Like it or not, English is the lingua franca of Europe. According to the【D1】________,some 84 percent of young people in the EC a

Like it or not, English is the lingua franca of Europe. According to the European Commission, some 84 percent of young people in the EC are currently learning English as a second language. No language—neither French in the Middle Ages, nor Latin before it—has ever been taught so widely in Europe.
    It is the world language, the most popular second language in China and Japan and spoken by 760-800 million people around the world. Some 1.2 billion people live in countries where English is the official language. This often has an adverse effect on native speakers. It makes them more reluctant to learn other languages, and the only way really to understand a culture is to speak its language.
    This international language can’t accurately be called "English" at all. It ought, rather, to be called the world English, international English or Anglo-American. The language is no longer the intellectual property of Britain.
    One of its great advantages as a world language is that there is no academy to decide what is and what is not "good English". English, like the Common Law, is what it has become a less formal and a more flexible instrument than either French or German. And it is seen in rich and poor countries alike as the language of modern consumerism. It holds out the probably illusory promise of prosperity and material progress.