2007-12-20 English-only?

At the moment Europe is going towards an English-only situation but in the past, it had a French-dominated period and a Latin-dominated period. It's just more practical to have one common language - in Asia, it is considered absolutely normal to speak English at international meetings rather than to translate into all the different languages. This in no way puts the other languages at risk. If there is a risk, I believe it's for English - being spoken badly by so many different people can only deteriorate the quality of the language. We're all richer if we speak other languages of course but there has to be one common one. As many of us (English teachers in France) say, when the common language is English, it's "imperalistic", when it's French, it's the "rayonnement de la France" - France brightening up the world with its language and culture.