This is a social and a political problem.

On the other hand, there is no count of languages that actually evolve day by day. The “established” languages such as English, French, German themselves change a lot as new expressions are adopted.
Net slang – though often smiled upon as inferior – will become of greater importance, as will “localized” peer-group related expressions (“Hip Hop”).

Though the number of “proper” languages will decrease, there is a lot of diversity around – which still lets me be optimistic.

Because, I am one with Voidgazing here – one language would take a lot of beauty and of what makes this world interesting out of this world.

(this text would have been stylisticially different if written in German…)

Does anyone know of current research being done on emergent languages? Even if physical barriers to language/culture groups have broken down due to globalization, new communities (cf. B. Anderson) exist in all sorts of forms and languages invariable evolve from there (e.g. chatroom speak or, regrettably, lolcat speak)

Think of it in evolutionary terms. Just as a lack of genetic variation in a species makes it more vulnerable to changing climactic and pathogenic environmental conditions, so does a lack of linguistic diversity make humanity more vulnerable and less able to cope.

In other words, people who speak Mandarin think differently because the language demands a different conceptual framework. They fill in more blanks, because they speak and write more imprecisely in some ways. Japanese speakers extrapolate like gangbusters because the language depends so heavily on context.

That very diversity in thought can produce amazing synergistic results, especially when cultures exchange ideas.

One language means a horrible reduction in humanity’s collective ability to figure stuff out, to be creative, and more importantly, the death of so much beauty, so much of what makes the world interesting, it could never be worth it.