A discussion of the kinds of English emerging in the world at large and in the European Union. In recent years, the world's Anglophone media, in the company of a range of other observers, have routinely been calling English ‘the world's lingua franca’. As a result, the phrase is now something of a cliché. We're all ‘global’ now, and need to use the first truly universal language, whether we are business people, politicians, teachers, tourists, or terrorists.