I don't have any 'ideological' position on this, but I do have a 'pragmatic' preference. Having experienced an emergency landing once as an exit row passenger, about 5 years ago, on a BA flight from Manchester, I do not find it scandalous at all that an airline might want the passengers sitting in that row to fluently speak the language of the crew. As we all know, while exit row seats are simply seats with extra comfort 999,999 times out of a million, they are also, occasionally, emergency exit positions. I'm not sure if people realise how quickly things go in this millionth case. In the flight I mention, the aisle passenger on the same row was a very nice Argentinian lady whose English was, however, not very good. The verbal interaction between the purser, each of the three of us in the ee row and the rest of the passengers behind and in front of us was dense, quick, and stressful. Pragmatically, considering the time already spent trying to explain things again to the Argentinian lady and to reassure the other passengers, I would not have wanted the purser to waste more time by giving all the exit operation recommendations in a language which would not have been her native tongue (even if she spoke it extremely well). This is all the more important than even the best speakers may find it harder to communicate clearly under conditions of intense stress which it clearly was for the staff as well as for us. So while I agree that I would like ee passengers to be able, agile, clever, sober, etc, I do not think that wanting them to understand the language in which the crew will likely speak to them naturally is a gimmick.