However, English has become the (now ironically named) lingua franca of, at least, the more educated parts of the world, and many people who are most comfortable in their native languages are still often translating their best work into English in order to see it more widely read. This is often the case with scientific papers, for example.
Perhaps England's biggest gift to the world was its language.
The original language which was actually called wasn’t really French it was a creole/pidgin language used in the Mediterranean mainly based on Italian and Occitan dialects.
Greeks and others just called all Western European Franks even though they didn’t really interact with people who actually spoke French (only used in the Northern half of modern France back then) that much.
And I only learnt about this whole train "vendor lock-in" from HN. Otherwise I either wouldn't know about it, or I would learn about it weeks or months later.