It seems right now that all of the people that have newly posted in response to this week's theme have a starkly contrasting opinion of the English language on the global stage. While those who have posted for the first time on this subject today appear to have a scornful view of English as a tyrannical overpowering force that is trying to suck in more people and destroy other languages. This, in my opinion, is a fallacious claim. As mav said, the dominance of English is purely coincidental and nothing but it's sheer volume of usage is pushing it on others. Those of us who have been here for a while realize that English is a growing, changing language that is very accepting to the entrance of new words. This is part of the beauty of English. In English one can express any number of shades of meaning and this makes it very desirable for literature. Perhaps a massive collection of words isn't the best for a global language, but this just happened, and no supreme dictator enforced this on the world at any time.
And about Chinese, I don't think that language will be gaining any global influence as long as it remains an isolationist communism.
