[programLyrique]

I think that with the progress of automatic translation and interpretation (which is not perfect now, but is likely to progress -- I can't imagine all the current progress in machine learning not being also applied to automatic translation) as well, learning a foreign language for practical reasons could also become useless.

No lingua franca anymore...

[jnky]

Yeah but if everything can be effortlessly translated by everyone in a lossless manner, why not just standardize on a language then? Do languages at that point not become an unnecessary hindrance in personal communication without perceivable benefit?

[programLyrique]

Well, languages are not just about straight communication, but also about culture, litterature, history, puns, sounds, and so on.

All languages can't express as easily the same set of ideas.

There is this Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that says that language shapes what we think. It sounds terrible to me that we could sacrifice so much diversity, so many ways of thinking.