English

English is a West Germanic¹ language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a global lingua franca.² The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain after its Roman occupiers left.

English is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. English is the third-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language³ speakers than native speakers.⁴

I grew up in an Indian region where spoken language can change every few kilometers. It is a fun fact that in the women-run market selling vegetable, and general items, people can communicate in pretty-ish good English or at worst in Monosyllable English to communicate with non-native speakers or even amongst the different groups speaking different dialects.

Recently, I had another encounter with an anecdote that’s become a recurring theme in my life. I was talking to my daughter and her friend in a language we are comfortable with, English. Someone who overheard our conversation for quite a while asked me which country we are from.

“My daughter and I are very much from India. Her friend is American and is visiting India.” Then, it went to which part of India we are from? “I’m from Manipur.” He then went on a tangent as to why our local language is a much easier way to convey our thoughts and heart, and English is the language of the oppressor! He gave me a tirade of advice and suggestions to teach my daughter the language of India.

Of course, he spoke to me in Hindi, while we all are in Bangalore, a region in South India. I listened, OK-ed, and thanked him for his advice. He also walked off as he picked up a phone call on his Android Phone powered by the English interface.

For many Indians, the word “English” still carries the weight of history. We hear variations of the same argument: English is the tongue of oppressors, so drop it and speak only our mother tongues. I get the emotion. I also think it is the wrong frame.

Language is an art. It deserves care and nourishment. It is also a utility. English today is a tool used by more people outside its historical core than within it. Your language is your identity; English is your passport. We can protect the first and still carry the second.

Let’s strip off the mythology and look at what English actually is in the 21st century: a neutral, global interface that powers science, software, trade, and everyday collaboration across borders.

English is a Language, Not a Flag

Roughly 1.5 billion people use English worldwide. Most are not native speakers. That alone tells you English is no longer tied to any one caste, creed, color, or region. It is a shared protocol for communication.

Linguists have a helpful way to think and describe as the “three circles” of English.

1. Inner Circle: Natives (UK, USA, Australia, etc.).
2. Outer Circle: Regions where English functions as an institutional second language (India, Singapore, Nigeria).
3. Expanding Circle: Regions where English is learned as a foreign language (China, Japan, Brazil).

The point is simple: norms and uses of English are plural. There isn’t one owner. There are many Englishes, including our own Indian English.⁵

Science and Academia

If you publish or read research, you navigate English. Studies consistently show that the vast majority of indexed scientific articles, often cited as more than 90%, are published in English. It means a single language accelerates the global exchange of knowledge.

Universities outside the Anglosphere increasingly teach in English to attract international students and plug into global research networks. As a snapshot, Germany alone lists 1,500+ English-taught degree programs, while many non-English European countries now offer thousands of courses in English across disciplines. The trend is not about identity; it is about interoperability.

Computers & the Internet

English is also the lingua franca of the Internet. Around half of all websites are in English, the largest share by far. That content footprint makes documentation, tutorials, and standards more discoverable.

Internet standards themselves are written in English. The IETF’s RFC Series, the documents that define the protocols you use every day, explicitly requires English as the publication language, with precise keyword semantics such as “MUST,” “SHOULD,” and “MAY” that have precise technical meanings. This is not cultural imperialism. It is a global engineering discipline that enables networks and software developed in different countries to interoperate.

Most programming languages also use English keywords, and core developer communities, from version control to package registries, operate primarily in English. That shared vocabulary is why a script written in Bangalore runs cleanly on a server in Tokyo and is debugged by a contributor in Warsaw.

Skies and Seas

When your safety depends on cross-border clarity, you choose a lingua franca. In aviation, pilots and air traffic controllers involved in international operations must demonstrate ICAO Level 4 English proficiency. At sea, the International Maritime Organization codifies Standard Marine Communication Phrases in English to reduce misunderstandings during routine and emergency operations. Global mobility rests on shared words everyone can trust.

India

India is a multilingual country first and always. The Constitution designates Hindi and English as the Union’s official languages for administrative purposes; English remains central for courts, higher education, and national coordination.

The 2011 Census reported about 129 million people who could speak English (first, second, or third language), roughly 10.6% of the population at the time. That makes English one of India’s most spoken languages by total speakers.

