Secondly, a language can be made a priority in a country’s foreign-language teaching, even though this language has no official status. It becomes the language which children are most likely to be taught when they arrive in school.
Why a language becomes a global language has little to do with the number of people who speak it. It is much more to do with who those speakers are. Latin became an international language throughout the Roman Empire, but this was not because the Romans were more numerous. They were simply more powerful. And later, when Roman military power declined, Latin remained for a millennium as the international language of education, thanks to a different sort of power – the ecclesiastical power of Roman Catholicism. There is the closest of links between language dominance and economic, technological, and cultural power, and this relationship will become increasingly clear as we look at the English history.
Nowadays people become more mobile, both physically and electronically. That is why people so often say that the world of modern communications, globalized trade and easy international travelling is a “global village”. And the “global village” needs the “global language”.
So why particularly English does become so popular nowadays? The movement of English around the world began with the pioneering voyages to the Americas and Asia, continued with the 19th century colonial development in Africa and the South Pacific, and took a significant further step when it was adopted in the 20th century as an official or semi-official language by many newly independent states. Now English is the dominant or official language in over 60 countries, and is represented in every continent and in the 3 major oceans. English is the first language in the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zealand. As a second language it is spoken in India, Singapore and other countries.
I think English is the right variant, but there are some disadvantages of the presence of global language too. This will make people lazy about learning other languages, or reduce their opportunities to do so. Perhaps a global language will make all other languages unnecessary and other languages will simply become dead. And this is indeed an intellectual and social tragedy. Than those who speak a global language as a mother tongue automatically be in a position of power compared with those who have to learn it as an official or foreign language.
However, if language dominance is a matter of political and especially economic influence, then a revolution in the balance of global power could have consequences for the choice of global language. So today it is English and maybe tomorrow we will have to learn Chinese. We live in a rapidly changing world and nothing can be predicted.
