The Global Position of English

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Who could have predicted, in, say 1300, that English would be the most widely spoken language in the world in a few hundred years? At that point the language was not only spoken on just one medium-sized island. It was also just one of the four major languages of that island (which included Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish), and it was not even the language of the rulers of the English people themselves. (They spoke Norman French.)

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