Thread by @tomaspueyo

Should everybody learn to speak English? Yes:
1. Network effects of a common language are stronger than ever in History
2. It's the 1st time these are global
3. English is the most spoken / written language & the fastest growing

Only one thing can prevent this

Thread 🧵

1k years ago, ppl mostly spoke with those around them. Little need for a lingua franca. In Europe, Latin was enough, learned by the Church and the elites.

After the printing press, suddenly you can learn & communicate w/ ppl far away. Incentive to understand each other ➡️ languages appear around the dialects most published. In Europe you go from a gradient of languages to German, English, French, Spanish...

That lasts until the 20th C, when you still have a few state-sponsored gatekeepers (TV, media) that produce most of the language that ppl consume outside of their geographic immediate vicinity.

But that changes w/ Internet

Suddenly everybody can read stuff written by anybody else. If you don't understand each other, you miss out on the vast majority of the potential info you can consume.

You miss out on billions of ppl you can exchange ideas with

The value of one single lingua franca becomes huge

Now that the benefit of one single language becomes overwhelming, the question becomes: which one? As Ulrich Ammon says (edited):
"There is virtually no indicator for the global rank of a language which does not place English at the top"

GDP

Speakers (including 2nd language)

High growth in native speakers

High growth of learners

Most countries in which it's official

High proficiency in many countries where it's not the main official language

There are other languages with more native speakers

But the potential of the main alternatives (Hindi, Mandarin) is low, because only natives speak them, and the # of natives is going to peak soon

So English will become the language that we all speak.
Unless the Klingon discover us and we realize the entire galaxy speaks Klingon, in which we should all learn Klingon.

Or unless... the network effects break.
They can.
With interoperability.

This is how the network effects can be broken: when you don't need to join the network to get its benefits.
That's how phone monopolies were broken.
It's how you can break the monopoly of English. How?

Make ppl understand each other without the need to learn English

Google Translate already does an amazing job.

Even in live, spoken language

With good enough tech, ppl will be able to understand each other without learning each other's language.

So now it's race between mankind's learning English and translation tech to get good enough. Who will win? 🤷‍♂️

But knowing all this has consequences for tech workers, politicians, professionals, investors, English speakers, and everybody else. What are these takeaways? I expand on all of this and detail the takeaways in this week's article.
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