Is English dying

This could be a little controversial and is certainly a discussion point.

I was thinking about how childhoods have changed over the years. In my day I built plastic kits (Airfix), did some wargaming with them, went out on my bike and played a lot - read quite a bit, was lucky enough to spend a lot of time on the sea sailing a dinghy, canoeing, swimming, diving, fishing, radio and TV (3 channels) with communication happening by conversation (person to person and over the telephone) and by letter. Now, the options for conversation are much more diverse, instant messaging, networking channels like MySpace, mobile phones, text messaging, email and options for entertainment far far wider, computers, the internet, computer and /or console games, TV (hundreds of channels), video, DVD, then all of the traditional games etc. Then you see reports in the media about how this is or isn't affecting everybody that I began to think about language (and I'm sure that I'm not the first)



Is English (as opposed to American English) dying? It's just a thought - no evidence to prove either way, just that our kids are so immersed in American culture in ways never dreamed of in the past (through TV, the internet, computer games and music) that it's possible that within 2 or 3 generations, English (as known by the English - with all of its quirky spellings and pronunciations) could well be past its sell by date.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing, does it really matter? I'm not sure that it does really. People may say that it gives us our heritage but surely that is defined by our glorious (and less than glorious) past.

So long as we all get along and can understand one another, is it really an issue?