How much do you think the English language will have changed in a few hundred years?

Question

A few hundred years ago we had what we now know as middle English (I think, if I'm wrong please correct me). You read scripts from back then and you will recognize a few words, but not much. So, in another 500 years or so do you think people will be looking at writings from today and saying "huh"?

Answer 1

I would imagine that our vocabulary will have changed quite a bit. Look at Shakespeare's writings--they may look largely intelligible to modern readers, but some of the vocabulary he used would have had different meanings, which is why some editions of Shakespeare include glossaries of some of the more obscure words. For instance, the dual pronoun "wit", used in Old and Middle English, may well still have been in use in a few English dialects in Shakespeare's time. And even writings of 19th-century authors such as Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain have a writing style that seems rather formal by today's standards. I have a feeling English will also undergo some changes under influence by further inter-language borrowings and advances in technology.

Old English, like modern German, was a moderately inflected language, and had grammatical gender. Over the centuries since King Alfred the Great, however, English has been losing its inflections and grammatical gender--nowadays it has natural gender, in that anything that is grammatically masculine, for example, is male biologically.

But I wouldn't exactly hold my breath over the idea that our loss of grammatical inflection will be permanent. Look at it this way: if I were to simply say, "I set", and you didn't know the context, what's the tense of my verb? It could be present, past, subjunctive, conditional, or anything else. As more and more people worldwide adopt English as a second language, they may find some difficulty making themselves understood with the limited inflections, and grammatical inflection in English may re-evolve.

With regard to writing systems, though, there is less material being written down on material that will last centuries than there was six or seven hundred years ago. Most books published in the last couple of centuries have been printed on paper stock that will eventually get dry and brittle. With that in mind, I wonder how much of our written language of today will survive five hundred years. Perhaps the more important works of literature will get preserved down the centuries, but this will only represent a microcosm of today's printed works.

Answer 2

I think the future English language will change quite a bit from what we know it as today. I think that it will absorb & co-exist with much of the spanish language, maybe have some new spanenglish words.

Right now the internet is lending a lot of new words to the English language. Much of the younger generation don't even know how to spell properly because of all the dropped letter characters in favor of phonetics for text messaging and what all. That could eventually turn into a whole new English language that will also get absorbed into the mainstream.'

Answer 3

It won't change as much in the next 500 years as it did in the last 500, due to mass media (particularly television). Changes in the past occurred because very few people travelled, and each small group could change the way it speaks (this happened for all languages, not just English). What will change is spelling (since most people using sites like this have no clue how to spell), and obviously the addition of new words for new inventions and technologies, as well as the disappearance of words for things that are no longer used.

Answer 4

Yes. I think it's quite possible. Language change proceeds apace. Today even when I read writing that was done as recently as the 70s it strikes me a little odd. I'm sure that in the future, the language of today will seem strange.

An even cooler question to ask is, I think, "Based on what we know about our language right now and normal language change processes, what will English be like in a few hundred years?" If we were able to correctly predict that, it would be so cool.

Answer 5

I already look at people nowadays and say "huh." But that's because I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere of Oklahoma. Thankfully that will change next month though ;-)

Answer 6

No Reading No Talking No Words No Languages . Just a Comp Chip in your head to all that for you.

Answer 7

probably, they will think we are all increadible geniuses and philosiphers because they can't work out what were talking about. Although if it keeps changing at the rate it is, in 500 years we will no longer have vowels and just speak in txt language

Answer 8

I already read some of the "English" language on this site and say; "Huh?"

Answer 9

lol, like when i read shakespears - i have no ideas what he is trying to say! But he sounded wise..
Hopefully, in the next 500 years, people would not understand what I wrote, and that I sounded wise, lol!

Answer 10

Ya espcialy if ppl kip typin lik zis, 'f u no wat i min