Why the world speaks English

From a comment on a blog I was reading:

"If there are 10 people in a room, and nine of them are Dutch and one is American, they'll all speak English to each other".

That's not lack of pride, that's courtesy.

I couldn't figure out if I wanted to reply on that blog or this one, so I just did both:

Ah, but it's highly likely the American won't speak Dutch or any of the other European languages (except maybe a smattering of Spanish) and, in a way, that's the result of a systematic lack of courtesy.

A strange thing happened in the English colonies in the late 19th/early 20th Centuries. Someone invented leisure time for the working classes. They wanted to go out and explore, and they wanted to do it with the education they already had (thank you very much) and that didn't usually include a foreign language.

And all civilised countries should speak English anyway, right? And if everyone who is anyone is speaking my language, why should I learn any other?

English became the universal language that it is because the sons and daughters of the Empire put their hands on their hips and said "Speak English, dammit!" and everyone said "okay".

Everyone except the French, that is, who said something very rude (in French) and have been reviled ever since as stubborn rude people.

But, you can't really blame them. English became the powerhouse language that it is because of stubborn rude people. The French are just trying to achieve the same result using the same methods.

Of course, this wasn't something particular to working classes. It was part of the psyche of the Empire at the time. Even those who could afford to have an education which included foreign languages regarded every language other than English as an inconvenience.

That's why I live in an area with a massive Italian population, but no signs in Italian (apart from in the Italian restaurants).