If English is your first language, there’s a massive chance you can’t speak any other language.

Out of the world’s approximately 7.5 billion inhabitants, 1.5 billion speak English – that’s 20% of the Earth’s population. However, most of those people aren’t native English speakers. About 360 million people speak English as their first language.

I don’t know what the percentage of 360 million people out of 7.5 billion is. Because that’s mental maths. Get that shit away from me. But I know it’s not much. So, if so few people speak English, why is it such an influential language?

It’s a complex question. There are thousands of contributing factors to the dominance of western culture as perpetrated by the English language. Many involve pointing a gun in someone’s face.

So I’m not going to try and answer the question of why. Instead, I want to highlight one single word, and talk about how English is so difficult to learn because of that word.

If you only speak English, grew up in a western culture, and then were tasked with trying to learn another language – “fuck that” might be your immediate response. Western arrogance assumes we only need one language, English, and that everyone else should get up to speed and learn English, rather than us learning Chinese or Arabic.

Imagine trying to learn Mandarin Chinese. The way it’s written, the pronunciation of words and the structure seems so alien to anybody who can only speak English. The same could be said for Arabic or Punjab.

The appearance of those languages on paper with their strange – to us – symbols and markings makes us imagine the languages as strange in our heads. It’s like the enigma code and we can’t crack it.

Now, imagine trying to learn English. It’s hard to imagine, but consider it. Just think of how difficult it would be to learn English.

English is a crazy language. There are so, so many ways to say the same thing. It’s a highly expressive language. But we often use the same word and give it countless meanings. For example, think of the word “set.”

“Set” is a deceptively simple word. Three letters, easy to say. But imagine learning English for the first time and trying to figure out the meaning of “set.”

I can speak French, poorly, but I get by. “Livre” means book in French. I know that. It doesn’t mean much else at all. 99% of the time when I hear the word “livre” used in French I know a book is being spoken about. Nobody in France says “livre une table,” when making dinner plans. They say, “faire une reservation.”

But think of “set” in English. There are so, so many meanings.

“Are you set?” (Ready) Adjective

“Set the table.” (Make) Verb

“My daughter has a train set.” (Item) Noun

“Quiet on set please!” (Location) Noun

And so on and so forth. Seriously, Google the word “set” and just have a scroll through how many different meanings come up. And then imagine coming from China to Dublin with little to no English, and then going to a BBQ and trying to understand the following conversations.

“Set the table please. Where’s your Dad?”

“He’s outside showing John how to set the time on the clock in his new car.”

“I just checked the golf. Woods looks set to take it.”

“We should eat outside and watch the sun set.”

“Mary, you have try the new Italian. They do a lovely set menu.”

“The food looks fab, Mary. Great set up.”

“Wasn’t it wonderful news about Jim’s son’s engagement? Have they set a date?”

“Woods just won the golf. And he set a new record.”

“So, Kate, are you all set for your holiday?”

“Ah he was innocent, no? He was set up.”

Just imagine trying to understand that load of shite. You’d be fucked.

What’s interesting though is that if we all just spoke in numbers, like how computers communicate, that Chinese person would understand. Think about it. We all have different languages and forms of writing to essentially communicate the same thing. But when it comes to numbers we only use one language: Numbers. We might pronounce the words for each number differently using our own unique languages, but on the page, we use the same script.

But fuck getting into that subject.