The Future of English We live in an age of Anglophone triumphalism. When an Indonesian businessman meets a customer from Finland, they converse in English.
Airline pilots flying international routes communicate with their controllers in English.
Seventy-six per cent of the content of the Internet is in English. There are a number of reasons for thinking that English may be at, or perhaps even past, the high tide of its influence. To begin with, the proportion of humanity speaking English as its first language is declining. If the rate of decline is linear we must now be hovering just over seven per cent. To be sure, this decline is relative, not absolute.