Approximately 1.52 billion people speak English as of 2024, as the most popular language worldwide, according to the International Center for Language Studies. However, only 25% of those English speakers are native, meaning the other 75% of speakers learned English as an additional or second language. It may not always be easy to speak another language, but if you are multilingual, I applaud you!
I didn’t realize how common English was outside of English-speaking countries until I went on vacation. In places that do not use the Latin alphabet, such as Japan, it was incredibly surprising for me to see English so prevalent there. I used to just brush it aside. It was only when I found a menu in a restaurant in the Netherlands fully in English that the reality sank in for me.
According to UK-based language school Simon and Simon, English has become a widespread language, starting with the colonization of the British Empire, one of the largest in the world. Because colonization attempts to erase indigenous cultures and languages, it’s no surprise that English became a symbol of power and administration.
Later, thanks to the United States and globalization, English became even more widespread. Additionally, since English is present in a lot of media-related fields, science, business, etc., people felt the need to learn it to become more connected with the rest of the world. As it turns out, people start learning English in either elementary or middle school, just like my Egyptian mother.
I remember my dad told me that French used to be on all American passports as one of the most dominant languages worldwide, but that has since disappeared. This just makes me consider how much influence English has.
According to Ethnologue, there are 7,159 languages spoken in the world today, with almost half of them being endangered. This is alarming, and we should be paying attention to this issue. Nonprofits, such as the Endangered Languages Project, are collaborating with speakers of these languages in order to keep them alive.
Recently, I attended CU Boulder’s annual Culture Crawl, an event highlighting various activities relating to diversity. My favorite event I attended was called “Quechua Bingo,” where you play bingo but call the numbers in Quechua. Our hostess, Professor Loyaza, first taught us how to greet others and introduce ourselves in Quechua. She gave us a cheat sheet on how to identify which numbers were being called out. Overall, it was a really fun day, and it opened my eyes to the language, where only around 10 million people speak it. Quechua is an endangered language from the Andes region. As I learned in a class my freshman year dedicated to the region, Quechua declined as Spanish gained prominence after colonialism. People like Professor Loyaza are determined to make sure Quechua does not regress, which I admire her for.
Language learning, at least in my experience, has been very important in the classroom. Growing up, I would take a Spanish class, all the way from elementary school up until high school. Other students took French every now and then, and very few took Mandarin.
Every weekend, my parents always took me to Arabic lessons starting from when I was 10 years old. Not long after, I transitioned into private lessons with my favorite Arabic teacher. Unfortunately, when COVID made people stay at home, I ceased my lessons completely, not realizing COVID was going to be around for much longer than I thought.
As someone who is half-Egyptian, it was my mother’s dream for me to become fluent in Arabic. I will say that sometimes, I was not motivated enough, or I would be caught up in other hobbies. I even wished Arabic were my first language, and I would be learning English, so I would not have to struggle learning Arabic as a native English speaker.
Arabic is consistently ranked as one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers. For instance, language-learning app Babbel ranks it the second hardest. Arabic also has multiple dialects, which makes it challenging to know which one to speak. Fortunately, Egyptian Arabic is one of the easiest and most widely understood dialects, thanks to its prominence in Middle Eastern cinema, according to Kalimah Center.
All the while, I was still taking Spanish, and I found it much easier to learn because Spanish and English both use the Latin alphabet. Additionally, where I am from, it is common to see Spanish written below English on public signs. However, I need to give myself some credit, because after a decade of properly learning Arabic, I mastered the alphabet (including the hardest letters), and I can read and write. The only thing I am continuing to work on is vocabulary.
There are several ways I am becoming more fluent every day. For example, yes, I use Duolingo daily. Even though the app teaches you standard Arabic, the vocabulary is still very helpful! In addition, I practice speaking in Arabic with my mother and grandmother every time I talk with them. I specifically have a vocabulary book in Egyptian Arabic that helps me with words and phrases.
I also started watching videos in Arabic with English subtitles, and I can feel vocabulary come to me naturally. One thing to know about me is that I love painting. I hope to paint scenes of everyday life, and write Arabic vocabulary on objects in my paintings.
Thankfully, my mother, a native Arabic speaker, can tell that my Arabic has improved so much from 2024 to 2025. This is just more motivation for me on my quest to become trilingual!
According to Preply, a language-learning app, around 22% of Americans are bilingual, in contrast to over half of the world’s population. I am determined to be “just another statistic.” I feel so proud of myself every time I can form coherent sentences in either Spanish or Arabic. I hope I can look back on this article one day and be proud of how far I have come from today.
So yes, while English can be convenient for tourism and getting around worldwide, it can suppress the prominence of local languages, even major ones in international cities. When I travel, I do not want to just rely on English. I want to be able to understand signs in Spanish or Arabic. It also feels fitting to see people speak their native language in their home country. If anything, tourists should make an effort to at least know some phrases in the local language. That goes a long way!