www.alphadictionary.com

Mary Jane Stoneburg, one of the Good Word's long-time editors, referred me to an article in The Guardian that the traders in the Agora might be interested in: "No language in history has dominated the world quite like English does today. Is there any point in resisting?" by Jacob Mikanowski. It is rather long, 11,500+ words, but the latter half is romantic speculation that is less interesting. The first half is well-researched and factual, loaded with facts, facts about the extent of English dominance that I was unaware of.

The US dominates the world economically and militarily. If this article is correct, and I believe it is, we dominate the world linguistically as well, if not culturally. So, when our economy drops to second place in a few years, behind China's, and reasonable presidents who reign in our military come back in season, language will be the only justification for thinking this nation is somehow greater than others.

Read it and let me know what you think.

A late response, but still valid I expect: one point to make is that English is not strictly an American language. When I was teaching English in Russia, most of the textbooks available were for English English, not American. There are subtle differences.

I once showed a friend from Izhevsk a bit of the movie "Snatch", and her reaction was one of delight; she understood what they were saying perfectly. It's practically Cockney slang to me. Great movie, but at times difficult, though it's still called English.

Somewhere I have a dictionary called something along the lines of "Let's Talk 'Strine", an introduction to what the Australians have done with English. That's a much slang as anything else, but it's still English.

I've read a theory that one day all languages will be spelled in something like the International Phonetic Alphabet, making them all mutually pronounceable, if not comprehensible. In a small way, I see this happening in American news media, with the growing use of other languages' diacritical marks and spelling when writing of people or events in other countries. Eventually, we will have to start teaching early on how to pronounce the letters and combinations. This will open more doors to changes in the language, leading to, perhaps, easier communication between peoples.

Then again, we may not last that long. We've only got some 4 billion years before the sun goes supernova.