Thank you for this comment. It would be interesting to know, among all those embracing everyone speaking english, how many are native english speakers and how many are monolingual; that might put things in perspective. In other words, it's easy to claim that everyone doing things your way with no effort on your part is the right way to go.

There's an interesting point. It's taken for granted that the ruling language of the internet is and will be English; no surprise that native English-speakers approve. I wonder how many people in this thread would change their tune if the emerging lingua franca was Spanish or Mandarin.

> I personally gain much and lose nothing in this scenario

You gain a great deal if you have the ability to communicate with millions (billions?) of people that you otherwise couldn't.

...Yes, that's what I said. I gain much and lose nothing, because other people are forced to conform to my standards. In the same scenario, someone who speaks only (say) Swahili gains nothing except another hurdle to access, and loses a potential shot at a local online community.

>I have no real conception of what it feels like for the hundreds of millions of people who do speak minority languages

Being understood by most people (instead of almost none) is pretty handy.