KarakterløftetEnglish as a World Language
Learn to describe how English grew from a small island language to the world's lingua franca – the historical spread, the varieties it created, and what global status does to a language.
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Just enough theory to use it
The curriculum asks you to describe central features of the emergence of English as a world language. The story has clear stages: Germanic settlers made Old English; the Norman Conquest in 1066 flooded it with French; the printing press standardised it; the British Empire exported it to every continent; and American economic and cultural power made it global in the 20th century. Today English is the world's lingua franca, with far more second-language than native speakers, and it keeps splitting into varieties – World Englishes – from Indian English to Nigerian English. A strong answer names the stages and explains the mechanisms: conquest, trade, empire, technology and culture.
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Real stories you can use in your answer
Read the whole story before you use it – then you can answer when the teacher follows up.
