Paper 4, Section A

                                            Can English remain the world's favorite language?


The article posted on the BBC website in 2018 envoys mainly English being the world's favorite language. People from all over the world speak English as their first language. Globally, English is known for being the business language because people speak it to communicate with other people around the world. English has been the second language for many people around the world for many decades.

As new generations of people are born all over the world, English is taught to them at a very young age. According to the article, it states, ¨At present… you are going to have a difficult time if you don't speak English,¨ new technology has been invented, meaning, the use of English as a global language has been decreasing, due to the fact that people will rather use a device to translate for them than learning the language. This ties back to the Descriptive Approach Theory by Jean Aitchison. This theory states that English evolves as its user does. In this case, people all over the world have been adapting to English for many decades.

Currently, there are more than 200 countries in the world that are dominant in the English language. According to the article ¨there are more people in China that speak English as their second language than there are Americans who speak it as their first¨ This ties back to Kachru's Circle theory. This theory talks about how a language is used around the world. China and other countries in the world use English as their second language in order to communicate with people from other countries.

According to the article, a computer scientist name Wonkyum Lee is trying to find a way in which people communicate with each other without being able to tell if it is a human or a robot speaking. Christopher Manning stated that in the future he hopes computers get the work done for humans. For example, if a computer can translate entire conversations in any language, we would not have to learn how to speak another language. Manning is hoping that computers will be better at translating than human translators, ¨no reason why… computer translation technology can´t be as good as, or even better than, human translators.¨

There is new technology being developed. According to the article, English won´t be the world's first language for too long. This means it is becoming easier for people to translate conversations, papers, etc. There is no doubt that English will continue to be one of the most popular languages in the world due to the number of people who can speak it. But, it is likely that in the near future that people won't be as interested in learning how to speak it. This threatens the popularity of English as the global language.

Personally, I have used my computer or iPhone in order to communicate with other people that don't speak the same languages I do. It is very helpful to have a tool that can help you translate in just a matter of seconds. It is fascinating to think that technology has increased dramatically over the years. I would not be surprised if computers become better at translating humans. Technology has a great impact on our daily lives and computer translation would make it better.