Why does the world speak mainly in English? This is because we are culturally alienated. We constantly hear and read about explanations that made the Arabic language backward, while the English language became a global language as it is the language of software and science.
But the truth is that no language is considered a universal language because of its structural features or because of the size of its vocabulary or because it was a vehicle to reach out to great literature of the past or because it was once associated with a great culture or a renowned religion.
These are all factors that can motivate someone to learn a language, but none of them can guarantee the spread of the language in the world. In fact, such factors cannot even guarantee survival as a living language — as shown by the case of Latin, which today as a classical language is learned only by a few scholars and religious people.
If anyone got into a time machine and turned the clock of history back to the year 1900, they would notice that when traveling around almost half of the world’s territories, the British flag was seen flying in different regions around the world. There were different empires that helped create modern American civilization and these included the Spanish, Dutch, French, and the British.
The British cultural influence continued to remain the most dominant one in the United States for centuries. This was primarily due to the settlement, conquest, habitation, and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Indian populations extending from Jamestown, Virginia, and eastern Massachusetts in the early 17th century until the 1960s, when Hawaii became the 50th US state.
Throughout this long period of American history, the Anglo-American civilization was growing, conquering, and dominating the United States. This also included the increasing dominance and widespread use of the English language. As the postwar period began in the late 1940s, the centuries-old French and British empires were on the decline, and their unofficial heir was the United States.
With the spread of Soviet Russia's Communism throughout Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the world, coupled with the almost invincible presence of the American military in every country of Europe and the Pacific during World War II, which ended with the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clear to the world that there is “a new policeman ruling the world.” And with this policeman, his English language also started spreading widely.
In other words, in my opinion, the reason for the superiority of the English language is the spread of the vast British Empire during the first part of the 20th century. This was followed by the American legacy of British imperial rule during the middle part of the 20th century, which continues up to this day, and this was not because of the ease or difficulty of using the language.
