This House believes in a global language

English has in the 20th century become the global language; it is the language of trade, diplomacy and the internet. English has 400 million mother tongue speakers in the world, and another 500 million second tongue speakers. There have been many 'lingua franca' languages before, Greek in the ancient world then Latin in the Christian world until the seventeenth century and more recently French. However these languages have always been the language of the elite. English is both much more wide spread geographically and is not just an elite language so is having a much bigger effect and is in a much better position to become a single language for everyone. But is its marginalisation of other lesser, regional languages, a good thing? The advance of English is resisted within many cultures who see language as an essential component of identity as well as a key tool for accessing the history and literatures of individual peoples (George Orwell explored this theme in his novel 1984 with Newspeak, a language created with the purpose to suppress a population's thoughts), yet others believe one global language would be useful; in fact L. L. Zamenhof created Esperanto specifically for this purpose at the end of the 19th century (although Esperanto never really gained ground as a language in its own right). Should everyone be taught English as to make the language the only one globally?