Should we rescue endangered languages?

[Anomalocaris]

English is (effectively) that already. In 50 years or so, I wouldn't be surprised if the global language ('Earthish'? 'Earthean'?) was some sort of Mandarin/English fusion.

Boru

It'd be called Chinglish

There is still a lot of French, Spanish and Arabic. I don't see any of those going anywhere fast, especially arabic, considering how resistant that area of the world appears to be to change.

Chinese is unsuitable as a global language because:

1. It's writing system does not lend itself to highly efficient machine input.

2. The tonal based sound structure of Chinese makes proper mandarin pronounciation difficult for native speakers of non-tonal languages to master. Furthermore failure to properly master tonal qualities of spoken Chinese often makes the speaker incomprehensible.

3. Chinese is linguistically distant from any other major language family, so natives of no other major language family is given a leg up on learning Chinese by virtue of having mastered their native language.

It should also be noted in East Asian areas where china enjoyed undisputed cultural dominance for many centuries the Chinese writing system proliferated and became the dominant writing system in Vietnam, Korea, and japan, But Chinese language did not follow. Everyone else went on speaking their native languages, only writing them in Chinese characters.