English As Identity
America’s story is somewhat similar to this. The United States of America was colonised by many countries. Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands, but the major portion belonged to Britain. So when the USA got its independence from the Britishers, they realised the importance of having a national identity and that language plays a very important role.
They decided that this language would be English. Which would unite the various States. You might be surprised to know this but at that time, many languages were spoken in the USA. French, Spanish, Dutch, German, but English was given priority. Priority to the extent that by the early 20th century, several States banned teaching in foreign languages in schools. It was only in 1923, that the Supreme Court of the USA, struck down the private language education restrictions.
The story that I told you till now, explains English being spoken in the countries colonised by Britain. But what about the rest of the countries in the world? No one forced the other countries to use English. The answer to this is hidden in the last 50-70 years, friends. In World War II, the Allied countries defeated the Axis countries. Allied countries like Britain, America and France, defeated countries like Germany, Japan and Italy. The first point is that the countries that win a war of this scale, their culture dominates over the world.
Since English was being spoken in Britain and the USA, it dominated the world. The second important point was that as how the USA became the most powerful country in the world, after the end of World War II, the USA was one of the only countries that didn’t incur huge losses. The developed European countries were devastated. Their economic growth had crashed. But in America, a large economic boom was seen after the end of World War II. After the 1950s, America came up as a superpower along with the Soviet Union.
