Annotator for all languages

I'd like is to register my annotator normally in plugin.xml:

<annotator language="" implementationClass="my.Annotator"/>

Where the empty string indicates my annotator should be invoked for all languages.  But this does not work.  After inspection of jetbrains code it is clear annotators are accessed explicitly per language; the empty string wildcard is not respected.

Is there a way to programmatically register an annotator?  

I read in an earlier post this could be done via:

Language.getRegisteredLanguages() and LanguageAnnotators.INSTANCE.registerExplicitExtension()

However, registerExplicitExtension() is no longer part of the API.  Is there an alternative?