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of colonial oppression in many countries, and is seen today in many countries as a demonstration of the superiority of the West. In some quarters it is felt that the use of English instead of a native tongue as an official language is detrimental to a country's national and cultural identity.

Due to its global nature in an increasingly shrinking world, English is fast becoming the language of commercial and formal communications. This makes it an economically viable language to learn in many developing countries where knowing fluent English can actually lead to increased earning opportunities. This strong economic incentive behind learning English could lead to the relinquishment of native tongues, leading to entire languages dying out.

Another factor that could cause a language to decline is a decline in its literature. There is a growing trend of non-native authors writing in English: Indian or African writers writing in English are becoming quite common. It is a well-documented fact that all authors with very few exceptions have their best literary output in one language alone. If most literature begins to be produced in English, even by authors who have a different mother tongue, it would be a great loss to their original languages.

When languages decline, they take with them rare and precious cultural traditions. This raises fears of loss of cultural diversity which is so vital to the evolution of mankind. Experts think that a uniform world where all cultures and literatures would be similar could become a future scenario if one language reigns supreme. The use of English could very well nudge the existing cultural diversity out of existence.

The effects of becoming globalized would slowly be felt on the English language itself, because it will be adapted to local contexts, form pidgins, and absorb slangs from local cultures. Languages are dynamic in nature, and keep slowly changing over a period according to the times and places in which they are used. The English language is spoken differently in Britain, America, Singapore or Papua New Guinea, with different accents, sentence structures and vocabularies. There are those who fear that the English language could itself end up subdivided into various dialects and languages and may never become a truly global language.

Going forward, the internet is slowly becoming multilingual, which could make the use of English not as important as it is today. An additional factor to be considered is the constantly evolving nature of technology, which is churning out innovations at breakneck speed: devices and interfaces capable of easily and reliably translating from one language to another may become a reality sooner than anticipated. This could render a global language increasingly redundant: English may no longer be required as the language of choice for facilitating communication.

Learn more about this author, Damyanti Ghosh.
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