> Seems odd, surely you could argue it was because of British imperialism (which also brought English to the US)? The British empire once covered 1/3 of the glo

> Seems odd, surely you could argue it was because of British imperialism (which also brought English to the US)? The British empire once covered 1/3 of the globe, it seems far more likely a cause. If this were the reason, then English should already have been the lingua franca in 1900. But it wasn't. But the previous spreading of the English language by the English Empire certainly helped when the US emerged as one of the main beneficiary of WW2.