The need for a global language is a big part of the fact of globalization, and the dominance of English looks inevitable for a good long time to come.
English certainly helps forge strong bonds across cultures, but knowledge of the local language makes a global workforce more nimble and productive, and therefore more competitive.
But a positive effect of globalisation is that you can have a language that is spoken by only five or 50 people in one remote location, and now through digital technology that language can achieve a global voice and a global audience.
This is the beauty of living in a country that speaks the language of global finance and trade.
It is a language without which the entire global infrastructure is struck dumb.
Markets have been tumbling around the world, in reaction to a darkening global economic landscape - and some equally dark language that politicians have been using to describe it.
If you don't like the term "empire" call it global reach, to which the English language lends a nicely helping hand.
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Parents stop using traditional tongues, thinking it will be better for their children to grow up using a dominant language (such as Swahili in East Africa) or a global one (such as English, Mandarin or Spanish).
"We live in an ever smaller global community and we probably are at a point where we believe having some language skills is a useful thing - it's what I would call a vocational skill really, " he says.
Visual art also transcends the barrier of language, making both the work and message able to be viewed by a global audience.
There was a time about two decades ago when the debate was what would be the next global business language: German, Spanish or Esperanto.
Two months after deciding to step down as a judge on American Idol, global superstar Jennifer Lopez today announces a multi-year partnership with nuvoTV, an English-language cable network for U.S. Latinos.
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This was accompanied by a proprietorial admission that French has decisively lost the battle for status as the world language and that English is now the established global means of communication, for practical matters and for a growing range of cultural ones.
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