A few years ago, I was standing on a landing of the fire escape stairs of the hotel I was staying at in Bern. It was the evening of Swiss National Day, August 1, and I was standing on the fire-escape as this provided an excellent vantage point for viewing the National Day fireworks. I was not alone, as many of the hotel guests were taking advantage of the view that the fire escape stairs offered. Next to me, two women in their early twenties were chatting to each other. Judging by their conversation, they had only recently met as they were asking each other which country they came from, how long they had been in Switzerland and what their immediate plans were. I gathered from overhearing their conversation that one came from Tokyo and the other from Shanghai. What was remarkable about their conversation was not so much the content of their talk, but that they were conducting the conversation in English. They were using English as a lingua franca, as this was the language common to both of them and the one in which they therefore chose to communicate.

A couple of years before that, I was looking around a Thai temple or Wat in Bangkok and stopped to listen to a group of monks chanting their prayers. Just as I was about to move on, the monks finished their prayers, stood up and strolled out of the hall in which they had been praying and were chatting to each other. Despite each of the monks being Asian, they were chatting to each other, not in Thai, as I had assumed they would be, but in English. They were also using English as a lingua franca, the language that these monks shared in common, suggesting that at least some of these monks came from outside Thailand and were not speakers of Thai.

These two vignettes describing the use of English as a lingua franca exemplify how widespread the use English as the world’s lingua franca is becoming. The question is, is it unstoppable? If so, what is the likely future for many of the world’s 7000 or more languages? It certainly seems to be unstoppable as it is gaining speakers in parts of the world where English was traditionally only used as a foreign language, a language that was learned in schools and only really learned because it had to be learned. The British linguist, Gerry Abbot, many years ago gave this type of English teaching and learning the acronym, TENOR, or the teaching of English for no obvious reason. These days, however, there seem to be a number of clear reasons for learning English. In Asia alone, it has been estimated that there are some 800 million speakers of English. There may be more speakers of English in China alone than there are first language speakers of it. The ten nations that form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have made English their sole working language. More and more universities across Asia are introducing courses and programmes taught through the medium of English. And this increased use of English has seen the development, not only of English as a lingua franca, but of local varieties of English of which Singaporean, Indian and Filipino are but just three examples from Asia. We can say English is truly becoming an Asian language.

But what effect has this extraordinary growth of English use had on other languages? As most governments perceive English to be a vital skill for their citizens to acquire, they invest huge resources and time in teaching the language in their school systems. The trend is for English to be introduced earlier and earlier into the school curriculum, typically starting in the third year of primary school. And parents support this. In Hong Kong, for example, many parents prefer to send their children to English medium schools rather than Chinese medium ones, possibly sacrificing literacy in Chinese for their children on the altar of English. So strong is the perceived need for English, it is common for parents who can afford it even to send their children to English speaking kindergartens.

This emphasis on English is having a detrimental effect on other languages. Ministries of Education want their citizens to learn English and their respective national language. There is little room in the curriculum left for other local languages, many of which will be the mother tongues of many of the children. Very few local languages of Asia, with the exception of the national languages, are being taught in a systematic way in Asia’s schools. Even the Philippines, which is unusual in insisting on the use of local languages as media of instruction in primary schools, teach only 19 of the 170 or so languages of the Philippines in this way. And we are talking about a very large number of languages, with Asia being home to some 2300 of the world’s languages. So, the widespread official emphasis on English and the respective national language spells danger for thousands of other languages. Does it have to be this way? Can’t English develop alongside local languages rather than compete with them? Can English become an Asian language while allowing other Asian languages to flourish? The book ‘Is English and Asian Language?’ attempts to answer these questions.