The lecture I attended was part of a lecture series called “Globalization lecture series: Language and global culture.” It was hosted by Dr. Lois Spitzer and she talked about if making English a global language I a good idea and what the advantages and disadvantages are to having a global language. She talked about why English would be the best choice for a global language and not any other popular languages. She described what we may lose with a globalization of one language but also what we would gain. The main point in this presentation was the concern for culture around the world and the impact it would have on all these different cultures that exist.
The reason for wanting to make English the global language is not because of how many people speak it but because of how widely spoken it is. If it was decided by how many native speakers there are of the language we would all have to learn Chinese. But Chinese is not the native language of many countries. English is the native language of almost fifty countries in the world.
The main problem with a global language, and making other languages die off is the loss of cultures. In many languages across the world there are unique words that we do not have words for in English. So we would lose all those unique words which will then develop to a loss of culture. Losing all these cultures will be very bad for the future of the world. There will be nothing for kids to learn about other countries. If we all spoke the same language we will all eventually fall into the same culture. There will be no differences between countries so there will be nothing interesting to study anymore.
A global language does have some benefits though. It will help to communicate better in business markets and fields of research. If a German scientist discovers something he can easily share it with the rest of the world because everyone will have the same language. There will be no more confusion in business markets and no more miscommunications. But along with a global language should come a global currency if we are doing it to make things easier. We will not have to convert Dollars to Yen or Pounds anymore so there will be no mistakes in those conversions and no money lost.