Why not French, Arabic, or even Chinese. Well, now, China are getting more dominant in the business world, because of their robust economic growth, geographically large country, and has one of the highest labor capacity in the world. But this was achieved only until a few years ago, when its Government started a reform on its policies and open up its doors to the outside world.
As the world passes through time, English slowly became the dominant language of the world thanks to "the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, via the British Empire,and of the United States since the mid-20th century. It has dispersed to become the leading language of international discourse, and has acquired use as lingua franca in many regions.It is widely learned as a second language and used as an official language of the European Union and many Commonwealth countries, as well as in many world organizations. It is the third most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish."
Hegemony---
"However, English language hide its existence as a pernicious 'tool' of discrimination that does nothing but widen social disparities. Why do people yearned to become proficient in English and virtually worshipping it ever since it established its superior status among other foreign languages? English is no longer such a harmless thing. It is breeding a discrimination and inequality because people are being "classed" into English speakers and non-speakers. It seems like native speakers and people who have studied or lived for many years in English speaking countries have an advantage over everyone else in the work force and the international scene. This is total 'Hegemony of the English language'."
"Nowadays some local firms (non english speaking countries) are making it as its official in-house language. There are three problems that would stem out of this proposition."
"First, using english as communication would have a huge impact on the local society. People would see this as a proof of the importance of having English skills, and this in turn will reinforce the structure of domination by this language."
"Second, native speakers of English will gain tremendous advantage over their colleagues in all areas of communication, which is bound to breed a new type of language-based social disparity."
"Third, the firms might prioritize foreigners, and what a greater anomaly is there than to be unable to communicate in your native tongue in your own country?"
The above was quoted and summarised from the interview with Yukio Tsuda for Asahi Shimbun (Japan's local newspaper). He is a professor in the Nagoya University. He is an opponent of the "hegemony of English" as well as a proponent of linguistic pluralism and the concept of "Ecology of Language". He believes that domination of English is tantamount to linguicide and that addressing the problem of linguistic hegemony is crucial to the development of "human and cultural security".
I guess he has his points there, and they all are well worth pondering.
