

How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand - robg
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-07/st_essay

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bouncingsoul
I've seen this type of story so many times it almost seems like a template:

 _There is a variant of our_ [ _primary audience's_ ] _native tongue. Its user
base is growing. Soon you might be forced to learn this strange culture/young
people's bastardization of our language to function in society!_

It's an interesting topic, for sure, but the consequences are always so
overblown.

I wonder if this is a common story in other languages.

~~~
Alex3917
"the consequences are always so overblown."

Only until some Asian country country replaces Hollywood as the biggest
producer of big budget English movies.

~~~
Herring
yeah it's darwinian. The british aren't too happy about american
bastardization of english, but they don't have much of a choice. We're much
better at exporting culture.

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singapore
This is a genuinely terrible article with an overblown and under-researched
thesis - just a lot of uneducated pontificating.

One way you can tell, for example, is his treatment of the Singlish phenomena
in the same context as mainland Chinese English when, at even the most casual
glance, they are completely different things. (Singlish is a primary day-to-
day language for a large number of people - mainland Chinese-English is not.
Singlish is often spoken by native/fluent English speakers who have been
educated in English from primary school to university; the situation in
mainland China is the opposite.)

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sdurkin
As long as English remains the international language of commerce the
incentives to keep all dialects mutually intelligible should prevent too much
divergence.

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Hoff
Shi Ma? Somebody's been watching Firefly re-runs?

~~~
queensnake
Zhende! (spelling probably wrong).

Seriously, the small amount of Chinese I've learned has made me come to take
the rules of English with a grain of salt - so much overhead that you don't
need in 95% of daily conversation.

~~~
poutine
Your pinyin is correct: zhen de! (Really! 真的!)

Chinese does indeed give you a new view of the superfluous nature of many
English words. Chinese is like caveman English: "I want beer. Bring more."
type stuff. Fun.

Still, English is a more precise language in many ways. And don't get me
started on how having an alphabet is totally superior. Gah, stupid characters.

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FleursDuMal
I find this idea ridiculistic.

~~~
khafra
Laugh if you like, but I've heard two different people I was only mildly
acquainted with--and not in a geek context--accidentally breaking into lolcat,
over the last few weeks.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
im in ur subconscious, hacking ur memes

[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash>]

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rory096
This article's outlook is way too simplistic; Chinese won't be the only
influence on English's future. China still accounts for only a somewhat small
fraction of English speakers, so other languages and cultures will have as
much, if not more, impact. Also, this time won't be like Latin- there won't be
any collapse of global society, so eventually the various dialects will
homogenize, both because everyone has to understand them (otherwise what's the
point of a lingua franca?) and because people from all over will be
interacting so much. The end result probably won't be exactly like modern
English, but I don't expect it to be too far removed, as all the changes
should more or less balance themselves out.

~~~
poutine
They're also being quite generous when they say that 300M Chinese read and
write English. In my experience (Canadian living in China) it's got to be
_way_ less than that who are actually capable in some rudimentary way.

I wouldn't expect any significant impact on English from China any time soon.

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maxklein
Well, pidgin english is widespread accross west africa, and I've met several
native french speakers from cameroun who can not speak english, but can speak
pidgin english. Also, with the advent of cheap flights and phones, pidgin
english is normalising accross the entire western coast of africa - from
sierra leone down to west cameroun. Previously, the pidgin english used to use
many words that could not be understood, but those words are dropping away.

So already, there are large areas where english has been changed into a form
that is difficult to understand for native english speakers, and the new form
of english is spreading faster than standard english.

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rglovejoy
I'm not buying the article's comparison with Latin. A big reason that Latin
forked off into Spanish, Italian, French, etc. is because of the influence of
Germanic and Moorish invaders. Also, the vast majority of people living during
the Dark Ages were illiterate and had no idea that their Vulgar Latin was
evolving into something else. Add to this the fact that most populations were
isolated from each other.

Today, we have widespread literacy, sound recordings and linguists who are
able to identify these trends. Humans are becoming less and less isolated, so
there are actually fewer opportunities for English to diverge, not more.

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talboito
I would think more influence on English will come from India. They have many
more native somthing-like-English speakers.

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MoeDrippins
I'm not sure I understand it /now/.

<http://tinyurl.com/6yb9t4> (warning, website is safe for work, but has
sound.)

~~~
gojomo
Your tinyurl doesn't shorten the URL any, and even if your target URL was
long, News.YC doesn't have a problem with long URLs.

What are you trying to hide by using TinyURL?

