
To appreciate 23rd-century English, look back 200 years - martey
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/opinion/future-english-language-linguistics.html
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Apocryphon
Vocabulary in terms of slang and so forth will change, but I wonder how media
will preserve the tone, accent, etc. that we speak in. The Transatlantic
accent may be dead, but the General American newscaster English is trapped in
amber.

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jacobolus
Watching / listening to American media from 50+ years ago, some of the
mainstream accents of that time are now completely dead as far as I can tell.
Or at least, I never hear people using those accents in any context today.
(And not just the “transatlantic accent”, which seems especially affected, but
others I can’t place/name. I dunno, maybe those are just some non-obvious
blend of regional accents.)

There’s enough variation in “General American” English, and enough change over
time, that I imagine people 100 years from now will readily recognize an
“early 21st century” accent.

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telotortium
Yeah, here's an old page imagining how the pronunciation of American English
might evolve over 1000 years - this is the projection for 2100:
[http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html#5](http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html#5)

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derg
This is a cool piece. I've been thinking a lot about how I communicate in
person and in text form, and how it changes based on situation, e.g. when I am
trying to be incredibly informal or quick in text, I default to all lowercase
and will always truncate words/use acronyms/use single letter spellings (u for
example).

It's been fun watching how we communicate in the age of social media and
instantaneous communication.

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reginaldo
Interesting premise, but be careful with the linear thinking here. As a
counter example, Icelandic didn't change as much as English in the past 200
years. For English, one would probably need to look even further back in time
than 200 years. Change in language use is somewhat related to the number and
diversity of speakers and the number and diversity of english speakers didn't
grow linearly in the past 200 years and probably won't grow linearly in the
next 200 years.

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peterwwillis
Dialects do distinctly diverge even if the diatribe it descends from dithers
in so doing, dwelling on distant drawls describing the delivery of the long
deceased.

~~~
contingencies
The Edward Sapirian view is that eloquent and erudite euphemisms even extend
their effect to Eurozone events and thus engender experience, excepting the
effervescent 'EUniversal grammar' of Eastern Europe (ex. Esperanto), and
endangered Estonian.

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lovehashbrowns
I never thought of "also me:" as being a linguistic innovation, but it totally
is! I'm now wondering how many of the current "memes" are going to translate
into linguistic innovations decades from now.

Now that I think of it, mOcKiNg tExT is tied to a specific Spongebob
image/meme--I wonder if that will affect how prevalent mocking text will be in
the future, or if the meme will accompany mocking text and both will be part
of linguistics.

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nategri
200 years is a loooooooong time. Would expect even more bizarre shifts in
digital communications, like attached emotional imprints from automatic brain
scans or something.

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rpmisms
I doubt that's going to happen. People enjoy being able to hide emotions when
they're communicating over a distance.

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Funes-
I agree. That's why people--especially _young_ people--generally prefer
texting over phone calls: without the spontaneity (synchronicity) required in
spoken communication, it is a lot easier to hide everything on your part, from
presence or attention to any kind of reaction. It is safer, so to speak; but
less satisfying.

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jedberg
That's not why most young people prefer texting. They prefer it for a variety
of other reasons:

* More private. Mom and dad can't snoop as easily, especially if you're in the backseat of their car

* Asynchronous. You can answer it when it is convenient and not have to stop what you're doing.

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Funes-
I think it's both what I said and what you added; they are not mutually
exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I would also say that chat apps
are designed to be addictive, too. An important fact to consider.

>and not have to stop what you're doing.

Which is, in their case, being on their phone all day, ironically enough.
Asynchronicity is what I meant by not requiring spontaneity (not being
synchronous, in other words).

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the_duke
I guess my only reaction to this is:

faux-enthusiastic sparkles

( /s )

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dang
Please don't do this here.

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labster
Hey, at least he read the article.

