http://mentalfloss.com/article/51362/4-changes-english-so-subtle-we-hardly-notice-theyre-happening
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/changing-voices/phonological-change/
I’ve been thinking about linguistic changes in modern English - as in, currently ongoing ones. These article mention a few. Another change which I first noticed thanks to a post on tumblr discussing it is the whole “yeah no” and “no yeah” thing (if the OP or anyone else who can find the post I’m talking about reads this, I’d love it if you send me the link.)
There’s also stuff like new words and phrases originating from internet culture - hell, you could make a case for grammatical shifts - and changes in how we see social dividers affecting the way we speak - certain words and phrases are becoming taboo (which makes some people uncomfortable as the changes caught them by surprise, and causes them to see this as political correctness gone mad; while other people feel bolstered by this in their own, more extreme forms of “progressivism” that really just polarize everything) as they are considered derogatory and problematic.
So here’s my thoughts on how English (spoken and written) MIGHT change in a few centuries:
Because of Internet Culture
“You” and “are” being shortened to “u” and “r”.
“-ight” turning into “ite”.
Possibly full stops being omitted at the end of a paragraph.
Internet slang, acronyms, and initialisms entering common vernacular - we’re already seeing this with “lol”, “omg”, “wtf” and my favourite, “dftba”.
“Because” followed by a noun as a shorthand explanation.
Question marks??? in the middle???? of sentences???? to express confusion?? even if the sentence isn’t an actual question.
We’re seeing people on replace “ck” with “cc”, that might keep happening.
Using phrases like “hashtag” or other internet terms irl.
It might even make it’s way into slang - who knows, “tagging" might come to mean “describing,” while “@” might be used to show you’re trying to get someone’s attention. I know it seems ridiculous, but cool, hip, and funky are all slang terms, what do you think someone from 1928 would have thought of them?
Streaming might become a slang term too.
Removing unnecessary vowels from words to abbreviate them - this is similar to Arabic, incidentally. We see this with “txt” instead of “text”.
Because of Ongoing Linguistic Changes
There’s a common sound combination where between a consonant and an “oo” sound, you get a “y” sound. The “y” sound is starting to disappear, either dropped entirely or fused with the consonant.
The fusion is mainly happening with “t”, “d”, “s,” and “z,” although there are exceptions to the latter two (I think it might be connected to syllable stress - the “y” is dropped if the stress is on that syllable, fused if it isn’t).
This is going to keep happening.
Something similar may happen with “th” - I can’t find any examples of words that have the stress on the syllable with the relevant sound combination, so we may see an English “ t͡ɕ “ sound. Although that syllable stress thing might be specific to sibilants rather than all alveolar fricatives, in which case even if the stress was on the syllable with “thyoo,” we’d get the sound.
It may also be happening with “n”, but that might just be me pronouncing “new” with a “ ɲ” because I’m not a native speaker.
In some regions - like East Anglia - the “y” sound is dropped no matter what, which will probably persist.
As for the drop, “y” sounds are already being dropped when it comes to “l”, but not with “p”, “f,” “v,” “b,” “k,” “g,” or “h.” I’m thinking the velars would probably cave first, then the labials, but it might be the other way around.
“Syoo” and “zyoo” sounds becoming “soo” and “zoo” if the stress is on the syllable, “shoo” and “zhoo” (as in leisure) if it isn’t.
And again with “n”, although in East Anglia, news is pronounced nooze with no ɲ sound.
Then again, given the CONtroversy conTROversy controversy, the stress may be shifting to the second syllable, so who knows. (It may be just that, though.)
Apparently - in Britain at least - there’s a shift towards initial ‘h’ sounds being pronounced rather than silent - “a hotel” rather than “an hotel”. I haven’t really noticed this, but then again I haven’t been looking for it.
Pronunciations shifting to align more with spelling - this has been the case with ‘nephew’, ‘if’, ‘envelope’, and ‘ate’. Maybe with words like “Edinbourgh” being pronounced “burh” rather than “bruh”?
Those words you’re supposedly using wrong? They’ll be right in a few decades. Isn’t it ironic? Personally, I’m unperturbed but not disinterested.
Because of Social Changes
“They” and “them” becoming the standard third-person pronouns - if someone specifies different preferred pronouns, those would be used for that specific person, but for someone you don’t know the default would be singular they.
And we’ll probably see some loanwords - I’m thinking from Hindi, Middle Eastern languages like Arabic or Turkish, and either Chinese or Japanese. American English would probably see loanwords from Spanish as well. These tend to mainly be due to either the countries that speak the language becoming more influential or migration.
If we’re going with migration leading to loanwords, given rising sea levels, we might also get loanwords from: Irish, Dutch, Danish, Greek (maybe?), and Bengali, to name a few.
Problematic terms for groups would be phased out. You could argue that slurs and terms which border on slurs are being replaced with less direct or casual-sounding terms - which is usually how it works when a word or phrase becomes taboo. Taboo words and phrases tend to be replaced by ones that sound more clinical.
However, non-problematic terms - ones that the group is happy to be identified as - would instead lose any negative stigma they may carry these days (think of homophobes using ‘gay’ as an insult, or cops freaking out when they find out that the kid with the probably fake gun is black).
Or, in the case of non-problematic terms that have a second, negative use, the negative use would become positive - like how some people here are advocating changing the secondary usage of ‘gay’ from a synonym with ‘lame’ to a synonym with ‘awesome’. That could happen.
