It's unfortunate that the #1 international language ended up being English. With its complete pronunciation anarchy it's impossible to tell someone over writing how to pronounce something, or in some cases even describe a sound, without digging up example words. And even that isn't foolproof since they fail at consistently pronouncing their own language and the same written word can have completely different pronunciation depending on accent.

Every single other European language I know of would be better. Yes, even French, they write 4x what they read, but at least they do it fairly consistently. No "ghoti" situations. No cases where an adult sees a written word and isn't sure how to pronounce it.

In some better timeline the US ended up speaking Spanish and a whole class of worldwide communication problems was avoided.