One Language

Interesting article about the death of writing in China.

It's reasonable to assume that for a very long time (we're talking hundreds of years to come), there will be people who know how to write in very complex languages. They won't be the average person in the culture, but rather artists and scholars.

Computers are forcing the world into one language - English. I can hardly write by hand anymore, and only do it a couple times a year at most. Even when I'm working I take my notes in notepad, rather than writing them down like I used to. Looking at John's desk, he has notes scribbled all over the place and his hand writing is a lot better than mine. His work is quite a bit different than mine though.

The trend isn't going to reverse itself. It's only going to accelerate as the world becomes more interconnected. It'll take longer for spoken languages to die than actual writing, but if somebody checks in 200 years, I'll bet everyone in each nation can speak English and their native language. In 500 years, it'll be English only - or a paired down, simplified version of English.