I think I’ve said before that English is the universal language. Well I think it is better said by Jay Walker here in this TED talk, which is both a little scary and a little inspiring.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
His point is that the local language will always be the first one learned and the primary one used amongst people. But English is quickly becoming the world’s second language.

To use an example to drive the point home, China will next year become the world’s largest English speaking country. Every year 80 million Chinese students will take a test for which they have spent 12 hours a day for three years studying – and 25% of it will be scored on their mastery of English.

Wow!