I once knew a researcher who despite having Japanese as his native language published most of his work in English. I assumed it was for a wider audience, he said it was partially that English was a good 'data communication' language as if it didn't have a specific word, you could pick one that did the job from any other language, put an explanatory after it, and you had an instant 'English' word. I thought he was making a joke, 15+ years later I don't think so anymore.
The English Language: "Nice descriptive vocabulary you have there. Shame if anything happened to it..."