English in the future

futurist   Sat Feb 21, 2009 11:00 am GMT
How do you think English will be in the future mid-distant future, in terms of language evolution? What are the trends and do they allow to predict the direction it will take? What words will become obsolete and what will new ones be like?
izzentopper   Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:34 pm GMT
Based on what I hear these days, I think the -er and -est endings for adjectives may become less important, or fizzle uot completely (except for a few common ones like better, best, etc.)
Caspian   Sat Feb 21, 2009 7:50 pm GMT
I heard that it might evolve into some kind of Chinese - English hybrid, on QI.
Radovan   Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:18 pm GMT
New scientific terms will no longer be esoterically taken from Latin or Greek but rather will be ordinary words. We are seeing the beginning of this trend already with words like "Big Bang", "quarks", "spin", "handedness" etc.
Caspian   Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:28 pm GMT
Yes, that's a good point. Perhaps the elements of the periodic table will also assume more everyday names? Such has already happened with 'Water'. Also, the irregular ones, such as 'Fe' for Iron, 'Ag' for silver, 'Au' for gold, 'K' for potassium already seem to have strayed. I mean, K would have been Kalium, Pb (lead) would have been Plumbum (whence we get 'plumbing').
-   Sat Feb 21, 2009 10:15 pm GMT
>> Such has already happened with 'Water'. <<

Huh?!? Water is dihydrogen monoxide.

>> Also, the irregular ones, such as 'Fe' for Iron, 'Ag' for silver, 'Au' for gold, 'K' for potassium already seem to have strayed. I mean, K would have been Kalium, Pb (lead) would have been Plumbum (whence we get 'plumbing'). <<

What are you talking about?
Uriel   Sat Feb 21, 2009 11:01 pm GMT
Well, the periodic table's Latin elements are alive and well in medical jargon -- too much potassium is still referred to as hyperkalemia, potassium chloride is a common IV fluid additive and is always referred to as "KCl"; too little sodium in one's system is still hyponatremia (Na for natrium, meaning sodium). Any dressings or medications containing ionic silver (a powerful antimicrobial) usually have "Ag" at the ends of their brand names to advertise their main ingredient. I got tired of writing out "hydrogen peroxide" on all of my inventory lists and just call it "H2O2".

But it IS pretty funny to read medical terms and translate them from their Latin names or fancy Latin- or Greek-derived terms into plain English -- cauda equina syndrome is just "horsetail" (the cauda equina is a bundle of nerves at the end of the spinal cord that looks like one), hemiplegia just means "half-paralyed", neuralgia just means "nerve pain", "postioned in left lateral recumbency" just means "laid on the left side". Envenomation or venom intoxication means something nasty bit you. People admitted with ETOH problems are alcoholics (ETOH is the chemical symbol for ethyl alcohol). CVA (cerebrovascular accident) and TIA (transient ischemic attack) sound more innocuous than they are; they are the two types of strokes -- hemorrhagic and ischemic. Oh, sorry; I should say the first is caused by bleeding in the brain and the second by the blockage of blood flow in the brain. And contrary to what you might think, the damage caused by the "accident" is far more profound -- I mean, worse -- than the damage caused by the "attack". Go figure.

There is a tendency toward black humor in medicine, though, that is best expressed in plain terms; thus, cats sometimes come in suffering from "high rise syndrome", meaning they jumped out of a window too high off the ground for them to land without injury; Chihuahuas who decided to pick on German Shepherds and bit off more than they could chew were said to suffer from "big dog vs. little dog"; and animals that came in looking mopey and depressed and sickly for no apparent reason could be said to be "obtunded" but were privately diagnosed as ADR by the staff -- "Ain't Doin' Right".

Sometimes medical terms are just plain and accurate: babies who don't grow or remain sickly and puny despite proper care and nutrition are said to have "failure to thrive" and spouses who die soon after their loved ones despite no real health problems that should have been fatal are said to have succumbed to "broken heart syndrome" -- a recognized medical condition.
from the valley   Sat Feb 21, 2009 11:23 pm GMT
Computer or programming jargon seems to have avoided the fancy Greek and Latin terms found in medicine and law. "Plain" English words are used for the most part, although some of those words must have come from French or Latin originally.
Radovan   Sat Feb 21, 2009 11:36 pm GMT
I don't think deeply rooted scientific terms will be replaced. Rather, it is the new ones which will be different. I've seen this a lot in modern branches of physics and mathematics. Don't really know about other fields.

Physics: botomness, colour, strangeness, beauty, strong force, weak force, glueball, strangelet, gluon, charmness, topness, dark matter, jet quenching, desert, flavour, seesaw mechanism, shed, outhouse, champagne flow, black hole, white dwarf, redshift

Maths: stack, bundle, group, ring, building, germ, ball, loop, knot, net, path, tree, wedge sum, sheaf

etc
tbd   Sat Feb 21, 2009 11:39 pm GMT
The "ly" ending for adverbs is already disappearing.
Joel   Sun Feb 22, 2009 12:24 am GMT
really?
retard   Sun Feb 22, 2009 12:36 am GMT
I don't know but it seems like phrasal verbs are becoming more popular than longer more specific verbs.

eg. overcome = get over. remove = take away, inflate = blow up, leave = go away, arrive = get there/here, return, get/come back, assemble=set up, dismantle = take apart.

Is it true or am I imagining things?
Sp3ctre18   Sun Feb 22, 2009 5:16 am GMT
I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right. Many words are being replaced by phrases. Using the words assemble, arrive, dismantle....they now sound more formal, literary, or instruction-book kind of words.

Basically, I'm afraid where English is headed. It's getting dumbed down and messed up. I wish English were regulated. We have both things going on, "phrasal verbs" as you called it, and a certain culture (*not* the race, but a certain culture) has a version of english from their uneducated roots ad lazy pronounciation, and it's becoming more accepted and even being considered a dialect or how English may end up.

Very sad and disturbing..... <.<
your name:   Sun Feb 22, 2009 6:24 am GMT
<<I wish English were regulated.>>

Would that actually change anything 'in real life' though?
Rhoi (Sp3ctre18)   Sun Feb 22, 2009 6:51 am GMT
Not much in casual conversation, but I think it would definitely slow down any negative changes.

Right now, basically, it's popular usage that'll decide what becomes accepted in English. For example, if "phrasal verbs" becomes more and more (oh excuse me, *increasingly*) widespread, it'll become accepted even in more formal terms.

I'm only 21 and i've seen so much change already. "Stuff" was not a word you heard on the History Channel for example, but now it's everywhere, especially from the phrase "stuff of legends."

Vulgar words are losing their vulgarity just because they become common, which to me makes no sense and poses a problem. "Jerk" is already perfectly fine while I grew up. "Suck" is losing is vulgarity, to the point that "Sucky Economy" is supposedly really a technical economists use. I haven't found anything concrete to back that up, but some of my professors insist that... So what, will the f word also become a not-so-vuglar word?

Now, I don't really know what regulation could do and how it works, so this is more how I hope it would be. What's popular drives changes in language. So, while "sucky," "stuff," and "blow up," "get there," etc., would probably be acceptable on a resume or formal document after some time, I would hope instead English could be regulated so that that would NOT be acceptable.