English Everywhere

U.S. born people are almost the only people in the world who never bother to learn another language. We automatically expect everyone else to learn English and most of them do. We are the ones who suffer for that. DP

Speaker's Corner: It's the universal, global, one-size-fits-all language. Eric Lucas says it's not enough.

By Eric Lucas

“Do you speak English?”

The impeccably dressed young man behind the hotel counter in Dresden looked at me as if I’d asked whether he ever takes a shower.

“Of course,” he replied, briskly. Oxford-style accent.

“Sorry, of course you do,” I apologized, moving on to my question about how to find a restaurant. That night at dinner, as I was having a conversation with our waitress, I mulled my language provincialism. I know a smattering of German—hello, please, thanks, good morning, etc.—but have not gone much beyond the basics in Deutsch. My lack of knowledge was no impediment whatsoever to the purple-tressed 22-year-old Goth who brought a Saxon-style meal and easily answered my questions about it. In English.

“Danke,” I said.

I might have said, “Masha danki,” or “Mil gracias,” or “Tack så mycket,” or “Dziekuje,” or “Hsieh-hsieh,” had I been in Bonaire, Mexico, Sweden, Poland or Beijing. Most everyone in those places could have looked me up and down, determined my provenance, and replied “You’re welcome.” In English.

English is everywhere these days. It has become the universal, global, one-size-fits-all language. Estimates place its worldwide use among 1.5 billion people—quite a preponderance, considering native speakers of English number around 450 million. Almost any human working in the travel industry, Earth’s biggest economic arena, speaks some English. Commercial pilots are expected to do so. Bankers, customs and immigration officials, police officers, corporate managers, food servers, retail clerks—are all largely English-speaking, around the world. The language that was once an imperial weapon has been utterly transformed into a peaceable necklace embracing all. No matter where we go, we Americans, people speak our language, willfully. The question is: What should those of us who grow up speaking English do as the rest of the world adopts our language?
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