Dominant languages can spread even without coercion
The keyword here is incentive, not coercion. Most of the world uses English as a second language because the British used to run a fairly large part of it and most of their former colonies still have a lot of English speakers and quite a few even maintain it as an official language. And then after two world wars, their former colony the USA of course became a super power. So, for the past few centuries, understanding English meant access to a large market where English just was the main language to do business.<p>There is an enormous economic incentive to do business in English as it gives you access to these huge markets with wealthy customers. Additionally, a lot of content is published by English speakers, which re-enforces the need to learn English. Finally because pretty much every country does at least some business in English, it&#x27;s also the most common language for any two countries that wish to engage with each other.<p>I&#x27;m actually Dutch but I live in Germany. While I speak a little bit of German, my English is far better. I don&#x27;t actually need German to do business in Berlin; so I don&#x27;t use it a lot I have no economic incentive to learn it. There&#x27;s a critical mass of foreigners here that mostly speak English far better than they speak German. And while some Germans don&#x27;t like that, a lot of them don&#x27;t mind it and actually move to Berlin because they speak English and because is so international. You see this dynamic in a lot of economically important cities across the world. As soon as you get any concentration of foreigners living in them, English becomes an important language to the point where the locals start using English to be able to keep up.