"Italian cool, say something in Italian....oh thats right, you can't."

With the admiration for bilingualism/ any lingualism I have, the idea of only one world religion makes me frown involuntarily with disapproval. But I know I’m biased. Maybe one or a handful of world religions is actually what’s best for the world. It would make migration much easier; it would give struggling countries a chance to join the race.  But what concerns me is whether or not along with a loss of linguistic diversity, would the world lose its cultural diversities? Would the world turn into one giant America, or England?  But this thought leads to another important question; can a society retain its culture, without retaining its language? How central is language to cultural identity?

 I do have to agree with Rob, that the English language is quite adaptable, and would not go uninfluenced by other important languages. I do think that eventually we will most likely end up with one or a handful of “lingua francas.”  And I think from and capitalist point of view that, that would be the best thing for the world. And of course I’ve realized that some people chose to lose their cultural identities and languages, to better their situations in the world and be happier with them.   But if English becoming the global lingua franca means losing cultural diversities and identities, then I’m not down with English being the global lingua franca.  That’s just my biased opinion, and I’m sticking to it.