I imagine if French ever wants to make a comeback as a really powerful language they'd need to start opening it up and allowing more words to be used within the language.

English came to power due to many reasons, mostly because of WWII as previously stated, but even before that it was essentially the language of science and business, mostly thanks to the Vatican *I won't go into hard facts about this, as my knowledge has been mostly skewed after reading Angels and Demons*.

English is probably not going to go anywhere for a while yet though. Not only does it stand as the language of business etc.., but it is also the most widely second language taught in the world, including in the new up and coming country superpowers *China and India*. Then of course there's the fact that English is much easier to learn than most, and while not the most, is more *efficient* than french and such.

I'm not sure about business. Traditionally, countries would mostly use their own language when it came to internal matters such as business, and would do the same in their colonies if they had any. Since the British Empire covered quite a bit of real estate, I suppose english was spoken more than other languages, but it was not the language for business.

As for science, this is definitely not the case. Until the 1850's or so, it was either the language spoken in the country where the results were published, or latin, which was used in science. After the unification of Germany and its rise as the largest industrial power in Europe, as well as becoming one, if not the leading country in science in general, german became the language of science from the late 19th century until after WWII. For example, if you ever read old chemistry books from the late 19th or early 20th century, you'll often find that they are translations from books written in german, and the author might even say that the book was translated for those who do not have a sufficient knowledge of the german language, and but warn that it is necessary to go further as most of the litterature is in german.

I think you'll find that English became the most popular global language during the period when the British Empire pretty much covered the planet, long before either World War.

As Styphon said, languages have always traditionally spread depending on who owned all the territory at any given time. French was popular throughout the middle ages as a lot of the nobility and ruling classes from around Europe were born and raised in France. Hell, King Richard III spent far more of his life when he wasn't looting the middle east in France than in England.

Once the British Empire started spreading across the world, it was only natural that English would become the most commonly spoken language. Nowadays, it's highly unlikely that any country will conduct a military territorial campaign (Ignoring the US's jaunts in the middle east as you guys just about speak English) of big enough scale to cause a change in the accepted global language. It's also unlikely to change because of trade due to English being taken up in China quicker than Chinese is catching on abroad.

Yeah, sadly your funny version of the language with random u's and funny spellings is what's being taught around most of the world (which is probably a good way to show that it's because of the British Empire that most of the world knows English instead of post-WWII America.