A lot of Americans in the south appear to speak Spanish from what I’ve noticed while traveling there.
Legit though, nobody alive today had anything to do with English becoming the trade language. It used to be French, but that went away and English filled in.
Any country where English is the primary language is going to have less people needing a second language for anything other than the general benefits it brings, which aren’t truly necessary.
It isn’t like everyone, everywhere speaks English on top of their first language, nor does everyone speak multiple languages. They do just fine with the dominant language of their country, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Also, Australians don’t speak English. They speak Cunt :)
Even the English royalty would speak in French in official ceremonies
Yup. It’s just the vagaries of time, war, and shifting alliances that put English into the main trade language. The term for that is lingua franca because of the French dominance in that regard.
The only reason English is probably going to stay in that place is inertia. Well, that and the friendliness of English borrowing words so freely. It’s easier to just adopt words with complex meanings into English than it is to translate them. But why change the trade language when it would cost more to shift things for no practical benefit.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded more and better language options in school. But it was the eighties and very early nineties, in a rural town, I was “lucky” to have two choices in high school. But I think if I’d had access younger, the way some countries do English, I would have gotten much better at Spanish than I did. Even my ASL is better than my Spanish, and I have arthritis that makes signing hard.
New Zealand is at least teaching maori languages
