[QUOTE=furt]
The irony is not lost.
I understand where you are coming from Clairobscur and in no way do I follow the view that any language can be superior to another, but I honestly think that there are certain characteristics of English which simplify life for low level learners from a variety of linguistic backgrounds. (Like you I found my knowledge of French helped me pick up another romance language, Italian, but if I’d studied German I wouldn’t have had a clue.) So, in no particular order …
No genders for inanimate objects - no need to worry about which form of the article to use (this can change a doctor into a drug if you get it wrong in French).
No agreements- linked to lack of gender but also no need to use different forms of adjective to match singular or plural nouns.
Use of pronouns rather than inflexions to indicate the subject of the verb - anyone can understand the subject of “She work in America” (oh and the fact that we only have one form of the second person, ‘you’ can be singular / plural formal or informal 
)
No case endings - true you have to get the word order right but remembering Subject Verb Object has got to be easier than remembering about 8 different case endings for nouns in possibly 3 different genders.
Regular plural forms (with 4 or 5 exceptions), only one pattern for regular verbs, relatively few irregular verbs, no real subjunctive mood, lexical items which can be recognised by speakers of Latin languages, lexical items which can be recognised by speakers of Germanic languages.
Each learner is different of course, very analytical minds may prefer a language like Polish where they almost have a table of rules to work through in order to create a correct sentence, and the non-phoentic nature of the spelling is a huge handicap,as is the stress based pronunciation but I stand by my impression that it is a darn site easier to communicate simple ideas in English, under pressure and with no dictionary to hand than it is in many other languages.
Another factor you have to consider is the learner’s intrinsic motivation - have you had to learn English to get a job / a promotion ? do you want to learn Spanish to travel ? You can’t underestimate such factors - why do you think everyone always says the easiest way to learn a language is to have a boy/girlfriend who speaks it ? 'cos then you’ve got a good reason to improve and you can have fun at the same time 
It’s wrong, but comprehensible. Should read “Ich will einen Krapfen kaufen” or “Ich will Krapfens kaufen”, depending on whether you want one or more than one doughnut.
Of course it’s easy to learn. I could learn it when I was just a little baby.
English does have some advantages as an international language, which others have mentioned (lack of grammatical gender, etc). However, the complex verb tenses are baroque and the spelling sucks.
And then there’s the “phrasal verb”. I, a native English speaker, had never heard of the term until I started studying other languages, and their books kept referring to the concept. “Give” is one word. But then there are “give up”, “give in”, “give out”, “give way”, “give away”, etc, all with often very different meanings. (“Give in” is not the opposite of “give out”, for example.)
I think one of the advantages of English is that it is easy to speak badly in it and still be understood. This may be the beginning of the next phase of English’ simplification: things like the loss of that different third-person singular tense so that “I go, you go, he go” become standard.
Whatever happens, I suspect that English will remain the technical language of computers and the net for a long time. Five hundred years from now, when people speak a combination of Spanish and Chinese, they will probably still learn English terms for programming, much like people studying Western music now learn 18th-century Italian musical terms. In both cases, the language was dominant when the technology evolved, so the technincal terms remained.
There could be political disadvantages to English though: it can be perceived as “the language of the ruling elite”, and if, say, a dominant English-speaking nation manages to alienate the rest of the world, English-speaking might not be regarded so highly, and speaking another language might get you in some doors where English wouldn’t. This kind of political complication might tend to limit English’s tenure as a “ruling language”.
I wonder whether English will split into a family of languages, like Latin did?
English will predominate until some other Major Nation grows in power and commercial ties. French was the universal language for a few hundred years. English should last a while too.
English is in fact relatively easy… it has simple grammar. Pronounciation is the worse part of learning English and in order to use it in the internet you don’t need to pronounce anything.
As for being ugly... I think English is very nice for reading. Its a language of the great Sagas. Spoken its not bad either. Its strong like german without sounding as bad... and almost as good to hear like french without being so gayish. Brazilian portuguese is nicer spoken IMNSHO.No.
And yes.
English is easy to learn, but difficult to master, even for natives.
I do think English will be the lingua franca (sic!) for the foreseeable future, but one of the great things about English has been its ability to steal words and phrases from other languages. Already, Spanish is a main factor in the US, with 30 million+ native Spanish speakers. I suspect influence of Spanish will become more and more dominant.
“Te voy a pickupear” (I’ll pick you up) is an example.
Spanish will most certainly continuew to be a big influence, partly because it’s Latin Light™, and almost all W Eurpean languages owe their grammar to Latin.
China’s gone commercial, but when it turns free and the whole potential is unleashed, the influence will be great.
In Sweden, one has to know English to enter University above bachelor’s level. Swedish is too small a language to translate and print text books for students. I guess it’s the same for Dutch, Albanian, Norwegian, Flemish, Greek.
However, Spanish has such a head start, with almost ½ a billion native speakers, it makes sense to translate and print. Even if there aren’t enough students in Venezuala, there certainly are enough in the whole Spanish speaking world. So text books are available in English, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish. Arabic is probably entering the equation too.
Few people from the Latin-Germanic hegemony want to learn Mandarin, Arabic or Japanese is that the linguage franca 500 years from now will be English, but not as we know it. Extreme heavy influence from Spanish with a lot of Mandarin to spice things up will make it as imcomprehensible to us, as Olde English, from before the Great Vowel Change™.
I suspect that English will become the second language of the majority of people in the world (a la Scandinavia). It will not substitute all other languages however. English is easier to learn than most other wide-spoken languages (can’t say about Mandarin or Arabic, but I suspect they are not easier than English). In fact, I find written English the easiest of all languages that I’ve learnt or attempted to learn (Spanish, French, Italian).