Paper 4 Section 1

  The first issue raised in the text is the issue of how more people speak English as a second language than Americans that speak it at all. According to the text, “There are probably more people in China who speak English as a second language than there are Americans who speak it as their first.” This, at first glance, doesn't seem like a problem. But upon further examination and pondering, you can see how that could mean the loss of English as a first language. As China begins to dominate the business side of the world and puts a strong foothold in the internet, more people will start to speak Mandarin than English

The loss of English is already beginning to be seen in America. According to the text, “A fifth of Americans speak a language other than English in their own homes.” America’s cultural influence can be seen around the world so seeing this shift in language is puzzling. However, if fewer Americans speak English, it may mean that it isn’t seen as the world's common language. For example, if a Chinese person and a French person walk into a Polish bar and none of them speak each other's languages. Chances are, they'll speak in English since it is common on the internet and in business, music, and many other sects. After all, according to the text, English is “the world's favorite language.” So it doesn't seem at first like English is going anywhere any time soon. 

However, English is starting to become the world’s second language rather than its most common. According to the text, “about 1.5 billion people around the world speak it – but fewer than 400 million have it as their first language.” That means that more than a quarter of the people that speak English, speak it as a second language (roughly 26.6 percent). That number continues to rise as the internet becomes more global since more people are exposed to English and must learn it as a second language to access much of the content on the internet.

According to labs.theguardian.com, English is the top spoken language on the internet with roughly 800 million users worldwide using it on the internet (as of 2013). The second is Chinese (Mandarin) close behind with roughly 650 million users worldwide. 

However, English is shrinking in usage and Mandarin is booming. According to  labs.theguardian.com, “English’s relative share of cyberspace has shrunk to around 30%...” and “Chinese, for example, grew by 1277.4% between 2000 and 2010.” English was the pioneer language on the internet but now it makes up roughly 25% of the internet and continues to shrink.

Another issue presented in the text is that people are incapable of utilizing the internet in its entirety since they can’t speak English, Mandarin, French, etc. This issue is being addressed, though, with translation and voice-recognition software becoming more sophisticated. According to the text, “...translation and voice-recognition technology that when you call a customer service helpline, you won’t know whether you’re talking to a human or a computer.”