Its gelivable! The whole world's speaking Chinese

It always amuses me when someone says the lingua franca is English because they require bastard Latin to do so. Furthermore, the lingua franca, or default language, keeps changing.

In Europe, it used to be Latin, German and of course French in aristocratic circles. Since the 20th century the lingua franca (literally Frankish tongue) has not been English, as advertised, but American-English. Put simply, might is right.

Which, by way of a forward, brings us to the development of Chinese as a lingua franca. Not in my lifetime, of course, but since the Middle Kingdom is now in the economic passenger seat and about to take the wheel, it is inevitable that its language gets a look-in too. And you may have noticed that Chinese words, and even characters, have become international currency.