At the Prague airport

On my way from the Prague airport to the city of Prague, I sat on a bus next to a man wearing a suit and tie.

“Here for business?”, I asked.

“European Space Agency meeting”, he replied.

Those were the days of Brexit, so, I had to ask, “What’s the language of ESA now?”.

“English”, he replied unequivocally.

That’s when it hit me that there are only two approaches to [business] languages that the world will follow.

One is the Chinese approach, where you create a big geographical entity that speaks your language.

The other is the European Laissez-faire approach of respecting a plethora of languages with few speakers which is worthless for most foreigners to learn, all of your mini languages die and get replaced by English.