Benjamin Franklin himself said it best: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." This is the exact same for languages, minus the taxes part. In my opinion, after studying languages from across the globe for this entire unit, all languages must die. At some point, most cultures will die. On the good side of that coin, a lot of stereotypes may die as well. Everything. Will. Die. But that might be a good thing.
I'm not going to list them out (even though it would meet the word requirement and then some), but here are all of the known dead languages - yes, it's Wikipedia, but even a few factual errors won't lessen the magnitude of the sheer number of 'em. Here's another Wikipedia article which has to split up the number of endangered languages into about 20 categories. The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) states, "by some estimates, 80% of the world's languages may vanish within the next century." Most sources say that the world has around 5,000-6,000 languages. This means that, potentially, more than 4,000 languages will die by 2119. And we've still got about 5,000,000,000 years until the sun dies! I wonder what will happen in the 4,999,999,900 years after 80% of our languages die out? So - in my opinion, this isn't really an "if." It's a "when." Will English be the victor? I've got no idea. David Crystal, the renowned linguist, suggested multiple possibilities in a recent lecture. English could take over. English could die. English could fuse with other languages to make a conglomerate pidgin. We don't know. We just know that a lot of languages are gonna die very soon. The languages aren't going to be the only casualties, though.
When languages die, so do cultures. We see it in Americanah, with Ginika, Aunty Uju, Ifemelu, and so many other Nigerian characters who move to the "promised lands" of the UK and the US. With these characters, we see them lose their accents and their past personalities. To put it very simply, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie makes it seem like, when you turn to the American or British life, you get much softer. A moment in Americanah that sticks out to me is when Ifemelu is talking to a call-center operator, and he compliments her on her English, saying that it's like Ifemelu's been in America forever. Ifemelu realizes that she wants to be herself, not someone like Ginika or Emenike who has been rolled up into a ball by English culture and molded to be like every other American or Brit. Ifemelu is an anomaly, at least by the book's standards - she's one of few characters who really seems to want to keep their African heritage. She's not normal. Most people want to look rich or fancy, and thus adopt American or British mannerisms. Because of this, if American and British cultures (and the English language) expand, diversity will contract - it's like a seesaw. One side goes up, the other side goes down. So, with American and British cultures steadily growing, everything else must die.
With this cultural death does come something good, though - the loss of stereotypes. In Americanah, we see a disturbing moment where a woman speaks very slowly to Ifemelu simply because Ifemelu is from Africa (and here's the kicker - she's spoken English her entire life). If we all speak the same type of the same language, nobody will do that sort of thing anymore. It's a simple concept, and something I don't really need to explain in depth. If we all speak one language, we can't bully people who speak a different language. That sounds good to me.
I'm probably over the word count, but to sum it up, right now it looks like everything's going to die. Good things are going to die, like diversity. Bad things are going to die, like stereotypes. It's unavoidable - don't call me a doomsday prepper, because it will happen. Say goodbye while you still can.
PS - I might edit this to cut down the word count later it's kinda long.
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