Future of the English language
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English, as many other languages, is in a constant evolution. It is a dynamic language that can now be recognized as a universal language. For us to begin looking at the future of English we must search for tendencies in its past and in its present. As of 2017, 1.5 billion people speak English in the world (That’s about 20% of Earth’s population). However, only about 360 million people of the 1.5 billion speak English as their native language. English has become a common second language in a lot of countries around the globe; many children study English in school as they would study science, music, or mathematics. This trend will undoubtedly continue through time, making native speaking English a minority. As a matter of fact, the largest English speaking country in the world is China.
History has told us that English evolves quite rapidly due to this worldwide expansion of the language. There are already different categories to refer to English based on the year it was spoken (Old English, Middle English). It becomes difficult for modern-English speakers to understand the same language even 100 years ago.
Dialects of English
Recently, and because of the fact that English is vastly present in many countries, new variations and dialects of the language have emerged. Culture is a great factor in these modifications of the language due to differences in identities and customs. Foreign English speakers adapt the language to their context and basically fill up the blanks with their own slangs and pronunciations.
We have seen the emergence for example of “Spanglish” which is a combination of Spanish and English. This variation is most common in Hispanic people living in the United States of America. New words emerge from these variations to the point that native-English speaking people and Spanglish speaking people can’t even communicate effectively solely by the use of language.
This phenomenon is taking place very quickly and very frequently, which has led experts to believe that in the future, instead of the language being one standardized version of English, there are going to be various mutually intelligible versions of English.
Internet and Communication Technology
The English language is in the fastest state of evolution it has ever seen. Sometimes, mature native-English speakers have trouble understanding words that their youth is using. As with everything, the widespread of information that we have in the present due to the internet makes the pace of the world go faster and faster. Language is no exception. Written communication due to social media is affecting the way in which we express ourselves. In the book 1984 by George Orwell the state is trying to implement a new version of English called “Newspeak”. In this language they were trying to remove all the words that were exact opposites and replace them with prefixes and suffixes such as “un-“. For example they left the word “good” in the language but replaced the word “bad” for “ungood”. A certain type variation like this is happening with the Internet, though not to that extreme. The Internet and specifically social media is giving people limited formats of text to which the user has to adapt to correctly express what he/she want to say to other people. This has led to language becoming more expressive and more concise. This also causes the rapid popularization of new words, hence the problem with adults and kids/teenagers. As time passes old words are left behind to disappear and new words make it to the dictionary due to society’s acceptance of them. Modern technologies and innovation have sped up the evolutive pace of the languages
How will English be in the future?
As a conclusion we can clearly see that native English speakers will be a smaller minority as time goes by. Experts predict that by 2020 only 15% of all English speakers will be native English speakers. It is and will continue to be a universal second language, we personally think due to its modern simplicity. Nonetheless, English in the future is most likely going to be very different to that which we know it as today. In the future, there may be various different accepted types of English, due to the foreigners’ adaptation to their own culture. These variations will be concise and very expressive due to the technology of communication we have available today.
English will continue to evolve as so will we, innovating and discovering things as new types of language as a lot of people have discovered here and now.