The USA is almost 6,000 miles from Key West, Florida, to Nome, Alaska, with 300+ million English speakers. Nothing like it in world history. English has become the language of technology, too.
Just since the ‘60s, Japanese, Arabic and now Chinese seemed to be the ‘necessary’ language. Truth is, everybody in the world except the USA is migrating toward English.
Considering India, the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, countries like Germany where knowledge of English is common... All countries where English is either 1st or 2nd, it is understandable English is 1st in the world (or should be).
“...everybody in the world except the USA is migrating toward English”
Yes, that’s true, of course. In fact I saw some news pix the other day of riot cops dealing with some pretty rowdy demonstrators. I can’t remember where it was, maybe Greece? I’m really not sure, but where ever it was on the cops’ shields it said POLICE in plain English. It also said the same thing in the country’s language of course. (Or maybe it said 2 for 1 Tuesday at the local ice cream parlor, how would I know?)
The reason I say maybe Greece, was that what ever nation this was this did not use the Roman alphabet.
I was very surprised to see that, I even wondered if the English had been photo-shopped in, but I didn’t know why anyone would be bothered to do that. It was very clear what was going on and who was who.
English is a great language, of course, because it picks up from so many other languages, it has a lot of nuance to it and is also very efficient. Gosh darn hard to spell though.
I’ve often wondered - do they have Spelling Bees in any other language?