AH Challenge: Make English a "dying language" by 2010

WI a POD anytime after the 11th Century (after the Norman Conquest), come up with a scenario that would make the English language a "dying language" by 2010, with just a dwindling population of a couple thousand speakers or less. Remember that this isn't an "English develops differently" scenario, and it doesn't have to be a "Europe is decimated by Plague, Years of Rice & Salt" POD. The more non-cliche the better.
 
Okay.

The Angevins Empire holds in perpetuity. French is the language of prestige etc. and even, finally, everyday professional relations.

Anglo-French kings are more interested in the colonies when the time comes; most colonies are therefore Francophone and any settlers from the English parts are in local majorities at best, or more likely minority populations.

When nationalised education and centralised government finally appear, acculturation is rapid (see Cape Breton and Newfoundland as to how hundreds of thousands of speakers can dwindle to nothing in a generation and a half) - ditto the fate of Manx, Norn, Irish Gaelic, even Breton.

With the advent of global Francophone mass-media, English is ailing beyond rescue.

Done.
 
Anglo-French kings are more interested in the colonies when the time comes; most colonies are therefore Francophone and any settlers from the English parts are in local majorities at best, or more likely minority populations.
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I don't agree with this - in OTL, the French were wholly uninterested in moving out to colonies, something I don't see changing ITTL. Rather, the backwards country folk who still speak English will have a biggest incentive to leave...especially if they're threatened or persecuted by local French. The biggest problem for French emigration-driven colonization is that they already have everything they need at home in France. Would the Angevins allow English protestants to leave? Just thinking of the Huguenots here.
 
I don't agree with this - in OTL, the French were wholly uninterested in moving out to colonies, something I don't see changing ITTL. Rather, the backwards country folk who still speak English will have a biggest incentive to leave...especially if they're threatened or persecuted by local French. The biggest problem for French emigration-driven colonization is that they already have everything they need at home in France. Would the Angevins allow English protestants to leave? Just thinking of the Huguenots here.

Yes, so?

Just look at what % of the US is of Gaelic, or German descent, and look at what they speak now? Or the Germans and the Hugenots in the Cape colony? Or the Germans, Slavs, Welsh and Italians in Argentina?

The colonists will, in the end, speak the language of the administration, which sometimes coincides with majority population and sometimes doesn't, but I would also think that IF the colonies ever become profitable, the Francophone professional classes will emigrate, regardless of how comfortable they are at home.

Granted, I'm not holding to this scenario that tightly, it assumes tremendous amounts of convergence, for one.
 
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