Link: English

By Alejandro Diaz Naranjo (The World in English elective)

Language is what set us apart from other living beings, allowing us to share information, knowledge and many other things. More than 7.000 languages are spoken in the world, it means that there are almost 7.000 cultures that have something to share (Tendencias Portafolio, 2013). As Wade Davis, and anthropologist at Harvard University, said: “There is other ways of living, other ways of thinking, other ways of orienting yourself in earth” (Davis, 2003), and every single culture is important to the earth because it gives the humanity the opportunity to learn and expand the knowledge.

Therefore, how we can communicate with other cultures and learn from them?

With many languages in the world, English has become the most learned language, the importance of English has been growing exponentially, more and more universities have adopted English as their second language, they give classes in English and motivate their students to do writing and research in English. Hence the importance of English, because it has become the link between cultures and knowledge. 

Let is imagine that everyone speaks a different language, how difficult would be the communication and the development? It would be difficult. Mark Pagel gives a good example saying that the European Union use a permanent staff of 2.500 employees just to translate the 24 official languages (Pagel, 2011). English has become the link between cultures, the importance of share knowledge is bigger than ever, and the Internet allows us to learn, communicate and share almost with every corner in the world.

In conclusion, the need to standardize a language for everybody is growing every single day. As well as the metric system or the sixty system to measure time, the humanity needs one language to communicate, as Pagel said, it is our destiny, and I personally believe that (Pagel, 2011). One language is our destiny without making disappear other languages.