"Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used."

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Source: Russell Baker (1990). “There's a country in my cellar”, William Morrow & Company

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Russell Baker

Writer

Russell Baker was an American humorist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist known for his sharp wit and insightful commentary on society.

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