Read more: 鈥100,000 AD: Living in the deep future鈥
SHOULD your descendants uncover this page, yellowed and curling, thousands of years from now, many of these words will be incomprehensible 鈥 even if they call themselves speakers of English. After all, we struggle to decipher old English texts like Beowulf. You might be able to understand the hero鈥檚 declaration that 鈥淏茅owulf is m铆n nama鈥, but a millennium of language evolution has washed away the meaning from 鈥済rimma ga茅st Grendel鈥 鈥 the 鈥済hastly demon Grendel鈥.
If our language has transformed almost beyond recognition in just 1000 years, how might it sound in tens of thousands of years? Languages are largely shaped by the unpredictable whims of their speakers, but by examining the forces facing our language, we can speculate about how our descendants might speak.
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The most obvious question is whether they will be using English at all. Although English is the world鈥檚 lingua franca, its popularity largely hinges on the present economic importance of Anglophone countries. Should another country come to dominate world trade, our descendents may all be learning its language. If so, it鈥檚 likely that they would begin to incorporate some of its terms into their own language 鈥 in the same way that Italians say that they will listen to a 鈥減odcast鈥 on their 鈥渢ablet鈥 at the 鈥渨eekend鈥. But very popular languages tend to be resilient to invasion, so there鈥檚 no reason to think that English will disappear entirely.
It鈥檚 more likely that it will splinter and fragment. We can already see new dialects forming in many of the UK鈥檚 former colonial territories, such as Singapore and Jamaica. Thanks to immigration, the internet and mass media, words from such dialects often feed back through the English-speaking world 鈥 as can be seen in Jamaican variations that are now sweeping through London slang, such as the use of 鈥渂uff鈥 to mean attractive, and 鈥渂atty鈥 to mean a person鈥檚 bottom. Given enough time, these dialects might diverge entirely. If so, English may end up like Latin 鈥 dead, but survived by numerous offspring.
Do such grand transformations make it impossible to predict anything specific about future English? Certainly, the language is changing quickly enough as it is; adds between 2000 and 2500 words each year, says its senior assistant editor Denny Hilton. But there may be thousands of new words that fail to catch the attention of the OED鈥榮 lexicographers. When Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel at Harvard University studied Google鈥檚 corpus of digitised books from the last century, they found around 8500 new words entering the language every year. Many of these are rarely used 鈥 words like postcoarctation, reptating and subsectoral.
鈥淓nglish is changing quickly. The Oxford English Dictionary adds between 2000 and 2500 words each year鈥
Use it or lose it
By looking at English鈥檚 journey since Beowulf, we can at least identify trends that might continue. Its future grammar might lack some of the nuances that rule the sentences on this page, for instance. We鈥檝e already lost many of the rules that governed the language of Beowulf 鈥 English nouns no longer have different genders, for instance.
Today, this ongoing simplification can be seen in the way we use the past tense. There are lots of irregular verbs whose past tenses do not have the more typical 鈥-ed鈥 ending 鈥 we say 鈥渓eft鈥 rather than 鈥渓eaved鈥, for example. But time is slowly taming these irregular verbs, and the effect depends on how common these verbs are. By studying English texts from the last 1000 years, Lieberman Aiden and Michel noticed that the less a verb is used, the more likely it is to become regular. 鈥淚f a word is rare, we don鈥檛 always remember if it is irregular,鈥 says Lieberman Aiden 鈥 so we assume it follows the pattern of more familiar verbs.
鈥淭o wed鈥, which is now used in only very specific contexts, is already in the throes of change. People are beginning to say they are 鈥渘ewly wedded鈥 rather than 鈥渘ewly wed鈥, for example. Others are more stubborn. Having found the way a word鈥檚 popularity can influence its chances of linguistic change, Lieberman Aiden and Michel started to predict the future lifespan of certain irregular verbs. For instance, given its relative rarity, there is a 50 per cent chance that 鈥渟lunk鈥 will become 鈥渟linked鈥 within 300 years (see diagram).
鈥淭o be鈥 or 鈥渢o have鈥, which are used in around 1 in 10 sentences, have 鈥渉alf-lives鈥 of nearly 40,000 years (). The researchers speculate that irregular plurals will follow a similar trend 鈥 鈥渕en鈥 could become 鈥渕ans鈥, for example 鈥 though they haven鈥檛 tested the idea yet.
In a similar way, we can predict which words will be ousted by new coinages or terms imported from another language. By examining linguistic evolution across the Indo-European languages, Mark Pagel at the University of Reading, UK, has found that this too depends on a word鈥檚 frequency 鈥 the more common it is, the longer it lingers (). That鈥檚 partly because we are less likely to use the wrong term if we hear the right term often enough.
In his forthcoming book, Wired for Culture, Pagel also argues that words have evolved to suit their purpose 鈥 if they are common and represent important concepts, they will be short and easy to say (see 鈥淔orget fittest, it鈥檚 survival of the most cultured鈥). Such words are 鈥渉ighly fit鈥, he says, using a Darwinian analogy. 鈥淚t鈥檚 difficult for a new word to dislodge them.鈥
This can be seen in Beowulf鈥檚 declaration. 鈥淣ama鈥 clearly lingers as 鈥渘ame鈥, a very common word then and now. Numbers, question-words and other simple nouns have similar staying power.
So, if your descendants do speak a form of English and happen to be reading this page, there鈥檚 a chance they may find some meaning in simple sentences like 鈥渨hat is your name?鈥 or 鈥淚 drink water鈥. There鈥檚 a slim chance they might even comprehend 鈥淗ello from the year 2012鈥.