[jillesvangurp]

The keyword here is incentive, not coercion. Most of the world uses English as a second language because the British used to run a fairly large part of it and most of their former colonies still have a lot of English speakers and quite a few even maintain it as an official language. And then after two world wars, their former colony the USA of course became a super power. So, for the past few centuries, understanding English meant access to a large market where English just was the main language to do business.

There is an enormous economic incentive to do business in English as it gives you access to these huge markets with wealthy customers. Additionally, a lot of content is published by English speakers, which re-enforces the need to learn English. Finally because pretty much every country does at least some business in English, it's also the most common language for any two countries that wish to engage with each other.

I'm actually Dutch but I live in Germany. While I speak a little bit of German, my English is far better. I don't actually need German to do business in Berlin; so I don't use it a lot I have no economic incentive to learn it. There's a critical mass of foreigners here that mostly speak English far better than they speak German. And while some Germans don't like that, a lot of them don't mind it and actually move to Berlin because they speak English and because is so international. You see this dynamic in a lot of economically important cities across the world. As soon as you get any concentration of foreigners living in them, English becomes an important language to the point where the locals start using English to be able to keep up.

[tinco]

The Americans gave us Cartoon Network. If the Germans had better cartoons we probably would be speaking German a lot better. In my opinion there's actually great economic incentive to speak German fluently. For me personally I've had multiple meetings with friends and business relations where I sometimes felt left out because I can't understand German well when it's spoken at native speed. Besides that I know of multiple great universities where I would have liked to go, but can't really because I'm not fluent enough in German.

Obviously as a software engineer it would be ridiculous to not at least read English, but I know for a fact there's great German language forums and learning resources out there. I imagine there exist programmers out there working in some deep and dark VW or Siemens lab that have been able to work for years without reading a full English sentence.

I'm pretty sure Berlin is also the only city (or one of very few) in Germany where you can actually live and work happily and productively without learning German.

[madrox]

> The Americans gave us Cartoon Network. If the Germans had better cartoons we probably would be speaking German a lot better.

It wasn’t until you said this that I considered my motivation to learn Japanese as part of this conversation. My whole reason for doing so was for better appreciation of anime.

[exolymph]

Similarly, a lot of people get into learning Korean because of k-pop or k-dramas!

[knuthsat]

I remember that a bunch of my classmates in elementary school knew German through watching Pokemon on a German cartoon channel that was broadcasted in Croatia (required no paid subscription, unlike Cartoon Network).

It was incredible, the accent was impeccable.

[flohofwoe]

> The Americans gave us Cartoon Network.

...and MTV, and the Brits the music to go with it! That's how I learned English as a teenager anyway.

[r_hoods_ghost]

I don't think the dominance of English has much to do with the quality of English or American cartoons or their wider culture. Even ignoring the British Empire, the USA has been one of the largest ever continental empires for 200 years and is now a quasi hegemonic global empire with around 600 overseas military bases and the ability and willingness to launch military strikes and enforce it's will across large swathes of said empire. Knowing the language of your overlords has always been a good idea and English is now even more widespread as a second language than when the British were stomping around engaging in the odd genocide and searching for a decent meal. I suspect that even if Germany produced the most amazing cartoons in the world only a tiny fraction of people would ever to learn it compared to English. That's what dubbing and subtitles are for.

Having said that, between roughly 1850 and the end of the second World War it was considered necessary for engineers and scientists in the UK and USA at least to know German because of the German's achievements in science and technology (especially chemistry) and the political and economic power of the various central European states and empires controlled by German speaking elites. Gaining a competitive advantage over your peers and expanding your knowledge has always been a good incentive to learn another language independent of wanting to learn what your occupiers are saying.

[flohofwoe]

In Eastern Europe the Soviet Union was that "hegemonial force", yet most people didn't care to learn much Russian, even though it was mandatory in school (for instance in Eastern Germany) and fluent Russian would have opened up some juicy carreer paths. My English was much better than my Russian, mainly because of the cultural influence via Western radio and TV. The Soviet Union simply wasn't "cool" for an East German teenager in any way.

[tinco]

I had excellent reading and listening comprehension by the age of 12, and could speak fairly fluently by 16. I don't think geopolitics had anything to do with that. The kids in my class that didn't watch foreign TV had significantly less skill in this regard.

German kids watched TV with dubs because their network execs deemed it worth it, I don't think that was very political either.

[oblio]

It's not the military.

Most people really learn English because of economics. American companies are big trade partners, customers and of course, employers.

Many of the others learn it for cultural reasons, as said. Cartoons, movies, TV series, songs, etc.

[thematrixturtle]

Japan, being an island nation, shows many strata of imported words in its vocabulary. Chinese was the original source as the language of the intelligentsia for centuries. When first the Portuguese and later the Dutch came along and were granted a trade monopoly, Japanese picked up words from both, and when the Meiji reformation opened up the countries, huge slabs of medical and technical German were imported. Now, of course, English is the predominant source of loanwords.

[pipodeclown]

It has everything to do co Cartoons. It is all about cultural dominance. Many tv shows i watched in my youth were in English, as were many of the videogames I played. That is the only reason I learned English. I you put a kid in front of a TV with mostly English language but subtitled movies and series, he's speaking English in no time.

[throwaway89374]

> The keyword here is incentive, not coercion.

This summarizes. In India the union government is trying to push Hindi as the national language while the state governments are pushing back. This has been going for 70 years.

The interesting change is the due to jobs in south India north Indian state migrant workers moved to southern states. Their kids who go public school score higher in the native language classes than the native kids. This applies only for the low income migrant workers. The white collar job workers send their kids to private school and still learn Hindi.

In South India at least English is given more importance than the regional language.

PS: To those who are unaware of India, India has 23 officially recognized languages