Re: Information on future English language development?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon Richard Clarkstone" <s.r.clarkstone@...>

> Joe wrote:
>> ...  One thing I will say, though, is that
>> English will change more in the next fifty years than it has in the last
>> two hundred.
> In my opinion.
> I only agree with you partly there.  Due to increased global
> communications, English could also be said to be changing less, as a
> better connected language community makes change of language more
> difficult: a new word will be very unlikely to spread fast enough to
> last long.
I presume you mean the media--television, radio, Internet--that has slowed
down the production of basic changes in structure and pronunciation.  I'll
buy that to a degree, but I disagree that the media has slowed down
neologism.  In fact, I think it expedites it.  New words are being made all
the time.  It's like consumerism: a toy, a product, an invention needs to
compete with what else is out there, and play on the complicated human
desires of the moment.  Words can be coined, but it takes usage, and
circulation by the media, for them to stick.

There is also a less convincing argument that since the
> whole of humanity has been discovered, then we cannot meet up with new
> peoples who give us new words; we have taken all of everyone's words
> that we want.
I can see why this argument is less convincing.  Or non-convincing.  Is the
whole of humanity really completely discovered?  by everybody?  Have we
really "taken all of everyone's words that we want"?  There are cultures
that are still obscure to those who are coining phrases in English.  You
have to read about them in books on anthropology.  How many among the
American or European masses know of the Piraha~ for instance? How many
Americans even know French argot, for that matter?

> However, the increased number of new types of things will lead to many
> new names being needed for them, or adaptations of old words, or
> borrowings.
True.  And new political or social developments.  New wars for instance.
The acronym WMD has spread pretty quickly.   I've already heard it used to
mean "weapons of mass distraction."  SORRY!!!!  Please ignore this
unnecessary political reference.  I mean to stay neutral.  No cross no
crown.  (It's what I've heard, though.)   Let's focus on something else: the
plus minus verbs that have come to replace "add" and "subtract."  I think it
was Marcos who expressed distaste for this new jargon, but who couldn't deny
that it was catching on.  Everything new contributes to new language, and
the media spreads it better than anything before the advent of the print
culture.  Also, writing conventions on email.  How many of you have seen the
spelling "speach"?  As the Internet becomes available to more and more
people, it will democratize writing, spelling and speaking conventions, and
we will be exposed to more dialectical flavors than ever, not unlike the
problem that faced Caxton sitting and wondering whether to write eggs or
eyren in his first printed text.

Sal
I must get off now.