"A small disclaimer that seems important to me. This book deals with the possible consequences of using English on a large scale. But that doesn't mean I'm making an apology for English nor making any favourable judgments about the English-speaking world. Allow me a brief explanation. I was a child in the cold war, but I grew up in a world with almost no walls. I was a child when my country, Portugal, handed over its last colony, but I grew up in a world with almost no colonies. I was raised in a home where it was chic to speak French, but where German was chosen for my second language. My parents looked to French as the elite language and German as the language of the future of the economy. Today I go to China more often than to the United States. I've been more in Africa than in the UK and I just saw Brexit. I don't have an emotional tie that binds me to the English-speaking world. But I recognize the ideological charge of languages. I do not only recognize it, but I also consider their political influence as a useful variable in this analysis. That's right. A variable, not the rule. The truth is my parents failed their prediction: Germany, as a country, had more economic future than its language: Germans learned to speak English – which made my (bad) German absolutely unnecessary. Even when I go to Germany I speak English. And this corresponds to the concept of a lingua franca. And, in that aspect, the English got that status. It wasn't really English, but something similar. Let's say that globalization needed a form of common understanding, and English was handy". [Rodrigo Moita de Deus, "Pax English"].