Exploring English:

language and culture

Exploring English © British Council 2014

TRANSCRIPT

NICOLE: What do we mean by a ‘global’ language? Do we mean it is spoken all over the world?

Well, yes. But we also mean more than that. How do we measure what makes English a global

language? Watch this.

MARTIN: Well, no, not really. I mean there’s ‘the’ global language which is English in the

sense that English is used in these many different contexts; there’s only one. There are

other languages which are used very widely and spoken by many people in many different

places: Cantonese, for example, a variant of Chinese, is spoken in many different places so

it’s global in a geographic sense and it can be global in the numbers, but in terms of the

use in different areas of education, science, research, English is the only global language.

NICOLE: English is global in the sense that it is used in many different contexts. Cantonese is

global in a geographic sense . But when we measure how global a language is in terms of its use

in different areas. then English is the global language.

These expressions help us to explain exactly what we mean and you’ll be looking at them in the

next step.