ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 deals with power relations between languages in the world.
As a result of colonization, European languages were exported all over the world. Based on its number of speakers as well as its power in the world, English is the world’s main language, followed by Chinese, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
The languages in the top ten most spoken languages in the world represent the major civilizations in the world. The dominance of English is due to the legacy of the British Empire and the power of the United States. Yet English is not the lingua franca it is often believed to be. It is, however, the language of globalization. This chapter also discusses Chinese, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi, Malay, Bengali and Dutch.
The Global Language System (GLS) distinguishes between peripheral, central, and supercentral languages. English is the only hypercentral language in the world. The present GLS originated in seventeenth-century Europe, when French emerged as the supercentral language. Germany and its language gained power in the nineteenth century, foreshadowing both world wars. The end of the Second World War marked the demise of French and German, while the power of English increased worldwide.
