Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Change and the Sine Qua Non


How English will change in the next 200 years? In my opinion, it will continue to be lingua franca, but will have changed much. This post will show you the reasons and some examples of change.

Firstly, the pronunciation of “th” will disappear. According to an article in The Telegraph, a newspaper in the UK, the sound will vanish by 2066. It is supposed by the linguists in New York University, and it is because the sound is difficult to pronounce. On the basis of Professor David Crystal’s opinion referred in Stephen Fry’s English Delight.
Secondly, some people will use accusative case as nominative case. In fact, some Americanespecially street children of Afro-American—say “Me like you” instead of “I love you.” However, we can understand the case of this sentence. Because the word order is right. Judging from this example, we can say that we might have quit using nominative case in colloquial language, and it will be more and more important to obey the correct word order.

In contrast, English will continue to be a most important language in the future world. We can believe it considering the authority of Latin. Once a language become a standard of academic, a lot of paper is written in it, and it will continue even if the superpower extinct. Then, grammatically correct English will be the sine qua non, however wide Chinese, Japanese, or Hindi spread.

Therefore, I believe English will change a lot in the next 200 years, but it will continue to be the most important language in the world.

5 comments:

  1. Some countries have changed the words order to express the same meanings in English, such as Singapore, they usually do not care more about the grammar in spoken English.

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  2. I think it's a good idea that once a language become a standard of academic, it will continue even if the superpower extinct. Now, English is used as a standard of academic, so we can say that English will continue to be a global language.

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  3. I almost agree with your opinion. Surely, Japanese think the pronunciation of "th" is very difficult, but in most of countries with English, they don't think so. These days, without right grammar, we can do the conversation. Therefore, English will continue to change more usefully.

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  4. I was convinced that many of our past academic writing has been made in English, so it could keep the power.

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  5. Two examples you show above are very interesting. I didn't know that is is said the pronunciation of "th" will disappear.

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