"The most important challenge is that of fairness or “linguistic justice”. A common language is a bit like a telephone network: the more people know a language, the more useful it becomes to communicate. The question of fairness arises because individuals face very different costs to access the network and are on an unequal footing when using it. Those who learn English as a second language incur learning costs, while native speakers can communicate with all network members without incurring such costs. It’s like getting the latest smartphone model and sim card with unlimited data for free."
@cyrilpedia it’s not going to be a problem for very many more years, as English is already diverging to the point where some speakers find it difficult to understand each other. In another 50 or 100 years, certain forms of English will become verbally incomprehensible to others, and only the written word will be truly international.
It will go the same way as Latin, Arabic and mandarin.
@peterbrown EuropeanComissionSpeak is already an undecipherable language, English as conceived by MBAs and 'ENArques'.
