Future World Languages

[mishery]

Case in point: look at rappers like P. Diddy who can speak perfectly good English in a more formal setting.

But the vernacular can become the new standard and the old standard can die out. As the standard becomes more distant from the vernacular this becomes more and more likely.

not verbs or adjectives, just nouns.

And nouns become verbs and verbs become adjectives etc.

The technical word explosion is a result of all the new technologies but plenty of non-technical words are still being created or moving into everyday usage. Have a search on the internet, there's a ton of websites about new words.

 

[carlton_bach]

Well, it seems to be true that a language becomes more stable as it acquires more of a written corpus, but I suspect we may get to see a surprise or two.

Something really interesting is happening in Germany right now. As anyone who has ever come in contact with the language can attest, German has a perversely complicated orthography. Recently, a government commission undertook to 'reform' this to bring it in line with the 21st century. This 'Rechtschreibreform' (spelling reform) has been a total, overwhelming, resounding failure, but it has resulted in a lot of uncertainty. Until recently, Germany was neatly divided into people who knew how to spell, and could confidently critique language, and those who couldn't, and shut up. Now, whenever people discover a nonstandard form they wonder whether this isn't the revised way of doing it. This has given rise to a whole lot of forms nobody would have believed possible before. Most interestingly, it seems an infinitive phrase with the - redundant - function of the present continuous ('am arbeiten') and a form of the gerund ('gearbeitet habend') appear to be making their debut. I eagerly await their fate once language has become restabilised. 'Polarbären' and their ilk (direct takeovers from English for words that have perfectly good, but different, German names, as in this case 'Eisbär') are already so common there is little chance of regaining this ground, and you could be forgiven for thinking German plurals are formed with an -s suffix.

There may already be more 'pent-up' language change than we know because it doesn't show up in the conservative written medium.

 

[Johnestauffer]

English will probably remain the standard. It is so much a part of our industry & technology today. As internet use expands the number of english users increases. If you want to do business globally you use english as a standard.

English as spoken today is a polyglot of other language additions. It is a 'work in progress' and appears to be adaptable and for that reason it may stay more vivable than others.

Other languages will remain in use, but at some point rather than ESL it might be OSL (other language literacy)

Nobody wants to change the way they communicate. But everyone seems to accept the fact that there must be a standard for global interchange. In fact, due to this global communication the potential of English becoming the predominate language is enhanced.

No matter what language is the language of the future - there are many concepts that cannot be translated well from one language to another. Every time a language becomes less & less used we lose a little of our ability to express ourselves.

Hi-technology may be the solution. With more and more translation systems in place we might continue to use our own language.

 

[Carlosjm]

English will stay but change

I think English will stay but will have a more fluid grammar. Teachers no longer correct grammar mistakes (and many don't know it themselves).

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Okay, back to my fanfiction for a moment.

Upon reconsidering, I’m guessing that no one here’s probably going to read it anyway, so I’m going to stop trying to subtly promoted it along the way. The discussion is going really well, though there will probably very little from this I can use.

My story’s not meant to be very thorough, anyway. Very little of the action takes place on Earth, it’s a lot like “near-future” series like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, where people still use machineguns… and dress in ponchos. And it’s not a very realistic extrapolation of the 23rd century, since I’m just having Earth getting back to the 1990’s view of a dullish, vaguely liberal free-market “end of history” idea. Oh, and the Earth-based space powers are the same as the current ones (U.S., Russia, China, India, EU, Canada, Japan, Brazil, same old same old).

Speaking of which, Firefly is where I got the idea to have Mandarin as a major language.

Last questions from me before I bow out: again, I’m trying to think of major regional languages. I doubt that most people would speak Esperanto, but what if it became as standardized as the SI system of units? What if Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia had regional standards to promote international trade and communications? What would they be?

For example, I listed Swahili and Hausa together because they seemed to me to be the major multinationally spoken languages in Africa. I’d like some idea on what would be Africa’s major future language.

