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In the ninth century, Latin broke up into several different languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian… well, it just broke up. Latin was like the global language… in Europe. Today, English kind of acts as more or less of a global language. With communities of English speakers on opposite sides of the planet from Scotland to Australia, it would make sense that English might follow the example of Latin and break up into a dozen different languages.

I disagree. When you think about it, today's world has a neat little asset that they didn't have back in the ninth century: electricity. The period of time that we're living in is called the information age. I can sit in my little dorm room up here in Grand Forks while I watch my future wife get the tar beaten out of her by Venus Williams while it's happening on live television being broadcast to all four corners of the globe. It's kind of amazing when you stop to think about it.

Pretty much, geography has little to do with language now. Really, geography has little to do with anything now. Oh, I say that now, but later on, the world will probably have even faster means of transportation making it even more insignificant. Many Americans will listen to English rock stars and have no clue that their English. Still, people listen to ABBA and have no clue where they're from either. When the differences are that insignificant, I doubt that a case can be made that they're separate languages.