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by matroosberg 3596 days ago
Ad A) It's merely a list of extinct languages, an incomplete at that since we cannot possibly know all languages that were spoken 3000 years ago. So it does not even give you a rate at which languages go extinct. But, yes, as we see more mobility (geographically and socially), languages consolidate, but a consolidation to one single language seems extremely unlikely, as I explained before.

Just because Swedish might die (which I doubt, but that's beside the point), does not mean that all languages but one will die.

Ad B) While English is probably gaining importance (speculating, I don't have a source), it is number 2 in total speakers after Mandarin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num.... Even Everyone in W. Europe under 30 speaking English is an overestimation. If you look in less well educated groups, you will find more people not speaking English. Even Sweden shows ~5% of "Younger" not speaking English in http://languageknowledge.eu/countries/sweden. Austria even shows only 52.35% speaking English natively or learned: http://languageknowledge.eu/countries/austria