Who does English belong to? In the article "Whose language?" (Financial Times, via EFL Geek via TESOL's In the News), Michael Skapinker covers quite a few items, including

• the spread of English (supposedly about 1.5 billion people),
• the issues this spreading raises (who decides which English dialect is correct), and
• the language(s) that may supplant it some day (Chinese, Arabic, or Spanish).

Here are two excerpts:

The issue is: whose English will it be? Non-native speakers now outnumber native English-speakers by three to one. As hundreds of millions more learn the language, that imbalance will grow. Mr Graddol says the majority of encounters in English today take place between non-native speakers. Indeed, he adds, many business meetings held in English appear to run more smoothly when there are no native English-speakers present.

Why should non-native speakers bother with what native speakers regard as correct? Their main aim, after all, is to be understood by one another. As Mr Graddol says, in most cases there is no native speaker present.

Prof Seidlhofer says that the English spoken by non-native speakers “is a natural language, and natural languages are difficult to control by ‘legislation’.

As a teacher of English, I can only teach the English I know, but it's fascinating that some day what is proper "global English" may be decided by "non-native" speakers due to their greater numbers and perhaps greater economic power.

The article is a very interesting read, and so are the comments at EFL Geek that elaborate on and challenge parts of the article.