LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- In 1984 I was invited to give a public lecture at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I began by apologizing for the fact that I would not be able to deliver my lecture in Dutch. I went on to remark that had I been alive at the time of Erasmus, I would have given my lecture in Latin. Many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin was still the lingua franca (common language) of the intellectual elite across Europe.
I proceeded to give my lecture in English, indicating what a great thing it was that, some 450 years after the death of Erasmus, one should be seeing once again the emergence of a lingua franca. In fact, the contemporary lingua franca was significantly better than Latin, because whereas the latter was limited to Europe, English was rapidly becoming the global common language.
In 1984 these were unconventional words for a Frenchman. In France there was still considerable atavistic linguistic chauvinism and rear-guard battles were being fought to oppose English and impose French. For example, in that same year, the French government had seized a $5 million consignment of umbrellas shipped from Singapore on the grounds that the name of the material shown on the label was in English and not in French (the difference was an "e" at the end!).