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Future of Languages?

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply
21 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
Akao
aka FailArtist
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona

 
 Message 1 of 21
16 April 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged 
I was thinking about dead languages and history and things like that when I got the
thought that in the future, is it possible that eventually the lack of people learning
rare languages will cause it to boil down to just a few major languages?

Say, in 200 years? Or 10 generations if 200 years is not enough? I'm just wondering. That
would be amusing to know what languages it would eventually come to. I'm sure at one
point it will boil down to about 50 languages, even down to 10 as the world unites.

But, on that note, what if the world does not unite? What if we stay separated, and
continue to separate, even further from each other?

Thoughts? Just curious.
1 person has voted this message useful



lichtrausch
Triglot
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United States
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Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 2 of 21
16 April 2010 at 10:38pm | IP Logged 
As long as a language has official status somewhere and is used as the medium of education in a school somewhere, then it's pretty safe from extinction. So I think at least 50 languages are safe in the long term.
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Sennin
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Bulgaria
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 Message 3 of 21
16 April 2010 at 10:41pm | IP Logged 
The Earthlings will speak Mandaringlish (which would be considered very posh), whereas the Mars and Moon dialects will slowly digress into separate languages?
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Akao
aka FailArtist
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United States
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Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona

 
 Message 4 of 21
16 April 2010 at 10:47pm | IP Logged 
Yeah, I appreciate your input lichtrausch but you have to understand that advances in our
space technology will soon allow us to create larger colonies on the moon and possibly
Mars. They will be very fragile but still exist, and eventually languages may be separated by planet.

It is a confusing concept.
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lichtrausch
Triglot
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 Message 5 of 21
16 April 2010 at 11:51pm | IP Logged 
Akao wrote:
Yeah, I appreciate your input lichtrausch but you have to understand that advances in our
space technology will soon allow us to create larger colonies on the moon and possibly
Mars. They will be very fragile but still exist, and eventually languages may be separated by planet.

It is a confusing concept.

Are you trying to say that space colonies are going to somehow cause the number of languages spoken on Earth to decrease?
1 person has voted this message useful



Akao
aka FailArtist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5336 days ago
315 posts - 347 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona

 
 Message 6 of 21
16 April 2010 at 11:58pm | IP Logged 
lichtrausch wrote:
Akao wrote:
Yeah, I appreciate your input lichtrausch but you
have to understand that advances in our
space technology will soon allow us to create larger colonies on the moon and possibly
Mars. They will be very fragile but still exist, and eventually languages may be
separated by planet.

It is a confusing concept.

Are you trying to say that space colonies are going to somehow cause the number of
languages spoken on Earth to decrease?


Actually, no. Those are irrelevant from each other, but over time the amount of
languages could decrease, and I'm saying that if Earth eventually has one language
left, POSSIBLY, then other planets could generate their own language.

Just a political thought, you never know what is going to happen in the future.
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markchapman
Diglot
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Taiwan
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 Message 7 of 21
17 April 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged 
Akao wrote:
is it possible that eventually the lack of people learning
rare languages will cause it to boil down to just a few major languages?


The world moves to a rhythm. At certain times there will be many, then as the pendulum swings there will be few.
Later, there will be many again.

Even if there was a future reality with only one language, then people would just want to create differences, and
differences would appear. Then, after more time, different languages would evolve.

At this time we are losing languages in the world, but many of the bigger languages have begun evolving into
regional variants of each other.
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Smart
Tetraglot
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United States
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Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French
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 Message 8 of 21
17 April 2010 at 12:19am | IP Logged 
^Going to avoid all the sci-fi nonsense above


Akao wrote:
I was thinking about dead languages and history and things like that when I got the
thought that in the future, is it possible that eventually the lack of people learning
rare languages will cause it to boil down to just a few major languages?

Say, in 200 years? Or 10 generations if 200 years is not enough? I'm just wondering. That
would be amusing to know what languages it would eventually come to. I'm sure at one
point it will boil down to about 50 languages, even down to 10 as the world unites.

But, on that note, what if the world does not unite? What if we stay separated, and
continue to separate, even further from each other?

Thoughts? Just curious.

Well, what do you mean by world uniting? We have the United Nations, isn't that unification already?

However, I feel the number of languages today (~7000) will drop significantly, but not because of domination of Euro-Asian languages but rather because we can not with our technology and advancements facilitate more than 2000 languages. Therefore, I feel that small languages will go extinct.

However I feel with more unification and the internet for that matter, people will actually become more multilingual as opposed to being monolingual. Therefore i actually think around 2000-3000 languages will die within the next 100 years, but another 200+ languages will replace them.


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