There is no mystery about the root cause of the linguistic holocaust that we’re living through. Take a holiday anywhere in the world. Your airline pilot will, as you listen to the safety instructions (in English), be communicating with ground control in English. Signs in the airport, whatever country you are in, will be duplicated in one of the world’s top twenty languages – most likely English. You’ll see Coca-Cola logos. MTV will be playing on the screen. Muzak will be crooning Anglo-American lyrics as you walk through the concourse to baggage reclaim. At the hotel, the desk clerk will speak your language, as well, probably, as the bellhop. (His tip depends on being polygot.) Go to any internet café and the keyboard code that will get you best results is what you are reading now: English – the lingua franca of our time. . . . The spread of English is the product of naked linguistic superpower.
Sutherland tells us that a favourite axiom among linguists is: ‘A language is a dialect with an army behind it.’ Follow the big armies (Roman, Norman, Chinese, Russian) and you will find the ‘world languages’. The most potent army, in 2002, flies the stars and stripes. It is not just