English of the future

[scarlettina]

More language geekery, this time on how language changes over time and speculation with regard to what English of the future will look and sound like. Some great stuff here, especially for those world-building types amongst you

Comments

[neutronjockey]

It's very thoughtful...but doesn't show a proper assimilation of Spanish.

Which will...overtake.

[singingnettle]

Good point. I agree that globalization of language will also play a large part in how English develops. Not to mention Internet-speak, which I genuinely think is changing language.

I also don't think humans are going to survive another thousand years and don't have high hopes for more than another couple of generations, but that's a different issue.

[steve98052]

Very cool. One newly-discovered language law that it failed to mention is regularization of irregular forms. The law says that words shift from regular forms at a rate that's inversely proportional to the square root of the word's frequency. Stated in common language, the most common words change most slowly, and there's a square root in the proportion somewhere. An irregular word that's four times as frequent shifts toward regular forms half as fast.

I searched for a source. This appears to present the same statement in opposite terms.