Lingua franca of the web

There was a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week this morning about the implication if France, not Britain, had won the Battle of Quebec. (This refers to the Seven Years War in the middle of the eighteenth century).

French could have been the language spoken across North America, and therefore now the language of the web. As it happens, global English is currently the universal web language. Here’s a useful article on the rise of global Engish.

Yet John Humphrys accuses politicians of dumbing down the language.