"English please so we all could join the convo!" That was just posted to a Facebook group, after a Chilean girl commented in Spanish. Posted by an ugly American, or a neocolonialist Brit? No, by a Bengali.I've notice lately that, while I almost never hear native English speakers criticizing others for not knowing English, I hearspeakers doing this all the time. The friend lamenting Japan's lack of English signage, the person I heard dissing a guest speaker for his poor English -- neither of these, nor the issuer of the Facebook reprimand, speaks English as a native language. All three live in Qatar. Yet all three expect English to be used as the default language, and become irritated when it is not.I often don't know how to feel about English as a lingua franca. It's awesome to see people from all over the planet being able to communicate through a shared medium. Without a shared language, Education City couldn't happen. Without a shared language, low-skilled laborers couldn't tell me about the human rights problems they face. Without a shared language, my dinner party on Saturday would have been pretty awkward, as the eight of us would have been speaking in five different languages!On the other hand, the more English fluency becomes a sine qua non of participation in the global community, the more non-English-speakers are pushed to the margins. The laborers whospeak English or Arabic can't talk to me about human rights abuses; more importantly, they can't file an official complaint. They simply can't participate in full society like those who speak one of the "important" languages.Not only that, but as other languages are lost or demoted, the world loses some of its richness. What does it mean for Arabic that Qatari schools are shifting to English as the medium of instruction? Our students are confident Arabic will never be lost, because it is so tied to religion. (Should I tell them about Avestan or Pali?) The switch to English means that fewer of our students will struggle in their first year because they've never been taught in English before. On the other hand, it also means that future Qataris will only be able to talk about math and science in a language that is foreign to them. Surely that has its own costs.In a strange way, I think it's also unfortunate for us English speakers that our language has become the default one. Of course, it gives us advantages: how many people can live 8,000 miles from their place of birth and still use their native language almost exclusively, I do? But it also means that English speakersget by without ever learning a second language, which is by no means good for us. Realizing that your language and culture come with embedded assumptions that aren't shared by other peoples is important, and it's something that most people in the world learn early on. It's a shame more of us don't have the opportunity to do the same.