Abstract

English is not a world language; it is the world language today. English has more speakers than any other language has ever had, including native speakers in Europe, North America, and Oceania, second-language speakers in former British colonies such as India and Nigeria, and foreign language speakers in countries such as Russia and China. As many of the 6000 languages currently spoken around the globe are seriously endangered, and several become extinct each year, the number of speakers of English constantly rises. Compared to linguae francae in the past, e.g., Latin, which were spoken only by elites, English is spoken by more people in more countries and in more domains, among them popular music, advertising, banking, and the Internet. In the domains of education and science, the dominance of English is increasingly seen critically as it may lead to linguistic and conceptual domain loss in non-English-speaking countries.