NEXT UP! 1 44 English – the “Babel fish” of the modern world According to the Bible all people on Earth originally spoke the same language. However, when the people of Babel tried to build a tower all the way into heaven, God punished them. He confused their language so that they no longer could communicate. Not being able to understand each other was considered a hard punishment. There are approximately 7000 languages in the world today. Most of these languages are only understood by the people who speak them as their mother tongue. This means that most of us can’t use our own language to communicate with people from other parts of the world. We have to find a common language that both can speak and understand. Languages that are used as common languages across the world are called “world languages”. So, what defines a world language? Well, firstly it has to have many speakers. Mandarin Chinese, Hindi and Arabic are all languages that have many speakers. Still they are not world languages because each language is limited to a geographical region. Which leads to the second point. A world language has to be used across national borders. Both English and Spanish are used all over the world, so they both qualify as world languages, but English has by far the most users. It is the “lingua franca” of the world community. English is even the official language of the sky. On international flights, all pilots speak English to each other, to passengers and to the ground crew. People all over the world learn English as a second language in school. The growth of the English language over the last couple of generations has meant a lot for communication across borders. But it has also had effects on native languages. You use far more English in your daily language further reading Before reading Scan the text quickly and look at the illustration. What type of text do you think this is (for example interview, fairy tale, instruction, informative article, short story)? according to – samkvæmt however – samt sem áður to consider – hér: álitið approximately – um það bil limited – takmarkað a lingua franca – alþjóðlegt tungumál a community – samfélag
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