::Ensayo::

According to data offered by the British Council approximately 375 million people speak English as their native language and another 375 million speak it as second language. In all, the world's population that uses the English language actively is smaller than 25 percent. But the importance of this language in the world doesn't reside in the number of people that speaks it but in the utility that it has for its users. It is the language in which international business is carried.

Due to the cultural and language barriers that all corporations face is of supreme importance that people carry-out commercial transactions in a common language, allowing for partners in other cultures to communicate. This way a Peruvian businessman could communicate with his Japanese partner in English. For most of the world's markets, the main sources of valuable information and financial resources are magazines like "Time" and "Newsweek", the channel CNN and Wall Street Journal - this are all written in English.

Also government, diplomatic and international organization matters are managed in this language. For example, English is the official language of the Organization of the United Nations, as well as of Central European Bank and the CLEAN (Association of Nations of the Asian Southeast). English is also used for the international communications of marine and air traffic. English is the spoken language for international communications through channel satelites. The Internet transmits an enormous quantity of information, most of which is in English. It is is considered that 80 percent of the information electronically stored in it is in English. More than half of the newspapers and magazines of the world are published in English; only in India three thousand magazines are published in this language. In many Non-English speaking countries at least one television channel offers the news in English.

English is a dominant language in topics related with different professions and in the sciences. English is the language in which international conferences are frequently conducted. All technological and scientific advances are published in the English language so they can reach a larger audience. The works that are published in other languages still take the title, summary and/or abstract but the keywords are in English.

Tourism is another area in which the English language plays an outstanding part. Tourists need a lot of information, such as maps, video recordings, posters and visual signs in airports and tourist places which they show-up in English. Same goes for people that are tourists guides, taxi or bus drivers and hotel personnel, they usually communicate with certain dexterity in English; This considerations may also extend to restaurants, bars and cafeterias personnel.

Pop culture has played an important role in the expansion of this language. British and American music is listen to all over the world; same thing can be said of movies and books written in this language. English is so important to Pop culture that one of the reasons people want to learn to speak English is so they are able to understand the songs, movies and books that are expressed in this language. English offers another advantage. Compared with Spanish, English is easier to learn since it doesn't use accents, the verbal times are simplified and the adjectives don't vary in gender nor numbers.

The current demands to acquire the English language as a second language is such that it is considered that in one decade half of the world's population will speak this language with some expertise. English is the world's language of the 21st century. Many European countries have abandoned its desire to win followers of their own languages. Instead they are promoting to learn English as a second language in schools as part of their basic learning curriculum. This is the case of Germany. In Switzerland, for example, three official languages exist: German, French and Italian; however, this country has adopted the English language recently as a second election language but it didn't replace one of its official languages. While some defend the creation of new identities and the postulate that a bilingualism should be fomented that points to preserve the native culture of the new English-speaker, others plead to standardize a formal English training. However, many immigrants and global users of the English language prefer to use a variant of this language that the standardized formal English that is difficult to learn for many.

The fact is that there is much interest in the entire world to learn this language since they consider it an useful tool to communicate with the rest of the world. Taking into consideration that the percentage of the use of this language in the Internet is diminishing as the transmission of information grows in other languages, English is here to stay. Everything indicates that the economic, political, technological and academic transactions among the cultures will continue to be carried out in this language and that the users around the globe will continue to adapt this language to their cultural own forms, personalizing it, reaffirming it as the true language of the XXI Century.