Globalisation is one of the most outstanding phenomenons in the modern world. The development of globalisation has grave influence on world’s economy, politics, culture, law and regulation. We may say that globalisation is an irreversible development trend of human history.

It is commonly believed that globalisation refers to worldwide international large scale economic activities, such as production, international trade, investment and finances etc. It is the unification of the global economics. By analysing the evolution of globalisation, we may gain better understanding of the principle of the development of the world economy.

1.       The origin of Globalisation

As a concept, ‘globalisation’ is only a few decades old. However, as a historical phenomenon, is it relatively young or has it been in existence since ancient times? Based on different understandings of economic globalisation, people may potentially have different theories.  In general, there are 5 major opinions:

1)      Globalisation has a very long history; it started approximately 2000 years ago alongside the development of the major world religions.

2)      The so called globalisation is a new trend started in the 1990s.

3)      Globalisation was brought forward by the great geographical discovery.

4)      True globalisation appeared in the mid to late 19^th Century.

5)      Modern globalisation is a social phenomenon of the 1960s, after WWII

The most commonly believed theory is that, globalisation started when international trade amongst each country reached a certain depth, i.e. from 1492 when Columbus discovered America. The world trade market had extended from within European countries to Asia, America and the coastline of Africa. The trading products included daily consumables as well as high value products.  Globalisation was initially established.

2.       The different stages during the development of globalisation

Although most of the scholars believed that globalisation started from the end of the 15^th century, they have, however, different beliefs over the division of the different stages during the development of globalisation.  Generally speaking, there are the ‘three-stage theory’, ‘four-stage theory’ and the ‘five stage theory’.

1)      ‘Three-stage theory’ has two branches. One believes that the first stage of globalisation covers from 1492 the discovery of America to the end of WWII, the second stage lasted from 1950s to the end of 1980s, and the last stage is from the end of 1980s to date. Another belief claims that the first stage should be from 15^th century to the establishment of the British Empire in 1870s, the second stage is from 1880 to the end of Dollar Standard in 1972, and the last stage would be from 1970s to now.

2)       ‘Four-stage theory’ also has two branches. One believes that, the first stage started from the discovery of America and ended at the end of 19^th century; the second stage was from the end of 19^th century to the First World War in 1914; the third stage is from the end of the Second World War to 1990s; and the last stage is from 1990s to now. The other one divided the 4 stages as Pre-Modern, Early Modern (1500-1850), Modern (1850-1945) and Contemporary (1945–).

3)      ‘Five-stage theory’ believes that the first stage should be from the great geographical discovery to the mid 18^th Century; the second stage was from mid 18^th century to 1870s; the third stage carried on from 1870s to the mid 1920s; the fourth stage was from mid 1920s to late 1960s; and the last stage would be from late 1960s to now.

Italian is part of the Indo-European language family. It is a Romance language. Ancient Italian is a dialect of Latin, as a matter of fact, Modern Italian is the closest to Latin.

In the year 1294, Dante used the word ‘Latino’ to refer to the language used by the ancient dwellers in today’s Lazio area in Italy. In fact, the current citizens of Lazio Italy are the descendents of the Latin people. According to most of the historical material, Latin started to be used as early as 8^th Century BC. It then spread to all regions governed by the Roman Empire.  Over time, Latin was slowly replaced by many Romance languages including Italian.

In 8^th Century BC, there were many different tribes living around the Latium area, including Umbri, Osci, Sabini and Sanniti. Because of geographical reasons, the languages used by those tribes based far away from the Tiber River were very different to Latin. During the time when Romulus built the city of Rome, Latin was still just a very basic language which was only sufficient in daily communication. At that time, people admire Greek Culture, and it was considered noble to speak Greek language. In the next few centuries, international trade and Wars brought over many Greek and Arabic words which greatly enriched Latin vocabulary and transformed the language enormously. In 1^st Century BC, Roman Philosopher Cicero greatly improved the reputation of Latin with his own speeches and literatures. By 1^st Century AD, Latin had become the official language of the Roman Empire, the people of which then brought Latin to all the lands they conquered.

476 AD – the Roman Empire collapsed and there had been no more monopolistic power in Europe. This gave Vulgar Latin a perfect opportunity to develop. By 18^th Century, Vulgar Latin had gradually evolved into many new languages. A dialect became fully grown in Florence—the centre of culture and civilisation at the time. Just as Cicero to Latin, Shakespeare to English and Martin Luther to German, Dante was of great importance to Italian.  His epic poem Divine Comedy established Italian firmly as a literary language.

