Americanah Post 1: What are some of the interactions between English and other languages worldwide? What does developing a personal identity look like in a globalized world?

In America, it feels like English is the universal language - like no other languages exist. In what language do all-day call operators from places like India speak (rather than possibly Hindi)? What about festivals such as the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, creating dozens of topics for English-language forms of media while jettisoning only one category for the other thousands of languages? According to the BBC, approximately 1.5 billion people - approximately 20% of the global population - have some knowledge of English (even though not nearly as many speak it fluently). I looked at a couple of articles when finding the data here, and many of them use the same term, something I've never heard - "Lingua franca." The definition of a "lingua franca" is something that can be adopted as a common language among people who speak different languages. As BBC describes it, "Imagine, for example, a Chinese speaker who speaks no French in conversation with a French speaker who speaks no Chinese. The chances are that they would use English." I really don't know what else to say regarding this part of the question; English is just sort of the dominant language nowadays.


In a globalized world, I believe that developing a personal identity is not necessarily a requirement, but it is important. It's how you present yourself combined with how you perceive yourself. It's all of the boxes you begrudgingly fill out on a college application, plus or minus a few others depending on who you are. Unfortunately, in this day in age, one's personal identity can be costly. I cannot think of a specific group of people who are not persecuted or defined by racism (yes, I do believe that there is reverse racism in society, although it isn't nearly as prevalent as anti-minority racism). Right now, I think that, for many, developing a personal identity can be costly. However, it is still an important facet in one's life. Hopefully, I can expand my answers to both of the prompt questions in the future.
 Based on this chart, it doesn't look like English is spoken in very many places. However, it should be noted that countries like India have a ton of English speakers, just not a great percentage of the population (because India has over 1 billion people, 12% of the population speaks English, meaning that over 100 million Indians speak English - a lot of people)


Lustig, Robin. “Can English Remain the 'World's Favourite' Language?” BBC News, BBC, 23 May 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-44200901.