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Information on future English language development?

From:Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Date:Thursday, October 21, 2004, 20:41
Hi, guys!  I feel like I flummoxed y'all with my questions for Estel.
Estel, if you're working on a "future English" conlang, I wonder if you
would be interested in having my colleague contact you.  She is not a
conlanger.  She's a scholar of cultural studies. You can write me privately,
if you wish.

My broader question: what is the history or popularity, if there is one, of
"future English" conlangs?  Are there any out there besides the one Estel
says she's contemplating?  Would E-prime count as "future English" or merely
"idealized English"?  John, would you consider Lojban, in part, a kind of
"future" language, given that it consciously develops patterns of logic that
would make machine/language interface easier?  What incentives (fictive,
philosophical, linguistic, scientific) drive one to invent a future English?
I'll admit that in movies that take you forward in time, it's a real thorn
in my side to hear everyone talking a perfectly contemporary English cum
twentieth-century slang (Star Trek, for instance... although I can see the
pragmatic reasons, of course, for making it understandable to contemporary
viewers).

Do you consider _A Clockwork Orange_ to be an example of future English?
Any other fiction/science fiction examples come to mind?

Anybody else doing this?  I'm writing on behalf of my friend, but I'll admit
a bias towards the contemplation, as well, of a future human.  Given how
much our language reflects our politics, technology, and so forth, a future
English has to take into account some sort of future history, and future
technology, right? Especially given our increasing "digitalization."  How
can it not?

Or is it mainly an exercise in trying to predict how we will be pronouncing
would, good, and should in California twenty-five years from now?  Whether
or not "they" will become the acceptable generic singular pronoun?  Whether
"lie" will disappear from English altogether and be replaced with "they"?

I know the last three questions are provocative, but I'd love to have
answers to my major question: the prevalence of "future English" conlangs
and/or speculations.

yours truly,
Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net

Replies

Rik Roots <rik@...>
And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
John Cowan <jcowan@...>