I'm a native English speaker who ironically first encountered the use of English as a lingua franca when I moved to London for the first time. London turned out

I'm a native English speaker who ironically first encountered the use of English as a lingua franca when I moved to London for the first time. London turned out to be a much more cosmopolitan place than anywhere that I'd lived before and I'd say that around 50% of my colleagues at work were non-native English speakers, as were a similar percentage of the new friends that I made. I quite quickly learned to change the way that I spoke in order to be understood, and I learned that certain words that I'd used all my life were not even recognised internationally. The example that I remember vividly: a Polish colleague had to ask me why I kept saying "ta". Where my family comes from, "ta" is short for "thanks" and I had used it all my life without even thinking about it. It was one small example of the things that I had to try to un-learn in order to be understood in the more international environment that I found myself in. As the article states, many English speakers are monolingual and probably have a hard time empathising with the struggles that non-native speakers can have with a language. I worry that the situation will only get worse. English is now spoken by so many people in so many places and the incentives (and opportunities) for English speakers to learn other languages are consequently increasingly small.