It [English] is everywhere. Some 380 million people speak it as their first
language and perhaps two-thirds as many again as their second. A billion are
learning it, about a third of the world's population are in some sense exposed to it,
and by 2050, it is predicted, half the world will be more or less proficient in it. It is
the language of globalization-of int.ernational business, politics, and diplomacy.
It is the language of computers and the Internet. You'll see it on posters in Cote
d'ivoire, you'll hear it in pop songs in Tokyo, you'll read it in official documents in
Phnom Penh. Deutsche Welle broadcasts in it. Bjork, an Icelander, sings in it.
French business schools teach in it. It is the medium of expression in cabinet
meetings in Bolivia. Truly, the tongue spoken back in the 1300s only by the "low
people" of England, as Robert of Gloucester put it at the time, has come a long
way. It is now the global language.