English is not replacing our languages. It is augmenting them. The Indian model that works combines a strong mother tongue with fluent English. That bilingual stack expands local markets and global reach.

Looking at our neighbor China, they present the clearest case of English as utility, not identity. Estimates place English learners in China at over 300 million, almost the size of the entire United States. English has been compulsory from Grade 3 in most regions since the early 2000s, and it is a Gaokao subject in many provinces.

In EF EPI 2024, China ranks 91st with a score of 455, close to Japan, though major hubs like Shanghai and Beijing tend to outperform national averages. The direction, however, remains consistent: English is a core skill in China’s outward-facing economy.

Japan has long wrestled with English instruction, but there is steady movement. A 2025 education ministry survey shows over half of junior-high and senior-high students meeting national English targets (using Eiken equivalency), with teacher proficiency climbing too. The British Council also notes clear year-on-year gains in teacher CEFR levels. Proficiency rankings still place Japan low globally, yet the baseline is improving, and bilingual education options are expanding.

If you want your work cited, you publish or at least abstract it in English. That is where most of the global conversation lives. The goal isn’t to erase local scholarship. It is to bridge local insight to global discourse. Many European and Asian universities run English-medium programs for precisely this reason: researchers and students need to plug into a single, shared index of knowledge.

Try building a production system without English today. Your APIs, RFCs, libraries, cloud services, and package managers are all documented in English. The RFC Style Guide, which governs the publication of Internet standards, explicitly standardizes English for clarity and consistency. That choice has made the Internet interoperable.

Global supply chains then standardize documentation, contracts, and quality systems around the same language. If you are an Indian founder selling into the EU, a Japanese OEM, and a U.S. cloud marketplace, you benefit from one consistent “ops language.”

“Language of Oppressors” Myth

The empire is gone. The paperwork stayed.

English in India today is not about pleasing the British. It is about serving Indians, as a means to write papers that get read, to land global customers, to contribute to open source, to negotiate with a supplier in Shenzhen, to read a spec hot off the IETF press, and to onboard a teammate in Vietnam. That’s a tool. Tools deserve evaluation by utility, not by origin story.

The best counterexample to “oppressor’s language” is how thoroughly non-native communities have localized English. Indian English is full of our rhythms and references. We coin terms, shift meaning, and export our usage back into global tech and media. The same is true in Singapore, Nigeria, and the Philippines. When the majority of English speakers are outside the native core, the language belongs to all its users.

Local vs. English is a False Choice

We should absolutely nourish our languages. Teach them. Create in them. Build high-quality content in Assamese, Kannada, Manipuri, Marathi, Tamil, Odia, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, and more. At the same time, we should master English to reach.

Your language stack is like your tech stack:

• Mother tongue for culture, relationships, early learning, and local markets.
• English for research, standards, global markets, and cross-border collaboration.
• Bilingualism is not a burden; it is a feature. India has operated like this for decades. The data shows sizable bilingual and trilingual populations, and a durable trend toward English-medium education where families can access it.

How about?

1. Mother-tongue first, English early. Foundational learning in the home language improves comprehension. Add English early for digital literacy and global reference material.
2. Teach for use, not just tests. Focus on writing clear emails, reading docs, presenting ideas, and contributing to Global Collaborative Project (Open Source), real tasks that build fluency.
3. Adopt global standards literacy. Make RFC reading groups fashionable again. Understanding how standards are written will improve engineering quality.
4. Publish twice when you can. Produce work in your local language for community impact and an English version for global visibility.
5. Build local content ecosystems. Encourage high-quality tech explainers, glossaries, and developer tutorials in Indian languages. That complements, not competes with, English.

English is not a badge of superiority. It is a connector. It lets a product manager in Bengaluru align with a designer in Tokyo, a researcher in Helsinki, and a supplier in Shenzhen. It lets a young founder in Imphal pitch in San Francisco without losing the texture of their Manipuri identity at home. We should celebrate our languages and invest in them. We should also treat English as shared infrastructure, like roads and fiber. The choice is not between pride and pragmatism. It is both.

If the goal is to build, ship, and publish at global scale, speak your mother tongue with love and use English with confidence. The future belongs to those who can do both fluently.