A
Also, I believe it was the world wars and the continuous destruction of Europe that led to Anglo American dominate, plus the cold war, with the West fleeing under Americas cover. Without those Europe would be able to stand on it's own, with it's various economies challenging American cultural dominance. Just look at Germany, before being destroyed in World war two, it had some if the best scientists and film actors and directors. Their film scene could have rivaled the US. I think,but the Nazis didn't make it better, that's for sure. Even today, Japan and India are having movies that are popular in other countries, especially Japan. And they are the only country that speaks Japanese. So English language dominance isn't inevitable even after world war 1.You've got this in after 1900, so I think the best shot of English not being the lingua franca is a German victory in alt WW1 , still Germany on one side, France, Russia, and Britain on the other, other countries can get mixed up whatever way works out. USA participates on British side, but far too little far too late. Germany and german minorities, and germanics (in AH, the baltics, scandinavia, low countries, etc) end up dominant over europe. Harsher depression, and less confidence in government after losing the great war leads to USA, Britain, and the US and British colonies, becoming weaker, possible civil wars and revolutions, possible german/germanic or nationalist decolonization happening earlier, or maybe if the german colonies, some of the nicest places to be subjugated and oppressed OTL, end up even nicer (less terrible) TTL, then a few british colonies might even try to transfer over to being a german protectorate. A second world war, or a world wide depression, revolutions, etc. leads to new political order in europe, with maybe more liberal and modern administration in germany and germany's dependent states becoming more tightly economically and politically attached to it, like OTLs european union.
Come 2016, the Europäische Union encompasses most of Europe, and despite have dozens of official languages its de facto language is german. In most of Europe's nations, especially the germanic ones and those bordering germany, a majority of citizens are fluent in german, and a minority even speak it as a first language. Europe's worldwide dominance has continually decreased for a century now, but it is still the single largest economy, the centre of the global finance, trade, and research, and the origin and centre of telecommunications; including the WeltWeites Netz (WWN). Europe's population continues to grow largely thanks to immigration from africa and asia, with Germany recieving the lion's share of that.
The "success" of nationalism in Europe led to a mid century attempt to impose that structure over Africa, which failed under the weight of Africa's thousands of thoroughly mixed languages, cultures, and religions. Subsequently a loose Afrikanische Union was established, with German as the most convenient lingua franca.
In the americas, asia, and oceania german is not as dominant (excepting the former german colonies), but german is still widely taught in schools as a second or third language, and Europe is the main trade partner of many states around the globe.
German is also the international language of computer programming, aviation, and science.
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We could probably make similar scenarios for French or Russian instead, perhaps with most change happening around the second world war instead of the first. Any other language, I think, would require a POD before 1900.