[Scarblac]

On the one hand, communication is easiest if everybody uses the same language. On the other, the dominance of English is one thing that gives US too much cultural power.

I think I'm happy that there is still content in other languages out there.

[usr1106]

Communication is not good if everybody speaks the same language at a different level. I have worked in English for close to 30 years and been at many international conferences, presented myself a couple of times. Still I feel handicapped in some presentations/discussions that are dominated by native speakers not using offshore English.

[davrosthedalek]

Hmm, not sure, I'm non-native English speaker as well. I have a lot more problems understanding/being understood by non-native English speakers from a different language background than I or they have with a native (American) English speaker. Or do you mean America with offshore?

[Y_Y]

What you say matches my experience. I grew up speaking "local" English, but now my day-to-day language is "international" English. I find it funny when people compliment me on my clear and simple English, because when I talk to my family it's anything but.

In my job I deal with tons of non-native speakers, and in some cases I'll end up "translating" between two speakers who can't understand each other, even though it's all nominally English. This is especially the case when they're from different parts of the world and accent and native language strongly influence their speech.

[usr1106]

Pronunciation is only one problem: Personally I find some British and most French natives harder to understand.

But native speakers from any continent can make me feel lost if they start to use a lot of idioms and slang expressions. My boss is an American who has lived abroad for a long time. I have usually no problems to understand what he means. In one phase I noticed him using an increasing amount of idioms I could not understand. When mentioning it to him he said he had had many telcos with US partners recently and that had probably inspired him to revive all kind of colorful idioms.

[usr1106]

Offshore English is a concept to make the language more understandable to non-native speakers. Avoid rare words and idioms. Avoid everything that wouldn't be taught in foreign schools or common in your field. You won't get a Nobel prize in literature using it, but international colleagues will thank you.

[miki123211]

> On the other, the dominance of English is one thing that gives US too much cultural power.

I think you got the causation wrong; the dominance of English is due to the US having cultural power, not the other way around.

If this were true, you'd see Ireland, Canada and Australia also having significant cultural power, and this just isn't the case.

[cjs_ac]

I think the dominance of English comes from the United Kingdom's significant cultural power in the nineteenth century (cf. French's status as the language of diplomacy deriving from France's cultural power in the eighteenth century). The US is just riding on Britain's (England's, really) cultural coattails.

(The US's economic dominance is, at present, unrivalled, however.)

[bratwurst3000]

i dont know anyone who speaks English because of that. all my friends and all people i met do it because US culture stuff like tv music articles. also here in europe its because of USA. Noone speaks british english here. With english we mean US english. also the other reason is work and travell and thats also mostly US english. if britain would speak chinese noone would speak chinese. everyone would speeak us English. Its crazy that people still have a britain centric worldview. that ship sailed 100 years ago and then it became the american century.