I am for English becoming the common language. First, it sounds much nicer than most languages; maybe French has us, but compared to Italian, German, Dutch (God help us if Dutch ever became the language of choice), etc. And this is not just my opinion, but that of many second English language speakers. Second, aside from being tied with Russian, English has almost three times as many words as any other language. There is much more depth in English (and Russian, however if you feel Russian should be the language of choice, refer back to my first point).
English sounds nicer than other languages?
Hmmm My native language is English but I am fluent in Italian, French and Spanish.
Have you heard President Bush or his lap dog Anthony Blair.
Personally I find Italian, (it's amny colorful dialects), French and Spanish to be far more interesting colorful and remarkably beautiful.
I also find that they have words that are sipmply non existant in English.
Find me an English work for diripmetaio. The word for a neighbor that lives across the street, but right infront of your house.
English does have many words, but many are just another more or less snobbish ways of saying the same thing as a more commonly used word.
It's not like the English language can express notions that other languages cannot.
Italian dialects are simply facinating with very different ways of saying things in relation to their local culture and history.
I owned a country house in a town where a knife was described as a sgullotta and across the river it was described as a cultiello.
A chair, segiolla and cadregha.
Then the really funny thing is spelling. Spelling in English and American English is to say the least disgusting. Only in America do they make a big deal about the Spelling Bee. A dumb ass competition to see who can remember all the stupid irregular ways English words are spelled becasue some have drunk dimwhiited aristoctrat spelled it that way first.
An interesting thing is I have no problem at all translating things from English into Italian, however so many times there just isn't a way to say certain things that are sai in Spannish of Italian in English.
I think that the rather presuptuous assumption that English is the uber language leads to so many problems fro a political and cultural standpoint.
Another huge difference I have found is how language is used.
For example in Italy a greeting is only a question if time is going to be given for a response.
Other wise it's a friendly Ciao.
None of this walking right past you and blurting out how r you doin' ? ... and be gone before you can reply.
It also seems that despite the alleged abundance of English works it seems that 16 year old american girls
have to use the work 'like' , 'amazing' and 'awsome' like they were on sale at walmart.
And then there's one of my pet peeves. Using completely worng words because it makes you cool or apear to be and expert.
Like glass instead of lens when taking about photographic lenses.
Anyway time to brush up on that Spanish as it my soon be the main language here in the USA.
A language really shows it's beauty in how it is and can be used.
The final movement of Pergolesi's Sabat Mater for example shows how emotional Latin Mediterranean languages can be in a way that a cold language like English just can't.
http://youtu.be/mNt13Vw-K6Q This is the first movement.