Jean-Claude Juncker’s announcement on Friday that he would speak French to a Florence conference because “slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe” looked like yet another instance of the European Commission president twisting Brexit Britain’s tail.
More striking even than Mr Juncker’s jibe was the reaction of his audience of EU officials, local leaders and Italian students. They laughed and applauded.
Was that because they thought English really was losing its importance in Europe? They would have been deluded if they had. In the same week as Mr Juncker’s speech, Duolingo, the language learning app, published a map showing which language was most popular among its 120m users in 194 countries. English was dominant in Asia, Latin America, much of Africa — and Europe.