There are two possible futures. One has every human using the same language and all other languages die out from popular use. The other future has translation software become good enough fast enough that people more or less only speak the same language as their parents.
What do you expect to happen?
3rd option: everyone dies first.
I think option 2 is in my lifetime.
I kinda doubt option 1 will happen. Some cultures are very protective of their languages .
3rd option: everyone dies first.
I think option 2 is in my lifetime.
I kinda doubt option 1 will happen. Some cultures are very protective of their languages .
For cultural reasons many people would continue to know the local language but they'd still use the universal language for most communication.
Also I was thinking about it, and I think it's OK for languages to die just as long as knowledge of the language doesn't die with them. Modern dictionaries and translation software are very close to being able to preserve a language for historical reasons. Just in the same way that we can still appreciate historical math and numeral systems even though no one uses them anymore.
Or the third option, different languages continue to be a thing around the world as they have been for thousands of years
Or the third option, different languages continue to be a thing around the world as they have been for thousands of years
Different languages would continue to be a thing with option two. We're already well past how language used to be handled though. ~400 million people speak English as a second language and the only reason people would stop learning English as a second language is if a different language becomes more popular or if computer translation makes knowing a second language obsolete.
Although I guess it would be possible for everyone to just get really nationalistic and purposefully avoid interactions with people speaking other languages.
We're all going stick fish in our ears and then we never have to think about languages again.