Chapter 3 of David Crystal’s book “English as a global language”

highlights some important factors in the nineteenth-century social

history which laid the cultural foundation for the eventual growth of
English as a global language.

Although English had established a position as the language of

popular literature, there was still a strong tendency towards the use of
Latin in all fields of knowledge. The problem with English was that
there was generally no accepted grammatical system that everyone
could conform to. The variability of English spelling was an important
part of the instability which people felt characterized the English
language in the 16th century as compared with Latin. In 1582, Richard
Mulcaster (who was a school head master) defended the language by
making an effort to stabilize spelling and writing for about seven
thousands of the most common words in English. But at same time,
he also recognized that English could not compete to become a global
language because of the limited expanse of its use.

Contrarily, John Adams [1780] believed that “English is destined

to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language
of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age.”
English became important because people who speak it were important-
politically and economically. English is now the dominant or official
language in 75 territories which is a direct legacy of the British Empire.
By the time anything resembling a language policy was introduced,
English had already reached all corners of the globe through
colonialism.

The spread of English began in 16th century, when the language

became a tool of imperial expansion, and end up by gaining a special
place in the history of significant number of countries. David Crystal
quotes William Russell, who writes that “the establishment of British
schools in Asia and Africa would tend to conquer the heart and its
affections which is a far more effectual conquest than that obtained
by swords and cannons ...” [Crystal, 79] In India, for instance, English
was established firmly as the medium of instruction by the British Raj
and People in British colonies who wanted education would receive that
education only in English.

The most obvious effects of English Expansion are to be seen in

the vocabulary. One important characteristic in English grammar is that
English is distinctly varied and flexible in some of its verbal expressions
than other languages. The development of the progressive passive is
attributed to the 16th century which shows that English is a living and
growing thing: that its grammar is constantly growing.

British colonialism was the first step of the expansion of English

across the world. But the Industrial Revolution is also very important
in terms of the spread of English. Britain was the leader of the
Industrial Revolution, and large-scale manufacturing and production
machinery were just some of the major technological advancements
being pioneered there. Countries which needed this new industrial
knowledge could access it only through the medium of English,
something which made English internationally powerful again.

The omnipresent usage of English in media and entertainment has

also helped spread English to even greater height and greater
geographical areas. Crystal points out that, with the introduction of the
printing press, English was widely published and made available for
reading along with the cinema and music becoming popular
entertainment technologies which mainly came from the dominant
English speaking nations- USA and UK (2006). Through enormous
influence and overtaking of the commerce, technology, education and
the political grounds, English has been adopted as the “global language”.