'The other is the worldwide popularity of American popular culture. Hollywood movies, rock and roll, etc' I agree with lmckenzie on that one. In almost every country in europe the charts are generally dominated by music either from the US or the UK. This has a huge influence on kids. And the same goes for movies. Even though the movies are dubbed into different languages, the atmosphere and locations (mostly american, in the case of movies) become a part of popular culture. There can't be many people in the world who don't know that San Francisco is hilly or that Caifornia has great beaches. As far as Joerg Weber's comment about mandarin is concerned, I'm afraid I have to disagree. Mandarin speakers may have a numerical advantage, but they don't have a technological one. All you need to do is look at a world map of poser users or internet users in general to see the way things are going. Two big clusters on the east and west coasts of America, another smaller one in the UK/western europe, and another small one on the east coast of australia. I don't see many users in china. And the internet will always be driven by technology. A piece of trivia. The second most known word in the world is 'coca-cola'. The first? Obvious. It's 'OK' mac