Trumping them all

Is the dominance of the English language over others because of its perceived aesthetic qualities, clarity of expression, literary power or religious standing? But these qualities did apply also to Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic and French. Is it due to the intrinsic, structural properties of English? Or because it has produced rich literature from ancient through classical to modern times? Not really so. It is because the Us dollar talks in English and so does the British pound.

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Nearly a decade ago, at a nationally televised debate, Donald Trump chided Jeb Bush for speaking another language on the Presidential election campaign trail. "This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish". Ever since, Trump, it is said, has stayed true to his word.

Trump has always shown his apprehension regarding languages coming into the USA, reiterating that migrants are entering the country speaking "truly foreign languages". More recently, he described New York classrooms as overwhelmed with "pupils from foreign countries where they don't even know what the language is."

Elevating English while denigrating all other languages has been a pillar of English and American nationalism for well over a hundred years.

It is a strain of linguistic exclusionism heard in Theodore Roosevelt's 1919 address to the American Defense Society, in which he proclaimed, "We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."

The Japanese novelist Mizumura describes English as a currency used by more and more people until its utility hits a critical mass and it becomes a world currency. Jonathan Arc, a literary critic, goes to the extent of noting, in a critique of what he calls "Anglo-globalism" that "English in culture, like the dollar in economics, serves as the medium through which knowledge may be translated from the local to the global".

Today, when the world is already rife with anti-US sentiments, the talk of de-dollarization is also on the increase, meaning thereby reducing the importance of the US in the three motives that Keynes had ascribed to currency ~ as a means of exchange, as a store of value and for speculation.