Drawing on a study of current language use in a rural community in Japan, we question to what extent English actually does serve today as a lingua franca in multilingual, internationally diverse communities. Specifically, we report on a critical ethnography of a small Japanese community with a growing number of non—English‐speaking immigrants, largely from Brazil but also from China, Peru, Korea, and Thailand. We investigate how people in the community view and engage in local linguistic diversity and how this is related to their subjectivities and to their experiences in learning and using English. We analyzed the public report of a community survey on diversity conducted by the city and interviewed three Japanese volunteer leaders who are teachers and learners of English and two Japanese who study Portuguese in order to support the local Brazilian migrant workers. Based on our findings, we highlight four emergent themes that provide insights into the significance of learning English in a linguistically diverse context. We also discuss the pedagogical implications of the local linguistic ecology for the teaching and learning of English.