* – Subtitled: “Or I Would Have Severe Trouble Getting from the Hotel to the Office”

I’ve written variations on this before. From Hong Kong, for sure. From Europe, Japan and Korea, probably. From El Salvador and Mexico, possibly.

Thank goodness for English … because I can make myself understood to most of the people in a multinational country of some 7 million people located on the Arabian Peninsula.

Not for the first time I discover the reach of the language. But I am perhaps even more grateful for it than I was in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, the non-English-speakers were almost entirely Chinese speakers (of the Cantonese dialect). It is a language extremely difficult for English-speakers to learn, but (in theory) had I stayed long enough I could have picked up the 20 or 25 phrases that would have enabled me to order in a restaurant, instruct a cabbie, pick up my laundry. To get by, that is.

In Abu Dhabi, however, “getting by” would have been a nightmare because there is no dominant native language. Even the native Arabic-speakers are in the minority. And if it weren’t for English … I would be asked (and be unable) to communicate in a half-dozen important languages. From Arabic to Hindi to Urdu, Bengali, Malay, Tagalog …

Instead, all of us struggle along in English. Whatever we know of it.

For us native English-speakers, it’s a pretty sweet deal. Nearly every business has signage in English as well as Arabic; no guessing at what might be behind those doors. Every road sign is in English and Arabic. We talk to anyone in English, here in Abu Dhabi, anyone conducting business, anyway, and the odds are extremely good they will know enough English for us to get along.

My accent may seem as strange to them as theirs does to me, but we usually figure it out. (Avoid slang, contractions, sloppy pronunciation, and you’re pretty much fine.)

English is, again, the lingua franca (or the lingua Britannica) of another former British Empire outpost.

Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates speak Arabic first, of course. But they are surrounded by a population that is 85 percent expats, most of them from South Asia and a smaller chunk from the Commonwealth and the U.S.  And all they have in common is … enough English to get by.

English, right this minute, has to be the most commonly understood language in the history of the planet. Yes, there was a time when French was important enough to be known as the “lingua franca” … and Greek was common in much of the Mediterranean and Near East for hundreds of years, followed by Latin …

Mandarin is spoken by 1.2 or so billion Chinese right this minute … but by hardly anyone outside China’s borders. Maybe that will change, in the years ahead. (Long after I’m gone, I hope.)

Or perhaps English just happened to be the common denominator of languages at a moment when global communication became instantaneous. And perhaps that will give English a longer shelf life than we would normally expect from a vanished empire.

All native speakers of the language — and maybe even the Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Arabs I “speak to” every day — must hope so, too.