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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
kerateo
Triglot
Senior Member
Mexico
Joined 5646 days ago

112 posts - 180 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English, French
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 17 of 21
17 April 2010 at 7:18am | IP Logged 
BartoG wrote:


The real story of language death is, in fact, language transformation. While we notice the passing of a language whose single remaining speaker is now gone, we don't notice Old Persian turning into Farsi, Dari and Tajik, don't notice Old Turki turning into Uzbek, Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz... And if Occitan disappears, subsumed by French, what's the story for language diversity? In the short run, you've got a language death. But in the long run, even if French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian kill off every other Romance language, that still means that 5 languages have replaced one (Latin).




Global communications prevent languages to diverge too much to the point of becoming separate languages, if there would had been television 2000 years ago, we would all probably speak latin. There used to be 20,000 languages 500 hundred years ago, there are 7000 now, and although they say there will be 3000 a hundred years from now, I wouldnt be surprised that It will be only 100. To bad none of us will be there to tell :(

Edited by kerateo on 17 April 2010 at 7:20am

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Smart
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5339 days ago

352 posts - 398 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French
Studies: German

 
 Message 18 of 21
17 April 2010 at 7:37am | IP Logged 
kerateo wrote:
BartoG wrote:


The real story of language death is, in fact, language transformation. While we notice the passing of a language whose single remaining speaker is now gone, we don't notice Old Persian turning into Farsi, Dari and Tajik, don't notice Old Turki turning into Uzbek, Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz... And if Occitan disappears, subsumed by French, what's the story for language diversity? In the short run, you've got a language death. But in the long run, even if French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian kill off every other Romance language, that still means that 5 languages have replaced one (Latin).




Global communications prevent languages to diverge too much to the point of becoming separate languages, if there would had been television 2000 years ago, we would all probably speak latin. There used to be 20,000 languages 500 hundred years ago, there are 7000 now, and although they say there will be 3000 a hundred years from now, I wouldnt be surprised that It will be only 100. To bad none of us will be there to tell :(

If I live to 116, I'll be there.
1 person has voted this message useful



ManicGenius
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5481 days ago

288 posts - 420 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Esperanto, French, Japanese

 
 Message 19 of 21
17 April 2010 at 7:45am | IP Logged 
Johntm wrote:
Even if it does happen (whatever the hell is supposed to happen) I've
survived, SARS, Y2K, West Nile, Bird Flu, and the Swine Flu. I'll be fine (and so will
y'all).


I think you missed the joke on that one. I was making fun of the fact that everyone
refers to it as the 2012 thing. When 2012 is just a year like any other.

I was trying to be ironic/sarcastic/some variation on that fact.

Otherwise people are essentially referring to the Mayan prophecy and a terrible terrible
movie that required 3 hot showers before I felt clean after watching. Cusack should be
ashamed.
1 person has voted this message useful



quendidil
Diglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 6312 days ago

126 posts - 142 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin, English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 20 of 21
17 April 2010 at 8:29am | IP Logged 
I'm not sure some of the above discussion is necessary or desirable in this forum.

Anyway, space colonization in some form will be necessary in the future just to supply metals and other resources to Earth. In all likelihood though, the actual mining, refining etc will be done by robots, possibly with very small rotating crews to manage affairs. Actual self-sustaining extraterrestrial human colonies are unlikely to be started within this century, during which languages will have undergone significant change on Earth.

I don't believe English will lose its global prominence anytime soon, but a change in accepted "standard" phonologies (currently mainly RP and GA) might take place, as is already happening in modern RP with significant influence from Estuary English and even in former British colonies like India, Singapore and the Caribbean countries where local "standard" Englishes are evolving.

Other interesting things to consider with respect to language change include possible redefinitions of nations, as someone brought up earlier. Personally I'm all for a return to a situation similar to Europe before the revolutions, which would likely be beneficial for multilingualism as well.
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newyorkeric
Diglot
Moderator
Singapore
Joined 6379 days ago

1598 posts - 2174 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Mandarin, Malay
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 21 of 21
17 April 2010 at 9:35am | IP Logged 
Why the need for profanity? I've had to delete a number of posts and as this thread seems to be moving rapidly away from language learning, I'm closing it. Apologies to those who posted serious replies.


1 person has voted this message useful



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