THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH

One of the many predictions about the future of English is that the language as we know it will be spoken only by a minority of English speakers. Other Englishes are being formed all the time. Singlish in Singapore is a good example. English was used in Singapore for for a hundred and fifty years and when it became independent in 1958, Singapore made it the official language of business and government, partly because English united diverse population of Chinese, Malays and Indians and partly because of its commercial and financial importance. But alongside with official English you often hear Singlish which continues to grow and develop. Some scholars believe that Singlish indicates the way in which future Englishes will develop. In so many ways it fits the traditions of the people of Singapore much better than official English and could threaten to replace it.

Some words clearly come from English, for example, blur (confused). But others come from Malay and Hokkien. Words such as makan (to eat). Some of these words are now being used as part of Singapore Standard English and they will change it greatly. Marking plurals and past tenses is a matter of choice and so you get phrases like What happen yesterday? The verb to be can be optional. She so pretty. A similar thing is happening in South Africa where local words now sit alongside standard English, indicating total acceptance and signalling the birth of another new English. Increasingly even in Europe there is an acceptance of different Englishes. Everything doesn’t have to be put in ‘correct‘ English. The Germans use handy for a mobile phone and on a Lufthansa flight you will be told to turn your handies off. The more English spreads, the more it diversifies, the more it could tend toward fragmentation. Just as Latin, which once ruled over a great linguistic empire, split into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, so may the future of English be not as a single language but as a parent of a family of languages.

Noah Webster predicted this 200 years ago. Although he thought it would happen in his native America, the reasons he gave apply to the condition of English around world today. He wrote, ‘New associations of people and new word combinations of ideas in arts and science will introduce new words into American tongue. These causes will produce, in time, a language in North America, as different from the future language of England as the Modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are form German, or from one another’. Webster’s North America 200 years ago could now be referred to as the ‘the world of today’.

Some researches believe that the future of English will be shaped by people who speak English as an additional language -- those who vastly outnumber the ‘core‘ speakers. Dr Jennifer Jenkins has pointed out that whereas the traditional English talk about something and discuss something, almost all English as a second language speakers discuss about something. She believes that phrases like phrases like this are here to stay and and will spread into Standard English as, she believes, will the tag How can I say? and many others. Perhaps even words we consider mispronounced will take their place in the Oxford English Dictionary. In Korea and Taiwan and elsewhere, for instance, a product and produk. What odds produk will replace product as Asian wealth grows. And the complicated English tag system, have you? haven’t you? could you? couldn’t you? - will most likely be simplified, Professor David Crystal thinks. He thinks nesspa (from the French n’est ce pas or isn’t it) could replace all of them.

The Internet took off in English and although here are now 1,500 languages on the Internet, 70 per cent of it is still in English. And a new form of English has now appeared - text English. This is yet another English and totally comprehensible to its users and therefore influential on the future of the language. I love you is now more commonly the text, i luv u. On Valentine’s Day in 2003, in the UK, about 70,000,000 text messages were sent, five times the number of Valentine cards - i luv u rules. Here is a word recently accepted by the OED, blog, a personal diary type statement placed on the Internet, and the following words may be included in the dictionary in future.

google: to search for information on the web, particularly by using the google search engine; to search the web for information related to a new or potential boyfriend or girlfriend.

cyberskiver: a person who surfs the Internet while supposedly being at work.

e-lancer: a freelance worker who communicates with clients through a personal computer.