Why english

I might just be a dumbass, but what set the British apart from other nations in Europe? why were they so successful and why is their language still literally everywhere?

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They had the right conditions to industrialize first. As a result they were able to create a global empire. English is everywhere now partly because of that but mostly because everyone does business with the US and thus has to learn our language. Being world hegemon has its perks.

>why is their language still literally everywhere?
Because business.

If you want to make money on an international scale you have to converse in English. I.e. if you are a Chinaman trying to do business with a Turk, you would both learn and converse in English. There are courses you can take when doing TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) degree which am at exactly this, teaching enough English to an individual so they can understand their business meetings and nothing more.

In short, all the rich people spoke English, everyone who wants to make some of that money need to converse with them. Watch it change to Chinese in the next 50 years though.

A lot of it has to do with geography. Britain is an island, which makes it easy to defend if you have a large navy. The English channel saved Britain's ass many, many times. And of course, having a nice large navy has utility beyond purely defensive measures.......

This and also the Glorious Revolution.

It's very useful having people be able to form companies and patent inventions relatively easily, without too many problems.

I certainly hope you meant "Industrial Revolution."

You can't have rule of law without constitutional government, and you can't have a free market without rule of law.

Fight me IRL.

>tfw turks stopped byzantines from inventing steam power and ushering in an industrial age early

They copied the dutch and Portuguese examples of strategically taking land to best control trade and key resources, but they had a significantly larger population and their status as an island nation meant that pursuing this strategy didn't leave them vulnerable to invasion.

Later on they were among the earliest and most aggressive adapters of steam power and industrialization.

As for the language that's mainly due to the fact that they were the world's leading maritime and business nation for well over a century, and were then eclipsed by another english speaking nation. When international maritime standards were enacted after the Titanic disaster it was agreed that English would be the sole language of maritime communication. By mid century when international standards were made for aviation it was similarly agreed that english would be the sole language used. Its worth noting that during the 19th and early 20th century French, not English, was considered the international lingua franca for diplomacy.

They're not historically substantially more successful than the French or the Spanish, who are the only really comparable countries in terms of geographic locale and early centralization. But the Spanish got fucked over by being involved in Hapsburg dynastic squabbles and the French got fucked over by having World War I take place on their soil.

So basically, good fortune.

I like byzabooing myself, but we can't blame Turks for this. Byzantines were perhaps doing well and good in terms of the whole innovation department, but this was all undone with the 4th crusade. Afterwards, Byzantium remained a backwater with ostent of empire. There's a great account that if interested I can dig up of 14th century Byzantines being bewildered by how much the Venetians and Genoans we're greatly outperforming them in terms of commerce and this owing to the later two's nascent inventing of 'accounting.' Something to the effect of a governor writing to the Emperor advising him that they should send some of their youth to Italy to study the Italian "counting ways." As a whole, it points to a state of decay that the Turks of Osman merely happened upon.

Though even pre 1204 is up for questioning.

Geography is destiny.

>but what set the British apart from other nations in Europe?

They're on an island.

No geography is potential, nations are still capable of fucking up and wasting what advantages geography gives them.

OP here, thank you guys for the explanation. that's something that's been bugging me for a while

>All brits shared a language since forever
>All brits share the success

Seriously though, the glorious revolution is nothing to fuck with

The English were successful well before WW1. Your point makes no sense.

Ireland is an island. But they got raped for a thousand years.

>China existing in 50 years

That's funny.
You're funny.

Even if the PRC loses power, there would probably be no territorial changes as a result.

>why is their language still literally everywhere?

American domination since the end of WW2
French used to be the lingua franca before that (albeit not as widspread)

>French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations (lingua franca) in the 17th century. It retained this role until approximately the middle of the 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War.[46][47]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language#History

The 19th century British "Third-World" Empire had literally no influence on civilized countries, and the fact Europe, Japan, Russia, China....etc speak English as a 2nd language now is gecause of US influence
You an find countless of testimony from US G.I.s in Europe and the civilians who met them showing that no one in Italy, France, Netheralnds and Germany could speak a word of English and all had to use French to communicate with each others

the glorious revolution set the stage for the industrial and agricultural revolutions, it created the political climate that helped everything that followed

I'm so grateful for America's efforts in making the French meme language irrelevant.

It's crazy how ironic history can be
English replaced French as the international language because France won a war against Britain in 1783

British and then US Empires helped more.

As stated above, the British Empire was a joke and never made English language relevant outside of its borders (and even in the shitholes it ruled, less than half the pop could speak it)
Even at its heigh, French was still more relevant (German diplomats in 1914 adressed British ones in French).

It's almost exclusvely the US domination after WW2 and American mass media that made English so widspread and relevant

France also had napaleon wars.

They spent about 200 hundred years working on their navy.

Don't be fucking stupid.

India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, a billion various islands, Malaysia, Singapore, etc, etc.

But how both Germany and France failed to cross that short channel is beyond me

because we had, both guns, germs and steel.

You, don't be stupid
Do you think it's any of these shitholes/irrelevant countries (the only two categories present in your list) that made English language relevant?
Clearly not
English is relevant because it's spoken in the civilized world, and US cultural domination is the reason it is

Helicopters weren't a thing until very recently

Britain is an island. Because it is an island, Britain was forced to become a nautical nation. Many times, Britain has successfully defended itself from invasion by the sea. This led to a greater ability than their neighbors to conduct overseas trade and establish overseas colonies that they could defend by the sea. Because of their ability to defend the best colonies, the British got the best colonies.

Americans, Canadians, Australians and others are all descended from these colonists, and our freedom was guaranteed many times by the sacrifice of British sailors and soldiers. So even now, when the empires of centuries past have been dismantled and massive superstates have been balkanized, the Eternal Anglo marches on.

I never said it wasn't. Go reread the post.

> British and then US Empires helped more.

You obviously lack any kind of intelligence. And calling those places 'shitholes and irrelevant' just confirms you're some kind of foreign teenage contrarian. Good day.

It's not Britain, it's America.

A lot of people just say it was the conditions for industrialization, ignoring the massive leaps in ways of thinking and our idolization of the Romans and Greeks.

i wish i was american ;-;

>change to Chinese
I am skeptical of this, simply due to the fact that Chinese is such a difficult language to learn. While it is easy to learn the basics of speech the system of writing in characters makes it very difficult to gain enough fluency to conduct business or meaningful interaction.

There's also the cultural aspect, Chinese media isn't consumed internationally at any significant level. Perhaps that will change in a few decades but not without substantial change in the way children are raised and educated.

No doubt Chinese will rise in prominence but current signs don't point to it becoming a lingua franca.

aren't the Chinese huge esperantists?