But once you link disappearance of language with words like endangered, dying, extinct, all of sudden it sounds terrible.
Power of the words.
It isn't at all obvious that it would be a straight-up boon. It would help some things, hurt others. And in a few generations, we would have dialects and languages again. It's just how brains and (by extension) communities work.
Any recommended references on this process of language forking and dialect creation, especially in the context of neuroscience?
Print, physical and electronic, kind of ossify a language. How much have English, Chinese, German evolved since widespread print and education? I think much less than they did a few hundred years ago.
Interconnectedness kind of promotes the preservation of the current state of a language, I think. Yes argots and memes and cants proliferate more quickly but dont seem to make so many permanent changes and when they do instigate a change that change gets diffused more widely so the language, while changing, remains monolithic rather than create a new dialect.
That's one of two equally important reasons for language. The other is to easily identify insiders in large communities. A few languages later change their primary use to inter-community communication, but those will then start to splinter into dialects to easily distinguish insiders from outsiders.
"language" is a tool used to communicate, and it would be wonderful if any two arbitrary people could successfully communicate.
It might have felt like a drag if I was forced to learn to play and listen to jazz, like in music classes. But I don't try to project my personal feelings of how playing and learning jazz feels like work and drudgery onto actual jazz musicians. Now imagine if a jazz musician woke up one day and there were no one left to jam with - just curmudgeons like myself who don't appreciate jazz. Man, what a drag.