The English language in the future!

simu

What do ye think the English language will be like in say 100 years' time?

Here are some possibilities according to myself!

Irish ppl will speak like Americans (presuming the USA is still a major power then) - already, it's amazing how many of today's teenagers sound like characters from Friends.

Lots of catchphrases from TV and ads will be so well assimilated into the language that their origin will be forgotten by most.

Many commonly used words will be registered trademarks and (nightmare scenario) you'll have to pay royalties to use certain words in your own articles.

Prepositions will become rarer - this trend is already evident in the USA e.g "I pray God", "Write me" instead of "I pray to God" and "Write to me".

Words will be change into different categories with ease e.g changing nouns into verbs as in "I pantened my hair".

Personal pronouns and the definite and indefinite articles(the, a) will be omitted where their use is not necessary to avoid ambiguity e.g. "Saw car parked outside" instead of "I saw a car parked outside".

What do other linguistic futurologists think?:)

CuLT

I think that the day any of my descendants speak and spell like Americans is the day that the disease hardcoded into my DNA to be triggered by american speech from a relative will activate and destroy the entire planet.
To save us from a grim, acronym & slang ridden future.

Praetorian

The English language is constantly changing and developing. It’s a fairly gradual process; I only really notice the new words.

Interesting article / site - http://www.lsadc.org/web2/faq/faqengl.htm

The English language is being documented more than ever these days because of TV, radio and cinema. No doubt people in the future, say 100 years from now, will look back at us and think that we speak very strangely.

simu

I think that the day any of my descendants speak and spell like Americans is the day that the disease hardcoded into my DNA to be triggered by american speech from a relative will activate and destroy the entire planet.
To save us from a grim, acronym & slang ridden future.

THe Irish would've had similar sentiments a few centuries back if you'd travelled back in time and told them most of their decendants would be speaking English 2day:)

Seriously though, lots of Irish ppl are adopting American speech styles already - slang words, pronouncing statements like questions, using American spellings etc

Tyrrial

in long enough time, everything we say will loose all meaning and any conversation had will simply be of quotes from people and shows and stuff. i find myself already having entire conversationions using simpson quotes... and if i do it for long enough i start to forget what a real conversation sounds like

CuLT

By that time we'll probably all be some sort of amalgamation of every race on the planet... a sort of... dark grey.. or something. Ok, thats waffle.

You're probably right simu :P , I'd just prefer if it wasn't going to happen .