Behemoth, bully, thief: How the English language is taking over the planet

(You beat me to posting this by 18 minutes! This is good for tildes.)

Researchers at the IULM University in Milan have noticed that, in the past 50 years, Italian syntax has shifted towards patterns that mimic English models, for instance in the use of possessives instead of reflexives to indicate body parts and the frequency with which adjectives are placed before nouns. German is also English grammatical forms, while in Swedish its influence governing word formation and phonology.

This is not surprising, as English is such a common subject for European students. I also wonder about neologisms; do we use any non-English words for technology? Even 'Bluetooth' is the Anglicised form.

The quest to master English in Korea is often called the yeongeo yeolpung or “English frenzy”. Although mostly confined to a mania for instruction and immersion, occasionally this “frenzy” spills over into medical intervention. As Sung-Yul Park relates: “An increasing number of parents in South Korea have their children undergo a form of surgery that snips off a thin band of tissue under the tongue … Most parents pay for this surgery because they believe it will make their children speak English better; the surgery supposedly enables the child to pronounce the English retroflex consonant with ease, a sound that is considered to be particularly difficult for Koreans.”

How many Anglosphere Koreans would it take to dispel that myth?