I feel fairly confident that most of the world will
be speaking the same language at some point in the future. Looking back through
time, language evolution is similar to speciation. Just as in speciation,
populations diverge until they can no longer interbreed, new words and phrases
are adopted to the point that groups can no longer communicate properly (this
was allegorised in the Old Testament's Tower of Babel story).
But while it's easy to understand how genetic populations became so diverse, it isn't so obvious with language - after all, there are thousands of languages - and yet, despite the multifarious benefits of a rich diversity of language, we all know the disadvantages of communication breakdown with language barriers.
I assume languages evolved to suit the needs of the populations, perhaps with groups adopting new ways of communicating in order to assert their established identity. Yet you also find that there is more commonality of language in highly developed areas than lesser developed. In Europe, a great many people can speak English as their second language. In other Asian countries, many can speak Mandarin - and Spanish, Arabic and Hindi are prominent too in various regions across the world. Such diversity is less common in more remote tribal regions, where hundreds of exclusive languages are found in smaller tribes.
My tentative hunch is this. Given that English is the primary languages being pulled in the most directions, and given increased globalisation, enhanced technology and human connectivity, it seems likely that English will continue to proliferate until most of the world speaks it, either as their primary or secondary language. In a world of global trade and increased online communication, such is the advantage of mutual communicability that it's probable that as more and more people find it advantageous to speak a common language. And as smaller languages will slowly begin to die out, I think there’ll come a time when virtually the whole world only speaks one language, and other languages are only used for historical study or perhaps have survived in very remote places in successful attempts to preserve endangered languages.
It's well known that a lot of the conflict in the
world is primarily caused by not understanding your neighbour (although not just linguistically, of course). In many of these conflicts and prejudices, the main barrier to concordance is a lack of empathy and appreciation
of that person as an individual - and a language barrier can play a big part in that.
While this might take hundreds or even thousands of years, I predict that one day almost everyone in the world will be speaking the same language, and that that language will be English.
