week 4-1 // would the world be a better or worse place if we all spoke a single language?

1. summarize
English is the third spoken language in the world when used as a standard language. Although it is not the most used language, it is by no means a small number. The most is Chinese, with about 874 million people using it in 16 countries. The second is Indian, with about 366 million people in 17 countries. What we should pay attention to here isn't the amount of language usage in the United States. It is used by 341 million people and is used in 104 countries. There are about 195 countries known to be officially called countries around the world, which means that more than half of them use English as their standard language. It is the most important language in politics, economy, etc. and is still in use. To speak English well is like to mean to have an advantage in the world. Particularly noticeable on the Internet, more than half of the content was written in English, which means that the Internet is also used well only when English is good.

 2. interesting
The importance of English has not changed since the past. English is important to me. English is in school, English is in academy, English is in internet, English is in advertisement, English is in product, and so on. Sometimes I wondered. Why is English so important and I must learn it. But I could get the answer in this lecture. You can see just by looking at the countries that use it. It is easy to look at the number of countries that are using it, even though we don't know the detailed background of that. It is possible to live in a foreign country if you can speak English even though you don't know another language.

3. discussion
However, I wondered if the current phenomenon of everyone focusing on one language was right. Language is not just a tool. I think language is an expression created by the culture and customs of the society. No matter how well you translate, you can't give a nuance of the original language. There are many cases where I can't understand to it and it's so awkward. If I use English, I can send and receive some information, but I don't think I can give an accurate sense of society’s something.

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