wpmason t1_iuhacww wrote on October 31, 2022 at 9:54 AM

Imperialism.

The British spread their language to all reaches of the world.

But then again, so did Spain and France. (And to a much smaller degree, the Dutch and Portuguese).

But the British Empire accounts for the UK, Canada, USA, Australia, Hong Kong, India, and huge swaths of Africa.

But then America came along and began exporting culture all over the world, primarily in the medium of Hollywood films.

Over the last century, English-language films have been a huge driver of informal English language acquisition. A lot of iconic quotes and slang infiltrated other languages. Things like “OK” became commonly used outside of English because it was easy to understand and pronounce.

And then, following WWII, there was a period of American Imperialism that further cemented English in more places. The US occupied parts of Germany and Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.

And as the UK, and then the US became dominant world superpowers, if became apparent to other language bases that knowing English was beneficial in terms of doing business on the world stage. It”s easier to learn and teach it as a second language that to rely on everything going through translators.

Susurrus03 t1_iuhj5mh wrote on October 31, 2022 at 11:44 AM

Also don't forget other things, like:

Internet was invented in the US, and the buildup of sites in the early days that only snowballed being in English was a result. Obviously other languages exist on the internet by now, but globalization and bringing the world together has its effects.

Language of aviation probably has something to do with it. Idk how past aviators, but I'm sure it helped as more and more traveled.

The US is home to many large international businesses, that businesses from other parts of the world want to interact with. Yes, other countries have large businesses, too, but with a country and population size the US has a large amount. (You mostly mentioned this one I guess.)

Maybe skewed towards my experience, but English very much seems to be used by tourists and the places they're visiting to interact. It is easier to know English than learning the language of every country you're visiting, and likewise for people/countries who want your tourism money it is easier to learn one language vs the language of every person visiting. While there's no specific reason this one should be English outside of places where exclusively English native speaking tourists go, it probably latched onto the other mentioned factors and formed its own thing.

bbqroast t1_iuhk0dx wrote on October 31, 2022 at 11:53 AM

France actually did a lot of work on the early internet too and even had their own network parallel to the internet.

I suspect English was just more cemented by that point, and possibly the fact France was a fair bit poorer in the 1980s than the US slowed the uptake of consumer digital electronics (and thus content creation on the internet).