Will we all one day speak the same language?
With over a billion native speakers, Mandarin Chinese is the language spoken by the greatest number of people. English comes third, after Spanish. But unlike Mandarin and Spanish 鈥� both spoken in more than 30 countries 鈥� English is found in at least 100. In addition to the 335 million people for whom it is their first language, 550 million cite it as their second. It dominates international relations, business and science.
All this suggests English is on course to be the planet鈥檚 lingua franca. It just probably won鈥檛 be the English that native speakers are used to.
Millions of second-language English speakers around the world have created dialects that incorporate elements of their native languages and cultures. Anna Mauranen of the University of Helsinki in Finland calls these varieties similects: Chinese-English, Brazilian-English, Nigerian-English. Taken together they 鈥� not American or British English 鈥� will chart the language鈥檚 future path, she says.
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鈥淲e used to think there were two possible futures,鈥� says Jennifer Jenkins at the University of Southampton, UK. 鈥淚n one we鈥檇 all end up speaking American English. In the other, English would separate like Latin did, and we鈥檇 end up with [new] languages. I don鈥檛 think either of those is happening.鈥�
Instead, English similects are probably here to stay. Even in a future where China, India and Nigeria are global superpowers, English is likely to be the language of choice for international discourse, simply because it is already installed. Weirdly, this puts native speakers at risk. 鈥淲e鈥檙e getting to the stage where all the educated people of the world have English,鈥� says Jenkins. 鈥淥nce it鈥檚 no longer a special thing, native speakers lose their advantage.鈥�
They could even be at a disadvantage. Non-native speakers are all tuned to each-other鈥檚 linguistic quirks. 鈥淚f you put a Chilean, a Japanese and a Polish person in a discussion in English, they understand each other perfectly,鈥� says Jenkins. 鈥淧ut one with two native English speakers and there might be problems.鈥�
Mauranen envisions a future in which English similects begin to blend over national borders. New dialects are likely to form around trades or regions. She says these common goals will drive the evolution of the lingua franca, regardless of whether we call it English or not.
That is not to say that all other languages will vanish. German will remain the language of choice within German borders. Even Estonian, spoken by just 1 million people, is safe. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a fully fledged language, used for everything [in Estonia],鈥� says Mauranen.
Likewise, the language directly descended from Shakespeare鈥檚 English has staying power with Brits and Americans. But English, like football, will soon move outside their control, pulled into something new by the rest of the planet.
How is technology changing language?
鈥淲riting used to be very formal,鈥� says Lauren Collister of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 鈥淚t was books, love letters or newspaper articles. Grammar and spelling were expected to be precise.鈥�
That is changing. Every day, millions of us have real-time conversations in writing, online and on our mobile phones. As a result, writing is evolving. 鈥淐hat rooms, instant messaging, they all contributed to informalisation of written language,鈥� says Collister. Goodbye 鈥淭o whom this may concern鈥�; hello txtspk, 炉\_(銉�)_/炉 and DBEYR*. This evolution is happening so quickly that we are already seeing it move offline and back into speech and formal lexicons. In 2011, 鈥渓ol鈥� was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The question is, what new language is coming down the internet pipeline?
Internet-speak often bypasses language barriers, so the next netspeak could have foreign roots. Japanese forums use 鈥淥rz鈥� to signify kneeling down: the O is the head, r the arms and body, and z is the kneeling legs. Depending on context, it is used to signify failure and despair, or sarcastic admiration. Chinese netspeak has adapted Orz to Chinese script, 鍥z, to convey a facial expression. Xiangxi Liu of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, foresees an explosion of such online language, especially in Chinese, which can draw on thousands of characters.
Even the traditional building blocks of language 鈥� letters and words 鈥� are being upgraded. Ramesh Jain of the University of California, Irvine, thinks images will play a bigger role in future online communication, precisely because they cross language barriers. , Google and chat companies like Line are continually growing their emoticon and sticker libraries to see the evidence for this.
This has created a strange new linguistic barrier: money. Line users pay for stickers. The company made $75 million from this scheme in its first year. Don鈥檛 be deflated, though. If there is anything the explosion of internet memes and netspeak shows, it鈥檚 how quick and crafty we are at inventing our own new words, which are adopted (or not) by the ruthless natural selection of social media.
Could we one day communicate without speaking?
Private thoughts fill your head every second of the day, safe from prying ears 鈥� for now. Lately, researchers have begun exploring ways to decipher our internal monologues from a distance. Don鈥檛 jump for your tin foil hat just yet. The aim is to give a voice to people who are paralysed and unable to communicate, but fully aware of their surroundings.
Adrian Owen at the University of Western Ontario in Canada showed in 2010 that it was possible to communicate with such 鈥渓ocked-in鈥� people through questions with yes or no answers. The person would imagine walking around their home for 鈥測es鈥�, or playing tennis for 鈥渘o鈥�. A scanner picked up on the distinct brain activity patterns that each scenario produces. With a small delay, the team was able to decode yes/home and no/tennis.
But a one-sided conversation isn鈥檛 much fun. Philip Kennedy of Neural Signals in Duluth, Georgia, has designed a brain implant that records activity in areas that control the movement of your mouth when you shape a word. He is investigating whether this could be used to interpret a person鈥檚 intention to speak, and command a speech synthesizer to do the actual talking.
An alternative is to decode brain activity associated with concepts, rather than words. Jo茫o Correia at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has done this using non-invasive EEG recordings. He reckons this could one day give people enough mental 鈥渧ocabulary鈥� to form whole sentences, or at the very least a few vital words.
Meanwhile, Brian Pasley and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley have found that groups of neurons in the auditory areas are tuned to certain frequencies and rhythms. The activity is the same whether you hear a word or merely think it. Pasley has built an algorithm that analyses .
It鈥檚 a little rough and ready, and electrodes have to be implanted in the brain, but the outcome is impressive. Listening to one of the recordings, I was able to recognise the word 鈥淲aldo鈥�, produced from imagined speech. It may be far-fetched, says Correia, but it鈥檚 also 鈥渢he closest we鈥檝e come to speaking with the mind鈥�.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淔uture language: English rulz OK, txtspk rises and mind-reading鈥�
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