I've heard it said that when a language dies, one way of looking at the world dies too. If you consider how much languages influence our perceptions of the world around us, it's easy to see the truth in that statement. I know many people wish that English would become the officially recognized lingua franca of the world and to a degree it has.

All air control is conducted in English and English is widely used wherever advanced technology is present, to one degree or another. While it would be convenient for everyone or more people in the world to speak English, I see this as something of a potential danger. The more people that speak English in their day-to-day lives means that there will be more people who learn to speak English at a young age or as their primary language and will therefore be deeply influenced by it, though their perceptions will of course be colored by their individual contexts.

That said, I think that the different perceptions that non-English speakers have contribute to the human experience by raising questions that many native English speakers might not think to pose. I think that the most important thing other languages give is other ideas about what it means to be human. I really wish I could understand what that woman was singing about. Even if it was something as banal as a work song, the words would be a way of understanding a little of what was important to those people.