![]() When these countries withdraw from the international stage, so does their mode of expression. As mentioned, the prominence of a language is inextricably tied to the cultural, economic, and military might of the countries that speak it. It’s possible English will not be around 1,000 years from now. This means that, in centuries to come, we may say “he run” instead of “he runs,” and “informations” instead of “information.” The next lingua franca ![]() As Barbara Seidlhofer, a professor of linguistics at the University of Vienna, has noted in her research, many non-native speakers have a hard time distinguishing between second and third person singular as well as mass and count nouns, because such distinctions do not exist in their mother tongues. The same, albeit to a lesser extent, goes for differences in grammar. In the Netherlands, English teachers are often frustrated by their students’ inability to pronounce the “th” sound, which is usually replaced with a “d” or an “f.” Words such as “thus” and “third” become “dus” and “fird.” “Other,” again to the chagrin of teachers, becomes “udder.” As in East Asia, these alternative pronunciations come so naturally to non-native speakers they cannot be hammered out of them, not even through dedicated study and practice. Statistically, these non-native speakers will have a much greater impact on the way English is spoken than native speakers will. However, an estimated 80% of all written and verbal interactions take place between non-native speakers. English is the most spoken language in the whole world. Just as “boot” used to be pronounced “boht,” so could the word “home,” which still has its oh-vowel, be some day pronounced “hoom.” Mother tonguesĪs some linguists try to predict future changes in a language by studying historical trends, others look at how that language is being spoken in the present moment - specifically, abroad. Albert Marckwardt, a historian of English at the University of Michigan, proposes the great vowel shift is not finished yet. For example, the great vowel shift of the 15th and 16th centuries, in which “ee” started being pronounced as “aye” and “oh” as “oo,” did not make words any simpler it just made them different. While there’s some truth to this analogy, not all changes are made for the sake of efficiency. It’s tempting to think of language as a machine that gets routinely updated to make it more efficient. Abbreviations like “LOL” or “OMG” are already being used as frequently if not more frequently than the phrases they abbreviate, namely “laughing out loud” and “oh my god.” And while “gonna” and “OMG” are currently not considered proper English, historical trends suggest their usage eventually will be recognized as correct rather than merely colloquial. Thanks to new technologies like text messaging, simplification - or “erosion” as some linguists prefer to call it - is taking place at a faster pace than ever before. Syndon resembles the Dutch zijn or German sein more than the modern English “are,” while dæge ought to be translated to “days” instead of “time,” or dagen and Tagen in Dutch and German, respectively.Ī more recent example of linguistic simplification is the substitution of “gonna” for “going to,” which began in the early 19th century. ![]() ![]() This is because Old English, in which the code is written, developed from a language family spoken in western Germany and Friesland. ![]() The first sentence of the law-code, Þis syndon þa domas þe Æðelbirht cyning asette on Agustinus dæge, roughly translates to: “These are the decrees which King Æthelberht set in Augustine’s time.”ĭutch and German readers stand a better chance at deciphering the law-code than their English counterparts. Language erosionĪside from a few runic inscriptions on metal and ceramic objects, the earliest evidence of written English is the law-code of King Æthelberht of Kent, which is dated to 616 AD. But to predict how language might change in the future, you first have to look at how it’s changed in the past. While the English of 3023 likely will be unrecognizable from the English of 2023 (if it hasn’t died out entirely), it’s worth asking what it will look like, and why. If the English language can change this much in a century, just imagine how much it’s going to change over the course of the next millennium. ![]()
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