Yes, I agree with the author on the points that he is making, but comparing to other languages, I think that English is one of the easiest languages that can be learned and understood easily.
"Ease" is an important aspect in the context of languages, since people all around the world are not using latin alphabet and to get them using the language as fast as possible requires to eliminate some parts of the language like the meaning of the words for instance.
"Like" can be used for several different categories such as liking somebody/food/something. It is not the same for other languages, there are different words for liking somebody and liking something. Which puts more learning curve to get going with the language. Sure, you can express yourself better if you have time learn everything.
I guess this was one of the important reasons why English took off as well. (I might be totally wrong on this)
Interestingly I find this topic kind of similar to programming languages. Most of our interns in the company prefers Ruby over Java when they are learning web development. Because they can get something working during the day. On the other side, ones that choose java are spending time with configuring their libraries to compile the project. They will both eventually find out the advantages and disadvantages of both over the time.