Ariel Cajar#Mandarin, #English, #Spanish and #Hindi are currently both the languages with the greatest number of native speakers as well as of overall speakers according to #Ethnologue (the order varies on each ranking). Between this and the notion of an interconnected world, my hot take is that we can't expect to treat these languages forever in terms like "native" vs. "foreign" experiences as their scope will inevitably broaden further in years to come. #language #globalization #sociolinguistics.
English in particular is international, deregulated (as opposed to regulated languages like Spanish, under the authority of #RealAcademiaEspañola #RAE), grammatically simple and the majority language of one of the current world powers (#UnitedStates). It's only logical for people all around the world to imbue it with their own cultural concepts as time goes on and English adoption —as first or second language— expands further.
I'm myself an #ESL speaker since 4-5 years old in #Panama, a country with no official standard form of English, where the only local variants of English are either #PanamanianCreoleEnglish and #GeneralAmericanEnglish, both which are essentially #sociolects in that they're confined to older African-Panamanians of #WestIndian descent and older former #Zonian and thus also risking extinction as living daily languages.
English is my main means of communication on the internet; not Spanish.
And even then Spanish tends to be useful as well since it's the de facto lingua franca of #LatinAmerica, eclipsing Portuguese and French, as well as a common second language option for non-native speakers. I'm, in that sense, in a privileged position.
What about those outside of the top 10 languages, though? If I spoke, say, Danish, I would likely have to communicate in English to reach a broader audience. This is our current scenario, as I see it. Co-opting majority languages happens naturally