What is the reason for the popularity of English?

Is it linguistic superiority or historical accident that has made English so popular?The spread and popularity of English is so rampant that most languages and cultures are dreaded to be extinct because of English. some language fanatics have tried to replace English with Hindi as the official language of India but in vain .The craze for English as a subject or medium of instruction is on the increase in non-native English speaking countries like India .some scholars argue that English is the language of the colonialists. They think English would not have been so popular as it is today if The British had not ruled the world in the past.


Let us now discuss the linguistic demerits of English.


•English is an unphonetic language. Maxmuller says ’English spelling is a national misfortune to England and an international misfortune to the rest of the world.’

•There is no one to one correspondence between its tense and time. Some argue that English has only two tenses-the present and the past.

•There is no numerical adjective like ‘howmanieth ‘ in English.It is difficult to ask for the hierachical position of a person. example. howmanieth son are you to your father?

•The use of prepositions is a big ask for even native speakers .the use of phrasal verbs is all the more difficult

•The use of articles is non-existent in most languages.

•Unlike most Indian languages English does not have causative verbs for most words.

Now let us discuss its merits.

•It is the most resourceful language in the world.It has not only graciously borrowed many words from living and dead languages but also profusely lent most of its words to all most all the languages.

•The verb does not change with the change of the gender unlike most Indian languages .For example, he is coming and she is coming

I think ,despite its popularity the linguistic demerits of English far out weigh its merits.The list of the merits and demerits is not exhaustive there may be some more. If you like you may point out them .Shall we go back to our topic “is English really the greatest language in the world?


I hope the teachers and scholars respond to the topic impartially and enthusiastically.


Yours sincerely,


JVL NARASIMHA RAO


source: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/forum-topic/english-really-greatest-language-world