Yup. It's just the vagaries of time, war, and shifting alliances that put English into the main trade language. The term for that is lingua franca because of the French dominance in that regard.

The only reason English is probably going to stay in that place is inertia. Well, that and the friendliness of English borrowing words so freely. It's easier to just adopt words with complex meanings into English than it is to translate them. But why change the trade language when it would cost more to shift things for no practical benefit.

Honestly, I wouldn't have minded more and better language options in school. But it was the eighties and very early nineties, in a rural town, I was "lucky" to have two choices in high school. But I think if I'd had access younger, the way some countries do English, I would have gotten much better at Spanish than I did. Even my ASL is better than my Spanish, and I have arthritis that makes signing hard.