As a result of this and other accidents, Korean Air’s new CEO set about an ambitious organizational change. He made English the official language of the airline ...

This reminds me that my dad "explained" to me as a child that Esperanto would one day be widely spoken. Though not a linguist (unlike Larry) I've never actually heard Esperanto spoken. I also remember high-school dropout Bobby Fischer teaching himself Russian in the 1960s so he could learn from the World's top grandmasters ... and yet today I find myself watching the hostess of Russian chess events on the Internet translating the (fluent English) answers from the top Russian grandmasters into Russian (for the local audience) ... then being further entertained when her translations are inevitably corrected by the Russian grandmaster! :)

BTW, Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen and his upcoming Russian title challenger both speak English fluently - even France's top player MVL doesn't seem to mind answering questions in English (which I would have thought impossible after visiting France as a child ;-). So, it seems that English, not Esperanto, has become the lingua franca of the web. Just another little example of how dangerous it is to attempt to predict the future of human culture.

References Added Later

• English as a lingua franca (wikipedia)
• Is English the lingua franca of the web? (quora.com)
• Re^2: Help to have real Perl's advantage