The formation of English dominance has gone through a long time. Just as Robert of Gloucester said before, English is a language that humble people spoke 1300 years ago. In the following 200 years, the development of English has undergone the period of old English, the period of French-influencing and the period of medi-evil English. 1500 years later, modern English was taking shape, which mainly refers to the stable spelling pronunciation and meaning.

However, English emerged as the international language after 19 th century. The main reasons are as follows: Firstly, from the macroscopic view, the dominance of English is not precipitated by the language itself, so the arising of English dominance in international communication is not solely the dominance of language itself. Just as the professor Jean Aitchison in Oxford pointed out, the success of a language has much to do with the power of the people who use it but has little to do with internal features of the language. It is very obvious in consideration to English.

During the 18 th century and 19 th century, the influence of the British Empire began to spread around the world for the sake of industrial revolution, so English began to become popular. English was used not only in the British colonies but also in the diplomatic negotiations of non-English - speaking countries.

However, no matter how powerful the adaptively is and how large the area that the power of English covers, currently, the international status of English mainly springs from the status of America as a superpower after World War 2.

Besides, with the development of the economic globalization and new political structure, there is a great need of an international language. As result, English became the first choice. Secondly, from the view of language, the dominance of English in international communication has a close relationship with the vitality of the language itself.

On the one hand, English has a connection with all the Indo-European languages. Maybe it appears to be difficult to oriental people, but it is an easy job to western European and Russian people because the grammar and are similar to their mother language. Compared with Indo-European languages, English also bears the unique characteristics of the " universal language ", that is diversity, flexibility and adaptivity. Although the dominance of English originated from Britain and America, it is regarded as the official language by many countries in 5 continents. Meanwhile, the vocabulary of English is the greatest in the world, but people only have to master 1000 to 2000 words to communicate. In addition, non-English speakers are allowed to localize English, and create English suitable for themselves, such as Singapore English, Chinese English, Japanese English, Western English, Creole, French English and even Germany English etc. It may also include pidgin English appeared in Shanghai. In short, the dominance of English is represented in that it can tolerate non-English speakers to use broken English, thus making them feel English convenient and close to them, making English more universal. Thirdly, the universalness of English has a close relationship with its cultural value system. It is universally acknowledged that the cultural value system of Britain and America can encourage more innovation compared with other cultures. On the other hand, the marketization and technological power of British and American media makes English a dominant language in international communication. The " Hollywood effect " and " silicon valley phenomenon " also worth mentioning here. The former is cultural products, which includes English media, film etc; the later refers to the computer-based and internet-based technical products, all of which swept over the world, thus making English a popular language. In the end, another reason of the formation of English dominance is that the universal culture appears in English. As mentioned above, 80% of the documents in the world are written in English. So the universalness of English is because of the universalness it has.