Today, there are 70 million Italian speakers around the world. Apart from Italy, these people can be found in 29 other countries, amongst which, 5 countries have Italian as their official language: San Marino, Switzerland, Vatican City, Slovenia and Croatia.

Spanish is a Romance language (sometimes referred to as Romanic language or Latin language), a branch of Indo-European language family. With over 329 million native speakers, Spanish is not only the most spoken Romance language, but also the 2^nd most spoken language in the world (Mandarin is the most spoken language with 1.3 billion native speakers).

Spanish is the official language of Spain and almost all Latin American countries (apart from Brazil and Haiti). The United Nations also use Spanish as one of their 6 official and working languages (the other languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French and Russian).  Spanish is a very beautiful language and is believed to be ‘the language of God’.

Spanish originated from a dialect of spoken Latin. In 218 BC, the Roman Empire invaded the Iberian Peninsula, and brought their language–Latin. 5^th Century AD, following the fall of the Roman Empire, Vulgar Latin slowly descend to many different Romance languages, one of which being Spanish. Spanish has many different dialects including Castilian, Basque, Galicia and Catalan etc.  During 12^th to 13^th Century, Castilian became the major dialect in Spain. Modern standard Spanish is based on this dialect hence the standard Spanish language is known as Castilian, especially in Latin American countries.  In the 15^th Century, the New World was discovered; Spanish language was introduced to America, while in the mean time Spanish also adopted a number of local American vocabularies. Because of the contacts with many other nations throughout history, Spanish was also influenced by Germanic language and Arabic.

Below is a list of countries where Spanish is used as an official national language:

• Spain
• Equatorial Guinea
• Mexico
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Dominican Republic
• El Salvador
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Panama
• Puerto Rico
• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Chile
• Colombia
• Ecuador
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Uruguay
• Venezuela

History

Chinese is one of the most ancient languages in the world and the evolution of the Chinese language is a fascinating subject. As part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, the Chinese characters—unlike European languages—are not at all phonetic. The earliest discovered written Chinese characters were called ‘JiaGuWen’ which literarily means ‘shell bone writing’. This is because the scripts were inscribed on many turtle shells or ox scapulae, which are known as ‘oracle bones’. They were written in the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC–1046 BC). Studies of these ‘Jiaguwen’ show that this ancient language has very simple structure and grammar; the vocabulary was also restricted to what people could understand at that time. For example, there were very few words representing abstract concept.

In the subsequent 3000 years, Chinese language changed slowly but dramatically, in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The development of the Chinese language has been divided by modern linguists into four major stages.

1.       Old Chinese

Legend states that during the rule of ‘HuangDi’ or otherwise known as the ‘Yellow emperor’ (2697BC to 2599BC), there were ’10 thousand countries’; and in Xia Dynasty (21^st Century BC-16^th Century BC), there were 3 thousand ‘countries’; early Zhou Dynasty (11^th Century BC-256BC) had 800 vassal states. People from different regions could not understand each other.

Old Chinese is also known as ‘Archaic Chinese’. It was used during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (this period covered from 11^th century BC to 7^th century BC). Texts were found on bronze ornaments, as well as in poem collection ‘Shijing’, history book ‘Shujing’ and part of ‘Yijing’.

During the early Spring and Autumn period (770BC-476BC), over 170 feudal kingdoms were recorded. However, until the Warring States Period (403BC-221BC), only 7 major kingdoms were sharing the land and power, their languages were all different to each other.

Before Qin Dynasty (221-205BC), all the literatures were written in a unified literal language, which is known as ‘yayan’, which means ‘elegant speech’.

After Qin conquered the whole of China, the emperor had also unified the written and spoken language, together with the unification of measurement and width of the wheels on the carts. ‘Small Seal Script’ became the official written form of Chinese language.

2.       Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese was used during Sui Dynasty (581 AD-618AD), Tang Dynasty (618 AD-907 AD) and Song Dynasty (960 AD-1279 AD). This could be divided into 2 different periods of time, the early stage was reflected in the dictionary of ‘Qieyun’ (601 AD), and the later stage in the dictionary of ‘Guangyun’ (10^th Century AD).

Modern linguists can study and re-build ancient Chinese.  Evidence has been collected from a few different aspects: the diversity of the dialects of modern Chinese, the translations of foreign languages, and rhymes in ancient books.

3.       Proto-Mandarin Chinese

Early Mandarin was represented by literatures in Written Vernacular Chinese. It was a descendant of the Middle Chinese.  There are different points of view in when it started to be in use. From as early as 5^th Century AD, to 13^th Century the latest, there are over 800 years’ difference.

