An international language

English has become an international language in two different ways. First, people almost everywhere in the world learn English in school even if it is not spoken in their homes. Whether it's for business, for enjoying western movies, websites, books, etc., or simply for speaking with American tourists, it makes sense to learn English wherever one lives.

Recently I stayed in a home where several young men from Nepal were living while attending college in Ohio. In conversing with each other they always spoke their native language, but they could switch to English very easily whenever I stepped into the room. I, on the other hand, know English and only English.

I have known visitors from China, Nigeria, South Korea and other countries who spoke my language as well as I did, often without much of an accent. That's because English is an international language. English speakers can visit almost anywhere in the world and find someone who understands what they are saying.

English is international in another way, as well. The language readily welcomes new words from anywhere. While French is a language that discourages acceptance of foreign words, English readily accepts foreign words and is enriched by them.

Consider the origin of several words so common that we might think of them as being English from the start: rocket (Italian), rapids (Canadian French), punch (Hindi), boss (Dutch), emotion (French), tycoon (Japanese), robot (Czech).

The reason foreign words sound English when English speakers say them is that while we may accept foreign words, we do not, as a rule, accept foreign pronunciations. We may accept ukulele from the Hawaiian language, but that doesn't mean we say it the same way native Hawaiians say it. We turned it into an English word.

By contrast, when an English word is adopted into many other languages, it is often pronounced as an English speaker would say it. Thus, it can be surprising to listen to a German radio station, for example, and to suddenly hear English words, said as an American might say them, inserted into otherwise German sentences.

When other languages sometimes adopt English words, they often take them pronunciation and all. English speakers, on the other, welcome words from anywhere, but then we make them our own.