Diffusion in Networks for languages
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-english-and-where-is-it-spoken
In the article from babbel magazine, the author, Dylan Lyons, outlines the history of English as a language. Notably, the humble origins from which English began to its current status as a language now spoken by over 20% of the global population. According to the article, Old English, the ancestor of modern day English, came to be after the people of Britain and their Germanic invaders combined their languages into one. Later, after the Norman invasion in 1066, some French and Latin words made their way into the English language. Surely, there were countless changes to English after these events, but these two invasions sparked the most consequential and transformative changes to English. In spite of the substantial foreign influence on the English language, it’s still remarkable that a language spoken on the tiny island in Northern Europe, is now globally pervasive.
We can analyze the spread of languages through the lens of diffusion in networks. Specifically, we can think of nations and land masses as clusters. Furthermore, we can think of the adoption threshold q as the benefit provided to someone by adopting the english language. There are two main stages of the diffusion: British imperialism and the emergence of the US as a global superpower in the 20th century.
Under British imperialism, the colonists, and involuntary British subjects were more or less coerced into speaking the language so they could be better servants and subjects. Accordingly, q was probably high for those that the British interacted with. However, in the scope of the global population, the Imperialists were directly connected to relatively few nodes. To a lesser extent, some of the newly colonized British subjects may have had a high q value as a result of the economic opportunities associated with their English stewards. As we move into the 20th century, this very same economic opportunity is what motivated the substantial rise of English when the US emerged as a global superpower in the wake of a post–World War II economic expansion. Interestingly, “English is by far the most commonly studied language” in the world. This means that English “nodes” are well connected throughout the world. This is a result of the great economic power of the US. As the US has the largest GDP, it makes a lot of sense that it would have such a strong network. Likewise, it makes sense that people who might not have any stake in the global economy would have little reason to care about learning English. For instance, isolated tribal peoples would be an excellent example of the “Clusters as Obstacles to Cascades” concept discussed in the textbook. Overall, its very interesting to consider the spread of English as a language, and how it has been influenced by networks effects.