reasons related
to World War I when we talk about migration.
Sorry for the spoiler, but that is
another big reason why we speak English.
World War II, again, the Allies win.
England and the United States are two
of the Allies, and after World War II,
the US becomes a huge economic power,
the richest country on Earth, and so that
also, of course, spreads the influence
of English, as people immigrate
to the United States, and the US exports a lot
of business and industry, and of course,
in the US, we speak English.
Also, after World War II, the United Nations was formed
to avoid future conflicts of that type,
and English became one of the formal languages,
the official languages, along with Spanish,
French, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic.
Little-known fact about me, when I was an undergraduate,
I studied international relations,
and I was obsessed with the United Nations.
In fact, I wanted to be a diplomat,
and I had my heart set on working at the UN.
I ended up becoming an English teacher,
and honestly, I love it, because
I feel like I'm in the UN every single day,
working with English learners from around the world.
So it's super cool.
I kinda gave a little spoiler for number two,
already, but it is migration.
Migration is huge, and a super interesting reason
why we speak English today, starting
from the very bottom, or the very top,
depending on how you look at it.
The beginning of English, as a language itself,
in 410 A.D., Germanic tribes went
over to Britain after the Romans left,
and two of those tribes were called the Anglo-Saxons.
Does that sound familiar?
It should, because this is where Anglo-Saxon came from,
and this is where English began.
And these Anglo-Saxons brought vocabulary
that mixed with the Romans,
and the Latin language, and became Old English.
Super interesting.
And then, more migration happened
for other reasons that I'm gonna get
to in a minute, like the Black Plague,
like the Industrial Revolution,
like World War I and World War II,
that we already talked about, but tons
of people were migrating to English-speaking countries,
primarily England and the US, with those historical moments.
All right, number three, let's talk about the Black Plague.
This is a really bad moment in history,
for millions of people who died,
but it's a very interesting moment
for the English language, because millions
of people migrated from southern Europe
to the north, to England, where,
of course, they needed to learn English.
And the great number of people who were migrating
quickly into England created what
we call the Great Vowel Shift,
which is basically the reason why English is so confusing.
That's why English words are spelled differently
than they're pronounced, or than they sound,
because we had so many different accents mixing together,
from different languages, and different immigrants
inside England, all within a short period
of time, the actual pronunciation of English was changing.
Okay, so what happened when so many people died
in England from the Black Plague, is
other people, from outside England, moved
in to make up for the shortage of labor,
and wages, and work conditions,
apparently, were better in England,
at that time, than in other places.
So between 1350, when the Black Plague was
officially over, and 1550, 65,000 people moved into England,
and about one in every 100 people was an immigrant
at that time, in England, compared
with today, where about eight in 100 are immigrants.
But even so, at that time, that was a huge shift,
and a lot of new accents coming in contributed
to the way that we speak English today.
Let's talk about religion.
In 597 A.D., Christianity came on over to Britain,
and we gained new vocabulary,
like font, bishop, and martyr.
Now, religion plays a role in the English language
because, of course, religion likes
to spread to new peoples, and we
also have literature, like the King James Bible,
that is, of course, inspired by religion.
It was a new translation, at the time,
from the Hebrew Bible, and the King James Bible gives
us so many phrases that we still use today.
And that Bible was written in 1611.
That Bible had a huge influence on the way we speak English,
and the number of people who speak English.
And around the 17th century, between beating Napoleon,
and further in the future, World War I,
England gained 10 million square miles,
and 400 million English-speaking people.
Well, they didn't already speak English,
but you know what I mean.
They had to learn English because
they were colonized by the English.
So we're talking about Australia, New Zealand,
the Indian subcontinent, North America,
and also Belize, and British Guiana,
and a lot of islands in the Caribbean, and much of Africa.
There's a lot of ground now covered by English,
where people really had to learn English
because their colonizers were telling
them what to do in English.
It's kind of like your English teacher.
And we got a lot of new English vocabulary
from these different countries,
and diverse peoples, as well.
Number six is literature.
We already talked a little bit about the King James Bible,
which I filed under religion, but literature is
very important, and I would like to
just give a huge shout-out to Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare was
hugely influential in the 17th century.
So he became known as a great writer,
and his works spread throughout Europe,
and people were reading his work in English.
And in fact, a lot of phrases that
we still use today come from William Shakespeare.
So thanks, Shakespeare.
His writing also marked the era of early modern English,
the modern English that we speak today.
Shakespeare introduced words like twerk, lit, and shook.
Number seven is science.
The Scientific Revolution had a big part
in England, and physicists like Robert Hooke,
Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon,
all contributed to scientific research in English.
And more than half of scientific research is written
in English, today.
Following the Scientific Revolution,
we have the Industrial Revolution,
which happened in the 18th century
in England, and was followed shortly
after by the Industrial Revolution in the United States.
So we have machines created by English inventors.
We have manuals, instructions, directions
for these machines, written in English,
and we have people flooding in
to England, and to the United States,
to work with these machines, where
they needed to learn English to do their job.
Number nine, we have, well, as
my T-shirt says, rock and roll.
Basically, it is rock and roll
that got created in the US, and exported
to the world, and it's just so cool
that everyone wanted to learn the lyrics
to all the songs, all The Beatles,
all the Elvis songs, but it's true, really.
English got this cool factor, from jazz,
rock and roll, from Hollywood,
that people actually wanted to learn English.
It's not like today, when you're forced
to learn English in high school,
and you don't really wanna be there.
It's like you wanna learn English
because all your favorite artists are using English.
And so one of the most powerful ways
that English has captured a global audience is
through entertainment, specifically entertainment
that came from the US in the post World War II era.
And finally, number 10, why English rules the world,
is, well, technology.
English is also the language of information technology,
starting with the invention of the first digital computer,
in 1945, at the University of Pennsylvania,
and the evolution of the Internet,
where a lot of American engineers had a part
in that, as well.
So the Internet, computers, manuals
for computers, Apple, Google, YouTube,
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Silicon Valley.
These are are English-speaking things.
Places, companies, you know what I mean.
It all comes back to English.
And so I think you can see, English
just had this knack for being
at the right place at the right time.
If I could be English, I would be so lucky.
So there you have it, 10 reasons
why English is the global language.
And if your friends ever ask you
why you have to learn English,
you can share this video with them,
because I think it's pretty clear why we speak English now.
English is just always at the right place at the right time.
So who knows?
Maybe in the future we'll go back to speaking French.
Maybe the next global language will be Chinese,
I don't know, tell me what you think.
Should English be our global language?
I think that it's very helpful
to learn English, and yes, everyone should,
but I also think all English speakers should know
another language, if not three,
or four, languages, because it's
really cool when we can all communicate, and it's fun,
and it's good for your brain, to learn another language.
So all right, make sure that you are subscribed
to Go Natural English if you wanna learn more
about language learning, and I'll see you again, soon.
Thanks for watching.
Bye!