Fascinating article.
My point of view is that languages devolve.... or simplify over time, if you will.
I like the fact a word gets "stored". It's better to lose a word, but not it's meaning, than to have words that change their meaning over time.
For example "Freedom" has changed meaning in an Orwellian way; not yet obvious, but there's something you can not put your finger on.
Older words are more easy to spot: gay (Flintstones had a gay ol' time) or Fair (she was fair to the eyes).
Newer worlds like "(m|b)illions" actually mean "much/many". (she gave me billions and billions of kisses)
Americans are also losing "Yes". They use "
absolutely", and use "yes" in the bedroom instead.
Not only words and meanings, but we lose letters all the time (thorn in English, LL and CH in Spanish).
Dutch lost the "she" form and we refer to female things with "it". While SouthAfrican kept the "she" form (die) and lost the other two. Spanish lost the "it" (lo)...
My guess for the future is that we will lose gendered words in favor of gender free words.
Ultimately,
we will lose English as a language. And not because Chinese will be the better language, but because we will need an unambiguous language to speak with our overlords (yes, AI will force upon us a new language, once we start interfacing with them).