Language Death, by Orooo on deviantart.com
Is English just a language like any other?
I don't think so: rather, it seems to me that English is a kind of monstrous metalanguage. Even we might think of it as a kind of voracious black hole into which other tongues collapse and die, leaving behind a few words like seeds, which will blossom as part of an ever-expanding global English or übertongue.
And this is why English-speakers are notoriously monolingual: for they already speak every other language under the sun.
