Future of the English Language

[eastsidebagel]

I just wanna draw attention to the future-speak I made in post #38. What is everybody thinking about it? Is it somewhat realistic to you?

 

[Bill3000]

so I'd say that any further change of the English language will most likely be restricted to vocabulary. pronounciation and morphology are pretty much set.

LANGUAGES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

 

[scherbchen]

LANGUAGES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

correction: languages did not use to work that way. I'll refrain from using the offensive smiley (pissed? really?) or the /b.

I know you did not provide any point whatsoever but hey, I'll bite... explain to me how the language globalization provided by global media and the intratubes has no homogenizing effect on language and dialect developement as opposed to Old English, Early Modern English, Middle English.

keep in mind that I already mentioned subcultures as well regional and covert prestige.

 

[Bill3000]

I know you did not provide any point whatsoever but hey, I'll bite... explain to me how the language globalization provided by global media and the intratubes has no homogenizing effect on language and dialect developement as opposed to Old English, Early Modern English, Middle English.

Because empirical evidence has shown us that there has been no homogenization of the language after the invention of mass media, and that more dialects have been created just as before. Same with sound changes.

 

[scherbchen]

I just wanna draw attention to the future-speak I made in post #38. What is everybody thinking about it? Is it somewhat realistic to you?

it is a moot point as it can not be predicted. you merely picked some random dialectical features and mashed them together, added some made up words and idioms. what do you expect?

did some 13th century guy write a book about how Dutch would develope if they decided to take a Low German dialect into another direction? of course not. they had more sense and did not worry about their post count....

 

[scherbchen]

Because empirical evidence has shown us that there has been no homogenization of the language after the invention of mass media, and that more dialects have been created just as before. Same with sound changes.

I notice that the "empirical evidence" is missing in your post... always a good sign. I have some seaside property to sell you if you are interested.

 

[zjl56]

LANGUAGES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

Languages only change to the extent that guiding bodies allow. English has been standardized some time; this is why the works of Dickens are still perfectly coherent minus a few basic cultural references. The continual advancement in English has been acronyms or tiny additions of nouns and sometimes verbs. When was the last time a whole new "verb set" was created?

As for the future of English, I see it as the dominant language of business for at least a century, and as the language of science maybe permanently. Mandarin and Spanish have great potential of eventually overtaking English, but the body of work that has been in computers and modern science make English a hell to get rid of.

 

[uppi]

Will there even be one English in 1000 years? Or will there be American, British, Australian, African and so on, based on English like the Romance languages are based on Latin?

 

[Mirc]

Will there even be one English in 1000 years? Or will there be American, British, Australian, African and so on, based on English like the Romance languages are based on Latin?

Could be, after all I'm very sure that English is further from any Germanic language than any Romance language is from Latin.

(that has nothing to do with future, yes, I know)

As for the future of English, I see it as the dominant language of business for at least a century, and as the language of science maybe permanently.

There's no such thing as a permanent language of something. You could argue Latin is the longest-standing language of biology, but it sure as hell didn't seem so in the 11th century.

 

[scherbchen]

Will there even be one English in 1000 years? Or will there be American, British, Australian, African and so on, based on English like the Romance languages are based on Latin?

there is no "one English" today.

 

[mangxema]

I just wanna draw attention to the future-speak I made in post #38. What is everybody thinking about it? Is it somewhat realistic to you?

Hard to say. I know enough to know that he's not totally BS-ing, but not enough to judge if his reasoning is solid. Some of the things in the Early period I recognize already from the South, so I suspect that he does actually know what he's talking about.

That said, I highly doubt that anything would ever be written that way. Spoken maybe... maybe. But I still doubt it.

 

[eastsidebagel]

That said, I highly doubt that anything would ever be written that way. Spoken maybe... maybe. But I still doubt it.

I just wrote it that way to make it pronounceable. I too think that English will never be written at any point in time in such a "distorted" manner.

 

[uppi]

there is no "one English" today.

but it's close enough to consider it one language

As for the future of English, I see it as the dominant language of business for at least a century, and as the language of science maybe permanently.

The language of science definitely isn't permanent. In the relatively short history of science there already have been 4 dominant languages.

 

[mangxema]

I just wrote it that way to make it pronounceable. I too think that English will never be written at any point in time in such a "distorted" manner.

I looked at the linked page; did you write that?

 

[Cutlass]

In 1000 years it will still be called English, but it will be nearly unrecognizable as the same language. It will be more complex and will have even more words invented and borrowed from other languages. Global communications will allow all English speakers to continue to understand one another, as new usages will travel the world faster. But the people then will struggle to understand what is written and recorded now.

 

[eastsidebagel]

I looked at the linked page; did you write that?

No, but I pretty much agree on what the author is saying and from this page I got the inspiration to do something similiar on my own.

 

[Bill3000]

I notice that the "empirical evidence" is missing in your post... always a good sign. I have some seaside property to sell you if you are interested.

Recent sound changes? How recent are you talking about? Mass media since 1940s?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-pen_merger#Pin-pen_merger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_cities_vowel_shift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonol...sh_fricatives_and_affricates#Lock-loch_merger
http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/83/4/403
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=13585504
http://email.eva.mpg.de/~blevins/pdf/webpub2006a.pdf


Plenty more. I'm not even counting the non-native speakers here, who will inevitably have more. All of these are at 20th century, 60- year sound changes. Changes that have existed, mass media be damned. Besides, mass media has trended towards diversity of dialects in their journalists - not just General American and RP.

Languages only change to the extent that guiding bodies allow. English has been standardized some time; this is why the works of Dickens are still perfectly coherent minus a few basic cultural references. The continual advancement in English has been acronyms or tiny additions of nouns and sometimes verbs. When was the last time a whole new "verb set" was created?

Other than the fact that language change doesn't even remotely depend on their guiding bodies, there has been an entire new class of verb modification in "n't" - negation of verbs.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/413900

Dickens is perfectly coherent because it takes more than 150 years to make sound changes. I do agree that massive sound changes have lessened due to literacy, but this doesn't even remotely mean that language has stopped changing. Dictionaries merely report the language used by most people - it's not an actual standard - and it's important to know that English does not have an official guiding body.

Besides, as I said before, the majority of changes in a language is not vocabulary, but in sound changes and verbal morphology.

Hard to say. I know enough to know that he's not totally BS-ing, but not enough to judge if his reasoning is solid. Some of the things in the Early period I recognize already from the South, so I suspect that he does actually know what he's talking about.

All he did was apply consistent natural sound changes. Nothing about probability or whatever; conlanging is entirely an art. The only one based on trends was Early American. Besides, considering the unpredibility in future trends, as said in the page itself, it's probably even more unpredictible.

 

[scherbchen]

but it's close enough to consider it one language

it has never been a question as to whether it pertained to one language. the questions that we have to ask ourselves are "how far has the variety in question strayed from 'English'", "do the speakers till believe they are talking 'English'", "do they regard a standard variety of English as the form with the highest (overt) prestige" [edit: last question was redundant]
more on bill once I have checked his links.

[edit] nevermind, I am not even going to look at three wiki articles, one single paragraph without citations and an abstract, no clue if the last one you posted holds any scientific merit... you pretty much discretided it with the first 5 links so I won't bother.