On the one hand, modern telecommunications breaks down the regional isolation from which languages evolve and separate.
On the other hand, there are already decided differences in pronunciation and vocabulary around the world, and asking one language to do the same work around the world is a big order.
What say the linguists?
There are any number of local dialects (pidgins, if you’re familiar with the term) that mix English and another language.
I’ve read a long time ago (as in several years ago) that the UK was undergoing something of the sort and it was theorized that (the south in particular) would be speaking a pidgin along the kind heard in the caribbean within 50 years or so.
It was read in the toronto star, and that’s all I remember.
Not exactly cite worthy, but it’s what I have.
I’d be interested in the accuracy of anyone’s predictions. That same person might be a good one to ask about stocks and bonds.
Linguists don’t make predictions about the future. It’s like asking an epidemiologist if there are going to be any plagues in the future that will kill as many people as the 1918 flu epidemic did. Nobody knows. An epidemiologist can recognize when a plague happens, tell you lots of things about the specific virus, or tell you how to best avoid such a plague, but they can’t tell you whether a plague will happen. The same thing is true of linguists. They can tell you whether a current variety of English is a new language or just a dialect, and they can tell you whether it arose by creolization, but they can’t make predictions about future languages. Too much depends on tiny shifts in history to be able to know something like that.
For English to “split” it must be sufficiently isolated in an area with a large enough population to develop and support a new language.
Not going to happen this side of either nuclear war or inter-planetary colonisation.
On the contrary, within England over the last thousand years or so, England has become more unified with less dialectal variation: better communication, printed books, compulsory education, radio, television, etc. There would not seem to be any reason for English to start splitting, though (of course) change happens, because changes tend to propagate across the whole language: note how many British people pick up the latest US slang, while even in the US, British slang often gets picked up and used.
I agree. Essentially, television and mass communications has homogenized dialects. Some have managed to hold on, and may continue in the future, but nothing new is likely to spring up.
I still think that American “English” is eventually going to become a pidgin of English and Mexican Spanish.
Es no way.
Pidgins are created when two groups don’t speak each other’s language, but are forced to communicate. This isn’t the case with Spanish, where millions of people are bilingual and the number is increasing all the time. Certainly, both languages will continue to borrow vocabulary and idioms from each other, but it’s highly unlikely that they’re going to pidginize.
If we put a colony on Mars or the Moon, it will probably happen.
In a thread like this, eventually someone has to make the trite assertion that if part of the country splits off, raises an army and floats a navy, then it will have a new language. I suppose that person may as well be me.
This one seems to be more of an opinion question.
Moved.
samclem
If something disrupts long-distance communications and travel for several centuries, English will split onto daughter languages, just as Latin did. It’s already got the geographical spread, but our radio, television, internet, and motorised transport are counteracting that.
:: wanders off, pondering the effects of Peak Oil ::
My prediction, based on current trends, is that English will become more predominant and less dialectic (if that’s the word) in the next hundred years. Especially as the trends are self-reinforcing. Language is not a solitary activity; if the people around you are choosing to use English, you are more likely to choose it also.
You mean, like when the 13 North American colonies of the British Empire split off, raised an army, and floated a navy?
Well, that has happened with some European languages, e.g., the split between Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, and the earlier split between Danish and Norwegian.
However, it hasn’t happened with the former colonies in the Americas: people in Mexico speak Spanish, not Mexican; people in Brazil speak Portuguese, not Brazilian; people in Quebec speak French, not Quebecois; and people in the US speak English.
The last European language to have a dialect split off as a separate language was probably Dutch, giving birth to Afrikaans. No part of the world is now as isolated as Dutch-speaking South Africa was – certainly no part where a European language predominates.
I don’t know that these varieties are the least bit different now than they were in 1985. They’re still completely mutually intelligible. The only difference I could conceive of is that a number of publications only use one alphabet now, but the fact of the matter is that the populations can still largely read each others’ alphabets.
My point is that while linguistically they are mutually intelligible dialects, they have been split into three “languages” for political reasons. The Bosnians, Croatians and Serbs feel that it is important to be speaking different languages, even if they aren’t in reality. On the other hand, British, Americans, Australians, South Africans, etc., don’t mind speaking the same language and calling it “English”, even if only a small minority live in England.
OK, but you put them in the same breath as Norwegian and Danish, which are a whole lot more different (in fact Norwegian has two pretty distinct dialects) than the Serbo-Croat dialects.