4.       Mandarin

Modern Standard Chinese or Mandarin Chinese is based on the dialect of Northern China, and the grammar of the modern Written Vernacular Chinese.

Nowadays, there are over 1 billion native Chinese speakers in the world. This covers 1/5 of the world’s population.  Some form of Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) is spoken in the following countries: People’s Republic of China, Malaysia and Singapore.

French (la langue françaiseor le français) is a ‘Romance’ language (sometimes referred to as Romanic language or Latin language), a branch of the Indo-European language family. Like Spanish and Portuguese, French is also one of the most used Romance languages. French was the most widely spoken language in the world in the 11^th Century. There are about 77,000,000 native French speakers and over 128,000,000 people use this language fluently on a regular basis (including people who use it as a second language).

Although, Gauls are believed to be the ancestors of the French people, the fact is that, only very few Celtic features remain in the Morden French language and culture. A large amount of the words are in fact of Latin or Germanic language origin.

In the 4^th Century AD, under the control of the Roman Empire, Latin started to become popular in France. Until the 5^th Century, Vulgar Latin had taken the place of the Celtic language due to the ever growing number of Roman immigrants in Gaul. In the 5^th Century, Germanic language was introduced to the earlier Latin/Gaulish speaking settlers in Gaul, following the invasion of the Franks (a Germanic Tribe). This new language profoundly contributed to the Vulgar Latin in terms of pronunciation and the syntax, as well as enlarged the vocabulary.  In the 8^th Century, the French language was greatly developed during the Charlemagne Empire. In the 9^th Century, Latin and Germanic language combined and evolved into Romance Language. Ever since the beginning of the Capetian Dynasty (the 10^th Century), French had been the only official language in France.

There used to be many different dialects in France, but Morden Official French language is based on one dialect used around Paris and Ile-de-France.  Although in the south of France, for many reasons, a lot of different dialects are still being used.

The following countries use French as an official language:

• Belgium
• Benin
• Burkina Faso
• Burundi
• Cameroon
• Canada
• Central African Republic
• Chad
• Comoros
• Congo (Brazzaville)
• Congo (Kinshasa)
• Côte d’Ivoire
• Djibouti
• Equatorial Guinea
• France
• Gabon
• Guinea
• Haiti
• Luxembourg
• Madagascar
• Mali
• Monaco
• New Caledonia
• Niger
• Rwanda
• Senegal
• Seychelles
• Switzerland
• Tahiti
• Togo
• Vanuatu

Like English, German is a Germanic language, part of the Indo-European language family. Other languages fall into this category are Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic. (French, however, is a Romance language)

German language was formed over a very long period of time in history. Linguists had divided it into 5 different phases:

• Germanic (Germanisch: 2000 v. Chr.—650 n.Chr.);
• Old High German (Althochdeutsch: 650—1050);
• Middle High German (Mittelhochdeutsch: 1050—1350);
• Early New High German (Frühneuhochdeutsch: 1350—1650)
• New High German (Neuhochdeutsch: 1650—1900)
• Standard German (Gegemwartsprache: 1900—)

The word German (Deutsch) first appeared during the early middle ages. It came from a Germanic word ‘thiodisk’, which means ‘of the people’. At that time, most of the Franks spoke Latin (and later on French), while German was not yet a unified language—it referred to many different dialects in general.

In Medieval ages, many different regional dialects were spoken in Germany. Great effort was given in attempting to unify the language system, however, the unified languages were only used within a certain region, or amongst a certain group of people. For example, Low German became the official language for trading along the Baltic Sea and the North Sea during the Hanseatic League.

Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, and had greatly promoted the unification of this language. Through the religious reformation, the dialect used in Luther’s Bible was widely spread and later became the foundation of the Morden Standard German.

In 1781, John Christopher Adelung published the first German dictionary. From 1852, the Brothers Grimm started their most comprehensive dictionary, the last part of which was not issued until 1960. In 1880 Konrad Duden published his “Complete Orthographical Dictionary of the German Language” (Vollständiges Orthographisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache). After some minor amendments, in 1901, Duden’s dictionary became the official source for correct spelling and standard definition of the German language. This remains unrevised until 1998. The reform in 1998 simplified some spellings and rules in German, and improved some grammar. Only the reformed spelling is taught in school, however, the traditional spelling can still be used.

In the following countries, German is used as native language:

• Germany (82.7 million)
• Austria (8.1 million)
• Liechtenstein (32,000)

The following countries use German as one of their official languages:

• Switzerland (4.6 million)
• Luxembourg (400,000)
• Italy (200,000)
• Belgium (70,000)

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