Sally Caves ha tera a:
> > Many of the changes I think of are more morphological/syntactic.
> > For example, one of the features I quite like is a simplification
of
> > the irregular verb system, so that past participles of (all but a
few)
> > irregular verbs are formed by adding "-en" to the past tense - for
> > example, in regular spelling:
> > sing - sang -sangen
> > write - wrote - wroten
> > hit - hit - hitten
> > slide - slid - slidden
> >
> > and so on, basically forming a new paradigm. There would still be
a
> > few really irregular verbs like "be" and "have" and "go".
> Vyko, Estel! Interesting! It jives with some of the variations I've
heard
> for brought and bought: "I'd've broughten it if someone told to."
"My
> mother's just boughten me a new coat." So also, "putten"?
Yes, I've collected a large list of such formations I've heard in real
life, including the examples you mention. I've also heard some other
revisions of irregular verb paradigms that don't fit this pattern, but
this is by far the most common. In my future English, almost all
irregular verbs would be reshaped according to this pattern, except
"be", "have", and suppletive verbs like "go"
> Would spelling stay the same?
Well, currently for most of my future English stuff I use the spelling
system I developed for my variety of spoken English, which I can't
always type easily because it uses non-ASCII characters, and my ability
to use them depends on the computer I'm using.
> Another thing that interests me is whether you
> intend to think about class issues eventually: what class status
would this
> occupy? You mention "casually spoken" English. Will class or
regional
> linguistic differences have evened out? Will there be a formal or
"elite"
> future English, say, for written or educated uses? Will that change,
too,
> in perhaps other ways? I was rather impressed by the example given
in A
> Clockwork Orange where even the scholar's written language had
changed, but
> not along the lines of the street thugs.
Well, currently I don't have any such plans, but the way these things
usually work is that I think of a bunch of "neat features" and then
discover which ones seem like they'd work well together. So if I
happen to think of any "neat features" for a future society that could
speak an English-derived language, and they were compatible with this
language, I might put them together. But I do imagine something like
this being the standard language.
-Estel