What is the language of the future?

Hi all thought I would put this out to see what comes back!

I have just finished a CELTA course in the UK that now means I can go and teach English to foreigners. Having done the course I wonder now though what is the future language of English? There are so many different types. American English and British English are steadily diverging and with all the sub categorise with just these variations the changes in English is vast.

My question is as a community that speaks only in English on the web, how are we changing the language, and were are our generation taking it?

lets see were you think we are going?

We are ruining it. Picture newspeak like in 1984 but without any political agenda, only defined by sheer lazyness and wacky trends. That is the future of english. It is a bleak future.

Since going in the chat room I have learnt a whole new language.....and it has been fun.

Language is not a static thing and should never be. My only beef with the way language is going is that crudity is becoming too prevalent.
I dont like hearing excessive swearing being part of a normal conversation

Quote:

---

American English and British English are steadily diverging

---

Well, that was true, but I think that they will start to come together again soon thanks to global media. I hope we don't loose regional dialects though.

English is the most spoken language on Earth, being spoken in at least some degree by nearly a third of the people on the planet, and about one in 5 are fluent to whatever degree the study decided was good enough to qualify as fluent.

French comes in as the 9th most known language, which makes me wonder what 2-8 are? Probably got Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and maybe Arabic and Hindi? But even if the last two are correct, that leaves 2 other languages before French. What are they???

It certainly isn't any African language - unless they are talking about language groups, in which case I guess all the bazilion variations on Bantu (Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, and 4 others officially recognized in South Africa alone, and at least 50 variations on it in west Africa) could qualify, but really they are not that similar to each other except in structure, and someone 200 km from home isn't like to find any one who understand much of what he is saying.

Unfortunately the article I read on the subject only talked about English and French.

Anyway, back to the subject of the thread. English is one of the most flexible languages out there. It may change. But as long as I can still understand what is being said, I personally don't care.

And though variations on the language are rapidly being developed, the globalization of english will also ensure some stability as well as variation. In other words, there will be some standardization of some aspects of the language, though the actual vocabulary may well get mixed up from one view point or another.

People use language as a form of identity, like globally it's easy to find the examples then you reach into England and the English language, you get people speaking it normally, people speaking "common" english, the rude boi's with "innits and sorted" yeah all my examples are stereotyped but it's true people use the way they speak their language as an identity even my boyfriend and I do and my friends and family. It's just about as easy to manipulate as the way you dress.
And as for this having relevance to the subject I don't know what will happen to languages, I can only speak English and a stupidly small amount of German "Wo sind die toiletten?" (How many grammer mistakes did I just make????) hehe.

Chinese and Arabic are good future languages, just remmeber many chinese dialects bear far less raltion to each other than say english and hebrew......prolly Russian is string, Spanish is strong, Hindi is strong. Portuguese? They have brazil....... i don't know what the top ten languages are these days. French has a lot of colonies, remmeber, so german, for example, is going to be a lot lower on the scale.

As far as english, some dialects are already unintelligable to each other, and in truth i think american "black enlglish" is far more divergent than british english. British english appears to have different words but the same grammer, whereas most black english is a strongly different grammar, more so than anything else save accent.

But anyway...good question...mmore if my brain is ever not fried.

-Kyri-

1337 5p33|(

Anyone remember Esperanto?

There's also a worrying trend for Klingon emerging.

Personally, i reckon everyone should learn BSL (brisitsh sign language) or even a foreign sign language as they're so easy to pick up. Not much good on the internet, but alrhight in noisy places.

Best not try it while doing poi either...


Peace. XxX

In all honesty, I think in the future there will be a much simpler language, one that is known by all. Of course we have to wait for the technology but the digital language could be the wave of the future. I've heard people are already working on some kind of universal translator thing, I dont know how it works, but its prolly fairly complex. At the moment is also prolly the size of a large truck. haha. But apparently any thing that is said can be translated into any language you want, with little or no error. I say in about 20 years, we're gonna have these kind of technologies, so a universal language will not be necessary, we will all be able to understand anything said to us. Haha, at least we will be able to understand what those shop vendors in foreign countries are saying to us, and maybe we'll figure out why those old ladies keep yelling.... does it have anything to do with these balls, on fire, on chains? hahahaha ANybody agree with me?

Honestly, I think the laziness exhibited on the net is a good thing. All we are doing is shortening words and terms. In most cases, it just makes how we read and understand things faster. We are just progressing naturally making things smaller and faster to be more efficient. I believe that eventually, computer talk will evolve into its own language and will end up the #1 language.

10110001 00101101 10101011

100:10100

And for the record... 1001110110000010110100!... yeah...

bloody binary

Goopa!

I think it will be Ewok

there are 10 types of people who understand binary: those who do, and those who dont.

Well ya I dont understand binary... only those wierd people who programed computers along time ago can understand it. Now the cmputers understand it for us. Hell Bill gates prolly dont even understand binary, lol. (well duh, its Bill gates, of course he dont. ^_^)

I feel obliged to post the obligatory geeky:

Billboard Poster

Not sure I'd want to work for them, though...

I post with reference to the posts by noir deluxe and royal, have either of you ever read 1984??
I Personally think that the derrivation of the english language is a terrible thing, im in nottingham and while a regional accent is part of the makeup of this country lazy speaking really hacks me off,listen to these adidas and kappa wearing rude boy idiots going Y'KNOW and SAAFE and like yknow not sort of like talking in like a way that makes any like sense y'know . intelligent people have spent hundreds of years working on language because at the end of the day it is the best way we have of getting what is in the brain, out of the brain.
on the net yes all good type quickly, play around, shorten Do wht evr u wnt 2
but insofar as this lazy way of doing things becoming a new language.... its all verging a little bit close to double plus good to me.
to anyone who reads this and hasnt read 1984, whats your excuse?? go and read it now, , famous phrases such as room 101 and big brother is watching you, all from this book. go and read it
please feel free to heavily criticise back, im at work and really bored