How English came to be the world language
English is the de facto world language. As a young German said to me in Kyoto in the 1980s, “they mostly understand English.” It was not his native language, nor (obviously) the native language of the Japanese—but it was the language they both used to communicate with one another.
It is widely assumed that it was the growing power of the USA in the twentieth century that brought about this state of affairs. But, as it happens, this is not the truth—certainly not the whole truth. English has come to be the world language as a result of deliberate planning—by the English themselves, in the 1930s.
One or more ‘Cabinet committees’ were set up, without publicity, to make English the language of choice when foreigners spoke to one another. They had 2 specific aims:
- to replace French as the language of diplomacy;
- to replace German as the language of science.
To achieve these aims, they created 3 new institutions.
- The BBC World Service. Wireless broadcasting had only recently arrived, anywhere in the world, and the BBC itself had only recently come into being. In December 1932, the BBC created a service called the “Empire Short Wave Service.” To make sure that people tuned in to this service, it was committed from the outset to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, without any ‘spin’ (as we should say now), or pro-British propaganda. People would listen to the Service, all over the world, because they wanted to know the truth. It was not designed to promote the United Kingdom; it was designed to unite English speakers, and to encourage foreigners to learn English. Even when the Government took the service over—and it became funded and managed not by the BBC, but by the Foreign Office—it kept to those principles. (The original committee members probably still had some influence, since they themselves had been at the heart of government.)
- The British Council, founded in 1934, with its first overseas offices opened in 1938 (making it the oldest cultural relations organisation in the world). Originally called the British Committee for Relations with Other Countries, it was designed as much to spread the use of the English language as to promote the culture of the UK.
- (Perhaps the most important) English international schools, which the ruling families in every country would want to send their children to. These would be modelled on English “public schools”—which already had a distinctive reputation. From the 1930s on, a great number of these schools were established—many of which still exist—and the teaching was all in English.
In Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), some scenes are set in the United Nations building, where (as a character says) “the speeches are all in French.” This state of affairs didn’t last much longer. The delegates found they were all speaking English to one another, when they were not making speeches. Gradually, it became the dominant language of speeches too.
You will not find much confirmation of this story on the Web. The truth is not online.