[gunapologist99]

I think you're saying, how much other good content is out there that I'm missing out on because I only read English, and it's a good point.

However, English has become the (now ironically named) lingua franca of, at least, the more educated parts of the world, and many people who are most comfortable in their native languages are still often translating their best work into English in order to see it more widely read. This is often the case with scientific papers, for example.

Perhaps England's biggest gift to the world was its language.

[tensility]

Worldwide colonialism wasn't exactly a "gift", but I must admit it has been advantageous to me, personally, for English to be as relatively universal as it has become as a result. ;-)

[ffgjgf1]

> (now ironically named) lingua franca

The original language which was actually called wasn’t really French it was a creole/pidgin language used in the Mediterranean mainly based on Italian and Occitan dialects.

Greeks and others just called all Western European Franks even though they didn’t really interact with people who actually spoke French (only used in the Northern half of modern France back then) that much.