The greatest immune system protecting a culture is its own language.
If the immune system of a culture is too protecting, the culture becomes a stagnant monstrosity; the solidification of certain energies in time. Loyalist marchers come to mind.
If the immune system is too weak, then the culture is liable to be overrun. If a country- say Ireland- had its own language, then it should prove much more resistant to, for example, the invasion of the worthless tabloid and celebrity 'culture' springing primarily from Britain and the US.
Though of course, the benefits of a culture's own language go far beyond merely defensive merits. That culture's whole historic sense is bound up in its language- think, if in England everyone spoke French for the last hundred years and English was little known, how much of the cultural reservoir would simply vanish from the common memory? This naturally explaining the heavy priority placed by experienced colonising powers on erasing the colonised's language and subsequent sense of self.
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Nevertheless, if we have anything to thank our own colonisers for, it is for the English language.
Though it is unlikely they could have goten away with replacing the native language with no language at all.
And a people will tend to adapt the enforced language to suit their ends, thus Indian-English is distinctly not English-English; but i guess any language can only be adapted so far before it fails
Though I suppose given humanity's innate creativity, the offshoots will be hopefully new creative streams, though whether this will be much more than a dilution of previous essences...
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