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by noir_lord 1875 days ago
Not just technology either, the two languages for the Indian Parliament are Hindi and English - a relic of colonialism as well (and in a country with 20 odd languages, multiple scripts and hundreds of dialects a lingua franca is required to get anything done without translators on both sides).

The academics are still arguing over whether English is a world language or not but it is the defacto world language and I don't know of another language that can make that claim.

Curiously it's the most widely spoken language while been only the third most spoken native language.

A result of two centuries of the British Empire followed by a century of US dominance in media/business.

The only language that gets close is Mandarin but the split of native to non-native is pretty much inverted between English and Mandarin.