I agree that calling it "universal" is both an exaggeration and chauvinistic, but English is the most widely spoken language in the world, both in total combined as first plus second language and it's by far the most spoken as a second language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Rust is not in the same position among computer languages. Javascript holds that distinction, with Rust being way down, outside the top 10: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology (it's still outside the top 10 in the 2026 survey, but the 2025 chart is much easier to read and interpret at a glance).

So Rust is indeed not the same as English, which makes it not an apt comparison. One can much more easily completely ignore and avoid Rust as a programming language than they can ignore and avoid English as a human language. They can surely both be ignored and avoided, but it's much more difficult to do so with English.