Re: A question

At 16:53 -0500 13.8.1999, Patrick Dunn wrote:
>I'm thinking of writing a bit of a time travel story -- guy goes on a
>relativistic journey that goes wrong, comes back to Earth 1000 years later
>to find things suck.  You know, that sort of thing.
>
>My point is, I want to make a new English.  But I don't know what kind of
>sound changes are currently occuring in our language.  Does anyone know?
>
>My clumsy non-linguist ear hears a dropping of final /s/ and /z/, an
>ellision (is that the right word?) of dentals after nasels, and a
>conversion of unstressed /u/ into /a/.  So "I don't want you to go to the
>park."  Might come out /ai don wan ja ta go ta da pak./
>
>Still, this isn't weird enough for 1000 years.
>
>What I want to know is, what general trends is english going through.  For
>instance, are vowels getting higher, fronter, backer, etceteraer?  Is it
>my imagination, or are /th/ and /dh/ going away (that would be a relief to
>my Japanese students, I'm sure!)?
Have a look at the literature on pidgins and creoles.  There is a good
introductory by Suzanne Romaine, IIRC.  Even the things happening in P/C
languages *not* based on English might furnish some ideas.

(Note: I don't want to open the can of worms on the mechanism of P/C lgs'
origins.  I have my own opinions, which are mine own...)

You might also look at the history of English, since changes tend to apply
cyclically within a given language -- probably because the same extra- and
para- linguistic factors remain in force.

In the real future English will of course have disappeared, North Americans
speaking daughter languages of Spanish, Brits will speak French as filtered
through a German-built machine-translator ("Sche weiss auschoidie le
noufeau film foir aller"), and only in the South Pacific will several
mutually unintelligible languages of the Anglo-Saxon family be spoken, the
chief of which are Ozone, Unzud an Pidgin Tok Pisin, not to mention the
Franglais current thruout Africa! ;-)

Have you read Poul Andersen's story called (IIRC) "Delenda est", where in
an alternate timeline Cartage won over the Romans and America came to be
colonized by speakers of a Semiticized Celtic lang (or langs, as he messes
up Irish/Gealic and Welsh miserably!)?


/BP

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)