Journal of English Language Teaching

English as Lingua Franca: a Brief Review from Indo-Europeans to Global English

Ricardo Casan-Pitarch

Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, Murcia, Spain

Keywords: English, Lingua Franca, Global English, Language

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Abstract

English as Lingua Franca is a status that this language has obtained after the recognition of society.  This paper introduces a brief bibliographical review on the evolution of the English Language towards its status of Lingua Franca. There are different historical, economical, military, and technological reasons that support and explain the achievement of this status.  These reasons are introduced in this paper with the aim of providing a general perspective on this topic.  This paper starts with an explanation about the origin of the Indo-European languages and moves towards the first Lingua Franca used in history; then the main focus lies on how English has become a global language in the current society, resulting in a language that has more non-native speakers than natives ones.

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