Interviewer – Why is English so important? David – Well, English is so important primarily because so many people speak it and use it, so it has now become the lingua franca in the world (1)_____  a way that we’ve never seen before.  We(2)_____  a world language of this kind before. So people are learning it not just to be able to communicate (3)_____ native speakers, but also with speakers of other languages around the world. Interviewer – And why has it become that dominant language? David – I think the reason (4)_____  that is actually very complicated, although in the twentieth century, we can just see that it’s the rise of the US military and consumer power. I mean the technology, all the big developments in technology largely came from the US. So all of these developments actually (5)_____ within the English language, and people had to learn English in order to understand them, or to benefit (6)_____  them. The Internet is only one example of that kind. Once a language has (7)_____  that position of dominance, it’s actually very difficult (8)_____ it.  So we could be seeing the emergence of other big languages in the world (9)_____  more important than they have been, like Spanish, but it’s unlikely (10)_____ they’re going to shift English from its position of dominance.