解放军文职招聘考试The Importance of English

 The Importance of English

There are thousands of languages in the world. Each language seems to be the most important to those who speak it as their native language. This is not strange at all, seeing that it is the language they learn­ed at their mothers' knees and may be the only lan­guage many of them will ever know all their lives.

The importance of a language can be judged ac­cording to several things. The first is the number of native speakers that a language happens to have. The second is how widely the native speakers are distribu­ted over the world. Next comes the cultural, economic and political influence of those who speak it as their mother tongue.

There can be no doubt now that English is one of the world's most widely used languages. People use a language in three ways: as a native language, as a sec­ond language, or as a foreign language. English is spo­ken as a native language by nearly 300 million people: in the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, some Caribbean countries, and South Africa. As a second language, English is often necessary for official business, education, information and other ac­tivities in a great many countries such as India, Paki­stan, Nigeria, Singapore, and the Philippines. It is one of the few "working" languages of the United Nations and is more frequently used than the others.

It is said that English has become the language of international trade and transport. Most planes travelling from one country to another use it to talk with airports. All ships sailing on the oceans call for help by radio in it. It has been said that 60 percent of the world's radio broadcasts and 70 percent of the world's mail are in English. At international sports meets, at meetings of scientists from different countries, and at talks of writ­ers and artists from the comers of the earth, English is the language most commonly used and most widely un­derstood.

English has in fact become the language of inter­national cooperation in science and technology. The most advanced results in space, nuclear and computer research are published in it. A scientist who speaks and writes English is in closer touch with the scientists in other countries than one who doesn't.