Essential question

How can language be powerful? A language is economically and politically powerful if it is the language of a powerful state. Thus, english is and has been for over 200 years the most powerful language in the world, courtesy of Great Britain and the United States. People with other languages try — or have — to learn it. Its speakers don’t bother with other languages. Language (the whole complex reality in human experience) is the essential component of all culture and all enterprise. Without language, the achievements of the previous generation — indeed, the previous moment — would be lost and not available to be built on, and similarly for another place. The modern (or indeed, the human) world would simply not exist. A bit of language can be powerful by virtue of the information it conveys or the emotions it arouses. A speech, even a mot, can bring flashes of memory or insight, can arouse a throng to become a mob or tame a mob into a community. It can answer a question or raise a new one. No language (in the first sense again) can guarantee that a person, by knowing it, even mastering it, will achieve some special status: conquer the world, achieve nirvana, think logically, seduce any desired person.