A second language is beneficial. It has been shown that learning a second language improves academic performance across all subjects. Also, it provides broader cultural literacy in addition to access to a better variety of people. If English becomes the only global language, it puts a threat to many other languages which are not recognized on the same scale. There are many endangered languages in the world which are becoming extinct because of English. Many languages in South Africa are undergoing gradual death, extinction for example TshiVenda, SeTsonga, the Nguni, KhoiSan and Sesotho languages. They are being replaced by English. Many South Africans do not want to be heard speaking their African languages. They do not engage in general conversation, even in their homes using their mother tongue languages. We are living in a society where grandchildren cannot have a proper conversation with their grandparents because none of them speak the same language. Many South Africans typically remain monolingual and the “children are only taught the dominant language at school and no longer are instructed how to speak their native tongue” (McMahon, 1994:391). Their grandparents probably speak a pure African language and do not understand much of the Standard English spoken by the monolingual generation. However “it’s dangerous to extrapolate or to prophesy, and none of us can guess what the English language will be like in a hundred years time. The changes of recent decades suggest what forces are at work in the language today and the likely shape of things in the next few decades, but the history of the language in the coming century will depend on the history of the community itself” (Barber,1993:277).