増補 日本語が亡びるとき: 英語の世紀の中で

The title sounds like clickbait, but it's a reference to a line from Soseki's novel Sanshiro. This is a book length essay on why Japanese literature had a tremendous flowering in the late 19th and early 20th century as Japanese and Western culture came into contact, and on the question of whether it (and other literary cultures in other languages) can continue to flourish in a world where English is increasingly the universal global language of communication. It also takes detours into areas including the virtues of historical kana spellings and the quality of teaching of literature in Japanese schools.

I didn't agree with all of the author's argument, but it was definitely thought provoking, and it caused me to adjust some of my prior beliefs about spoken language always being primary and written language merely a way to record it. Plus it caused me to go and read Sanshiro.