Open World p 11. English as a world language. Listening

You will hear a linguist, Maxwell Kingsley, talking about the dominance of English as a world language. Fill in the gaps with one word.

With(0) regard to language diversity we had never been in such a unique situation.
 Languages like Chinese and Spanish are more (1)_______________ than English.
The number of non-native English speakers is (2)____________ greater than the number of native English speakers.
The (3)_____________ of the fact that most conversations among tourists are among non-native speakers are enormous.
It just (4)______/______ that the USA adopted English instead of Spanish.
Latin was not only used in science and theology but also in (5)__________/_________.
When compared to English, Latin was not used (6)____________/___________/__________ as English is. Latin was only used by a small (7)___________.
English is believed to be (8)___________________ other languages. However, it may not play a significant role in the (9)_________________ of human languages.
The fact that smaller languages are (10)___________/____________ might be down to improved communication.
The only downside of the dominance of English is an (11)_________________ for native speakers caused by a lack of necessity to learn a foreign language.
Speakers of other widely-used languages are likely to (12)____________ the rise of English.
Although other languages have also been widely-used in the past, they have (13)_________/_______/_______.
English has only been a (14)___________/___________/____________ for about 50 years.

KEY
1. widespread



2. vastly



3. implications



4. so happened



5. intercultural communication



6. nearly as widely



7. elite



8. threatening



9. diversity



10. dying out



11. impoverishment



12. resent



13. come and gone



14. truly global language