To appreciate 23rd-century English, look back 200 years | Hacker News Reader

To appreciate 23rd-century English, look back 200 years

nytimes.com

45 pointsmartey20 comments

Vocabulary in terms of slang and so forth will change, but I wonder how media will preserve the tone, accent, etc. that we speak in. The Transatlantic accent may be dead, but the General American newscaster English is trapped in amber.

Watching / listening to American media from 50+ years ago, some of the mainstream accents of that time are now completely dead as far as I can tell. Or at least, I never hear people using those accents in any context today. (And not just the “transatlantic accent”, which seems especially affected, but others I can’t place/name. I dunno, maybe those are just some non-obvious blend of regional accents.)

There’s enough variation in “General American” English, and enough change over time, that I imagine people 100 years from now will readily recognize an “early 21st century” accent.

Are you sure those aren't just news anchors using the Transatlantic accent?

Yeah, here's an old page imagining how the pronunciation of American English might evolve over 1000 years - this is the projection for 2100: http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html#5

Do you have examples? One I can think of is the Ralph Kramden NYC accent -- that's very rare now.

This is a cool piece. I've been thinking a lot about how I communicate in person and in text form, and how it changes based on situation, e.g. when I am trying to be incredibly informal or quick in text, I default to all lowercase and will always truncate words/use acronyms/use single letter spellings (u for example).

It's been fun watching how we communicate in the age of social media and instantaneous communication.

Interesting premise, but be careful with the linear thinking here. As a counter example, Icelandic didn't change as much as English in the past 200 years. For English, one would probably need to look even further back in time than 200 years. Change in language use is somewhat related to the number and diversity of speakers and the number and diversity of english speakers didn't grow linearly in the past 200 years and probably won't grow linearly in the next 200 years.

Dialects do distinctly diverge even if the diatribe it descends from dithers in so doing, dwelling on distant drawls describing the delivery of the long deceased.

The Edward Sapirian view is that eloquent and erudite euphemisms even extend their effect to Eurozone events and thus engender experience, excepting the effervescent 'EUniversal grammar' of Eastern Europe (ex. Esperanto), and endangered Estonian.

I never thought of "also me:" as being a linguistic innovation, but it totally is! I'm now wondering how many of the current "memes" are going to translate into linguistic innovations decades from now.

Now that I think of it, mOcKiNg tExT is tied to a specific Spongebob image/meme--I wonder if that will affect how prevalent mocking text will be in the future, or if the meme will accompany mocking text and both will be part of linguistics.

200 years is a loooooooong time. Would expect even more bizarre shifts in digital communications, like attached emotional imprints from automatic brain scans or something.

I doubt that's going to happen. People enjoy being able to hide emotions when they're communicating over a distance.

I agree. That's why people--especially young people--generally prefer texting over phone calls: without the spontaneity (synchronicity) required in spoken communication, it is a lot easier to hide everything on your part, from presence or attention to any kind of reaction. It is safer, so to speak; but less satisfying.

Phone calls are outdated, what do you think of extremely popular voice chat applications such as discord?

There, they have an online persona they can hide behind. They don't have to deal with people from their real-life environment. Plus, discord servers center around a common interest for everyone involved.

That's not why most young people prefer texting. They prefer it for a variety of other reasons:

* More private. Mom and dad can't snoop as easily, especially if you're in the backseat of their car

* Asynchronous. You can answer it when it is convenient and not have to stop what you're doing.

I think it's both what I said and what you added; they are not mutually exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I would also say that chat apps are designed to be addictive, too. An important fact to consider.

>and not have to stop what you're doing.

Which is, in their case, being on their phone all day, ironically enough. Asynchronicity is what I meant by not requiring spontaneity (not being synchronous, in other words).

I guess my only reaction to this is:

faux-enthusiastic sparkles

( /s )

Please don't do this here.

Hey, at least he read the article.

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