Who taught you to speak English? Your parents, while you were a child? Your teacher at school? Perhaps even the BBC as a grown-up. Whoever it was, somehow you have developed an understanding of what is rapidly becoming a truly global language. There are now about 376 million people who speak English as their first language, and about the same number who have learnt it in addition to their mother tongue. There are said to be one billion people learning English now and about 80% of the information on the Internet is in English. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Should we celebrate the fact that more and more of us can communicate, using a common language, across countries and cultures? Or should we worry about the dangers of " mono-culturalism", a world in which we all speak the same language, eat the same food and listen to the same music? Does it matter if an increasing number of people speak the same language? I would have thought the other way around  although I have never accepted the argument that if only we all understood each other better, there would be fewer wars. _ ... If we all speak English, will we then all start eating McDonalds burgers? Surely not. If English becomes more dominant , it will kill other languages? I doubt it. When I travel in Africa or Asia, I am always surprised by how many people can speak not only their own language but often one or more other related languages, as well as English and perhaps some French or German as well. When we discussed this on Talking Point a couple of years ago, we received a wonderfully poetic email from a listener in Ireland. "The English language is a beautiful language. Maybe it's like a rose," he said. "But who would ever want their garden just full of roses?" Well, I love roses, and I think they make a beautiful addition to any garden. But the way I see it, just by planting a few roses, you don't necessarily need to pull out everything else. If more and more people want to plant English roses, that's fine by me. The author would probably agree that  _  .
it's very hard to plant many kinds of flowers in a garden it's good for people from other countries to learn English more and more people like to plant roses in their gardens English is easier to learn than other languages