Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

particular will split America culturally, linguistically and economically. He 
maintained that the USA might transform in the future into two cultures, 
Anglo and Hispanic, and two languages, English and Spanish. Huntington 
believed that if Mexicans wanted to be part of the American dream, they 
would have to learn to speak English.
In Europe, however, English does not at present appear to face a serious 
challenge. The peoples of Eastern Europe are increasingly learning English at 
the expense of Russian. German has made little headway, although Austria 
and Germany, together with German speakers in Belgium, Luxembourg and 
Alsace, total 90 million, which makes German the most widely spoken first 
language in the EU.
Arabic is also increasing in importance as the lingua franca of the Middle 
East, while Hindi, the official language of India, is a lingua franca, spoken 
by about half a billion citizens. Finally, the most spoken first language in 
the world, but not yet the most widely spoken, is Chinese, with Mandarin 
Chinese as its common written form and increasingly dominant as a spo-
ken form. This is perhaps the most likely challenge to the predominance of 
English in the future.
The decline in language teaching in the UK
However, the growing dominance of the English language as the most 
widespread international language has had a profound influence on the 
learning of foreign languages in the UK itself. There is a tendency for young 
people no longer to see the need to embark upon what is generally believed 
to be a more difficult option than some of the other subjects available on 
the school curriculum. The situation was exacerbated when in 2004 a for-
eign language at GCSE level was deemed by the government to be merely 
an optional rather than a compulsory subject. This has a knock- on effect 
on students’ choice of ‘A’ Levels. In their turn, universities, in a climate of 
economic restraint, have closed a number of foreign language courses, with 
German being particularly badly affected. Independent schools on the whole 
continue to insist on a foreign language and some have introduced basic 
Mandarin, although attempts to introduce Russian and Japanese appear 

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74 Cross-Cultural Communication
to have been less successful. All this is in marked contrast to schools abroad, 
where English is taught in many instances from primary school onwards,