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Has anyone ever attemped a prediction? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 9 21 August 2012 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
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A prediction on how a language will look like in 100, 200, or 500 years?
This came to mind thinking about how different fields engage in flights of fancy and try to predict, either speculating or with well researched data, how the future may look like (plate tectonics and continents, geopolitics and countries, consumer electronics and technology, etc, etc). I wonder if that has ever been attemped. I suspect if it has it would be on major languages only. Just wondering. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 2 of 9 21 August 2012 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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That’s an interesting question. Of course, there are general predictions about minority languages dying out and the world becoming more linguistically homogeneous in the future.
One book that seems to be making more specific and localized predictions is Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva’s “The Changing Languages of Europe.” Here’s the blurb from Amazon: “This book shows that the languages and dialects of Europe are becoming increasingly alike and furthermore that this unifying process goes back to Roman times, is accelerating, and affects every European language including those of different families such as Basque and Finnish. The unifying process involves every grammatical aspect of the languages and operates through changes so minute that native speakers fail to notice them. The authors reveal when, how, and why common grammatical structures have evolved and continue to evolve in processes of change that will transform the linguistic landscape of Europe.” I haven’t read this book, so I don’t know what transformations in the linguistic landscape the authors are predicting. At the moment I’m working on another book recommended on this forum – John McWhorter’s “Language Interrupted.” 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 3 of 9 21 August 2012 at 10:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I remember seeing a very detailed article about the future evolution of "American". It maps out the gradual emergence of American as a language distinct from modern English and describes its evolution over a thousand years. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it again, so I don't know to what extent it was tongue in cheek. There have also been several attempts to do that in fiction, with varying degrees of plausibility. A few examples here.
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| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 9 21 August 2012 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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With Arabic, a common analogy to compare Modern Standard Arabic vs. Dialects, is that MSA = Latin, and each dialect is a major Romance language (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, etc.) Frankly, this is nonsense, as I've explained in some of my other posts. A more plausible (though still flawed) analogy is comparing MSA and dialects to how Latin and the various "vulgar" dialects diverged several centuries ago to become the modern Romance languages. Some students ponder whether or not this will happen with Arabic.
However, most Arabists find this possibility to be highly unlikely, for several reasons. First off, MSA/Classical Arabic has a extremely intricate relationship with the Arab identity, so suddenly "giving up" MSA is not in the same chances as Latin was centuries ago. Second off, the dialects are more than anything converging rather than diverging, thanks to media exposure and a generally-speaking greater awareness of other dialects (especially between Mashriqi/Middle Eastern dialects). For example, Egyptian, Levantine, Hijazi, and Sudanese are all linguistically close, but globalization has led to some sharing of features, be it lexicon or other areas. Hijazi Arabic in particular borrows a lot from Egyptian and Levantine. Gulf dialects are reasonably understood, though with an increase in Gulf TV series and other media, it is likely that intelligibility will increase for these reasons. That being said, I'm curious as to how the Arab Spring will affect the role of the language in Egypt, Syria, and other countries. Egypt has always been a country proud of the Cairene dialect, but since religious parties won a large number of the seats in government, I think it may be possible that MSA's placement will be further reinforced over the next several years. As for Syria, the literacy rate was high and there was plenty of pride in MSA. I doubt this'll change, because MSA is important to them for cultural and religious reasons, not political ones (for the most part). In other words, I have also thought about how a language could be decades or even centuries from now. :) For Guarani, I'm not quite sure: on one hand, it has a much stronger ground in its spoken area than any other indigenous language of the Americas. However, the Paraguayan youth view Spanish as the gateway to the world (understandable, as it is more of an international language than Guarani), so its future over the next century is still a bit uncertain. Quechua is harder to analyze. Even today it is a low-prestige language. It would be great if this would change, but its only strength is that there are millions of native speakers (highest estimate at about 13 million), so it'll probably stick around for a while thanks to that. I'd honestly be very surprised if Spanish dialects or English dialects diverged to the point of being different languages. As for Persian, I dream of the days when the countries where it is spoken (especially Iran and Afghanistan), have improved situations some years from now, and how it'll affect the language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 5 of 9 21 August 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
I haven't read the book either, but I get sceptical when I hear claims about a "unifying process [that] goes back to Roman times". Since Roman times, Latin, Proto-Slavic and Proto-Germanic have all split into several languages. Edited by tractor on 21 August 2012 at 6:17pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 9 22 August 2012 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I would surmise that the variations of English spoken on the Indian subcontinent could already be described as different languages, or if not now, then they are well on their way to becoming so, with Hindi and other words mixed in, different sentence construction, and sounding nothing like the English of London, Ottawa, New York or Sidney. We get spam phone callers on a regular basis at home from Indian call-centres, presumably recruited for their English skills, who speak an almost incomprehensible version of English - I'm guessing these people aren't at the highest end of the educational spectrum admittedly. That's just an illustration, and by no means the only reason for the view I expressed. The process for the written language would be a lot slower, but even there I think there are signs of diversion. I've often thought that there could develop an Afrikaans-like variant or variants of English in Southern Africa, although I think that process would take even longer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 9 22 August 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
I would think that that sort of variant of English wouldn't be so localized, rather it would occur more globally, barring any complete breakdown of commerce and media transmission. But as we are right now, we are so connected worldwide that I think there would be a vast common ground as a base, with only small variances locally. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 8 of 9 24 August 2012 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I am personally interested in writing a sci-fi, so it made me think a little how the language(and which language?) will change in the far future.
It cannot be the same. So far I haven't came up with any bright idea. but there is a thing I wonder - do language change is slowing down? PIE is said to be spoken 3000 years BC, or something and it has diverged so much over those years. but American English - 500 years old (or 400?) has barely changed during such a long time! Moreover talking about Latin and Arabic - I wonder if the dialects were different from the start or they changed later? Like - Gaulls (Asterix-like French people) learned Latin, but made it to fit their sound pattern, thus later evolving in French. Or Egyptians learned Arabic changing it to their sound pattern thus producing Egyptian Arabic. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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