I didn’t think that Esperanto as it is right now would be the Euro Union’s mother tongue- I thought of it as a second language all EU children are taught, to facilitate EU business and a sense of EU pride. It would be a different artificial language based in Romance/Germanic/Scandinavian roots and have the name Esperanto because, well, that’s the most well-known of international artificial languages. What else should it be called? Music? Love?

 

[wkwillis]

If World War Four takes place next week between China and America (as is possible), then High English will be the international language because Chinese won't be spoken by a signficant proportion of surviving humanity.
Arabic will become less a prestige language because without the high price of oil from Chinese and American purchasers the Arabs will be impoverished.
Russian will be less spoken because the nuclear winter will be especially hard on them.
Hindi-Urdu is going to have less people because nuclear winter is next hardest on them, after Russia. Last major volcano winter (our best analog to nuclear winter) caused the monsoon to fail.
Bahasai Indonesai will gain because they will be logically the ones to recolonise China. Not Vietnam, because Vietnam will be impacted by the SinoAmerican holocaust.
Spanish will be boosted by the Mexican American refugees from the American southwest. They will also standardise the Spanish American dialects because they will go to all parts of Spanish South America.

 

[eschaton]

Maybe someone develops an artificial root Bantu language? The Bantu languages are spread from Cameroon to Kenya and down to South Africa, and diverged only around 1000-1500 years ago (at this point). They're still fairly mutually intelligble. Some future linguist could come up with a language with features of all of them, which would be easy for all of the groups to use.

Honestly, that's the only idea I can think of that would be logicial besides using an existing European language, and it would only work in the south of Africa. Hausa and Swahili would probabaly never become predominant. Hausa is only one of the languages in Nigeria, and Swahili is just one language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania. Not only would both nations have to get over ethnic differences and impose it on minority groups (or, in the case of Swahili, majority groups), it would also hinge on those countries being the most powerful in Africa.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Maybe someone develops an artificial root Bantu language? The Bantu languages are spread from Cameroon to Kenya and down to South Africa, and diverged only around 1000-1500 years ago (at this point). They're still fairly mutually intelligble. Some future linguist could come up with a language with features of all of them, which would be easy for all of the groups to use.

It's been done. Surprisingly, it never carried off.

K. A. Kumi Attobrah
Ni Afrihili Oluga: The African Continental Language
Accra, Ghana; 2nd ed., 1973
Lib. of Cong. call no. PM8063.A8 1973
no ISBN​

From the introduction:

El-Afrihili is an African language which has been created incorporating grammar and words from the languages of the African continent. It also contains words from many other sources so Africanized that they do not appear foreign.

[...]

El-Afrihili has been created with a view for it being adopted as the lingua franca of Africa.

Hausa and Swahili would probabaly never become predominant. Hausa is only one of the languages in Nigeria, and Swahili is just one language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania. Not only would both nations have to get over ethnic differences and impose it on minority groups (or, in the case of Swahili, majority groups), it would also hinge on those countries being the most powerful in Africa.

In a sense, though, SR was on to something. Both of these were historically lingue franche in their respective territories. Hausa is a natural language that became a lingua franca, and Swahili developed as a lingua franca along the coasts for trade between Arab traders and the indigenes (Swahili means "language of the coastal territories" in Arabic).

Nowadays they have both been replaced by English in their territories as auxiliary languages, and are used less often for communication between diverse groups (although Swahili shows some promise).

 

[NapoleonXIV]

I think that languages will be remarkably stable over the next centuries compared to what has gone before. This will be due to more and better computer translators. Technology always promotes greater standardisation

I read in a HS text that the publication of Webster's Dictionary in the early 19thc was a major reason why American English had not disintergrated into almost mutually unintelligible dialects. This does seem true, since the huge US only has about a dozen or so regional accents, all of which are still easily understood by one another, whereas London alone, I hear, has 26 and they often don't really know what the other is saying.