The Future of Languages

i

am a linguist no that doesn’t mean that

i speak 84 languages fluently

or that i’m the most boring person in

the world for liking this subject

i make it my job to look at all the

little details

components flaws and irregularities of

language that aren’t appreciated enough

now to some of you that’ll still seem

like a pretty dull topic

what’s the point of it you might ask

well i believe that there’s a hidden

beauty to this field and if you look

hard enough and in all the right places

then it’ll start to reveal its amazing

self

bit by bit you see i’m not only a

linguist

but a conlanger as well

now most of you here probably won’t know

what that is

put simply con hanging is the

application of linguistics

used in simulating the construction and

development of natural languages the way

i like to put it

linguistic fortune telling one of the

defining parts of conlanging

is taking a pre-existing language and

building on it

putting your own spin on it speeding up

the processes of change in a language

from a few hundred years

to a few days essentially you’re mapping

out the potential future of a language

with a bit brainpower so what’s the

point of doing this

well conlanging is an incredibly

powerful tool

it can make us look at language in a way

that we’ve never done before

it can give us glimpses into what the

future holds for language

pretty exciting right so the only

problem is

how do we go about doing this simple

when i can’t lang i see three main parts

to all this the first of which

is phonology this part

is all about the phonemes the sounds in

a language

and we’ll also touch on orthography the

letters in a language so

basically the first part of linguistic

fortune telling is all about

pronunciation and spelling now i’ve

heard a lot of people say that

in order to see the future we must first

look at the past

so to see this all in action we’re

taking a trip back in time

about 5000 years or so

this is proto-indo-european

or p-i-e the reconstructed ancestor of

pretty much

all of europe’s languages including

english

in my opinion proto-indo-european is the

best example of seeing the mechanics of

how

language changes over time

take these words in p.i.e for example

podes and merter respectively meaning

feet and mother imagine calling your

mother mer

every time you eat her i’m hungry

i’m tired i mean you can argue that

we’re lucky to have had these changes

happen

these words they’re quite a bit more

complicated than we used to

you’ve got guttural sounds intonation

and vowel length

all influencing the meaning of the word

now take a look at the sound changes for

each individual word

at first it looks like a bunch of random

shifts but take a closer look

and you’ll be able to identify two main

trends here

the tendency to simplify and the

tendency to shift to more sonorous

sounds

the change from up to the small shifts

and vowel sounds

and the loss of tone lengths and throat

rating consonants are all examples of

this

so by looking at our linguistic ancestor

and analyzing one aspect of it

we found it to draw two conclusions that

we can use to make predictions when

conlanging

and we can put that in practice now

let’s say

that for sound changes to happen the

human race will need to be subjected to

a situation like our current one for

quite a while

i’m exaggerating a bit here but let’s

say that masks are

enough of a nuisance to significantly

affect our speech

people can’t hear each other well

because of these masks

so naturally we’re inclined to make our

speech louder

and instead of shouting all the time we

changed the pronunciation of words

instead so

from feet we could slowly edge towards

words

and sounds that are more sonorous fat

than fat and then we get to fats

and voila we’ve just conlanged we’ve

made logical linguistic predictions

based on things we’ve seen happen to

language before

the second part we can analyze is

colloquialism

this looks at the impact of culture on

language

and vice versa so here we’re looking at

things like idioms metaphors and all

that nitty-gritty cultural stuff

the reference i’m starting out with here

is a bit more distant than p-i-e

i’m taking the example of klingon yep

that brilliant brilliantly raspy

language from star trek spoken by aliens

with prosthetic foreheads

one of the things i love about klingon

is their word for hello

the thing is they don’t have one

the only thing close to greeting is what

do you want and that’s it

if my pop culture knowledge serves me

well then the klingons are a race of

cold-hearted space warriors

and this little feature of their

language is supposed to reflect that

instantly we see just how much the fine

details of a language can tell us about

its speakers

it’s a fine example of culture impacting

a spoken tongue

of course we have examples of things

like this closer to home

take the example of the phrase steal

someone’s thunder

an idiom with a rather amusing origin

now again we’re going back in time this

time to the 1700s

now imagine this scene john dennis

a dramatist of the time has just come up

with an

idea for a thunder machine to use

anonymous plays

the machine was brilliant the play

less so but he soon found his machine

used in a performance of macbeth and

soon everybody heard about how

his thunder had been stolen

that phrase was used so much it was such

a big

point of interest that eventually it

found its way into everyday speech

culture had again woven its way into our

language

so we now know that for culture to have

a considerable impact on language

there has to be events big enough to

interest the speakers as a whole

our current situation seems to check

that box right so let’s see

how do these circumstances manifest

themselves

in the form of language well

one of the biggest points of interest

right now is making sure everything is

hygienic

are you clean are you sanitized you have

a cough

already we’ve seen a change happen and

if this goes on for long enough then

those phrases start to move

up in our priority and like the klingons

and their absence of hello

we could be greeting people with

cleanest of blessings upon you

again this con language mindset lets us

see the linguistic future one which

instantly reflects a cool part of

today’s society

now we come to the third and final part

of linguistic fortune telling

manner of communication this

is an umbrella term for a rather broad

part here we’re looking at shifts in

grammar

word meaning as well as methods through

which we communicate

now imagine this sometime in the future

we get a huge and i mean huge

influx of people from

non-english-speaking countries

moving to england they don’t speak

english well

we don’t speak their language well so

we have to compensate by communicating

in a way that benefits everybody

the solution well there’s more than one

the first is a trend which we’ve talked

about before

simplification although we as native

speakers don’t realize it

english isn’t an incredibly difficult

language

you teach today but you taught yesterday

yet for some reason you didn’t pro if

you preach in the past

no mispronounced gnome not gonomi

and rism has absolutely no vowels in it

yet we pronounce it like it does

maddening for all those people moving to

england this will be too much of a

hassle for them so

naturally they cut corners they make

things easier more logical even

because of the inconveniences to put it

mildly that

english poses to foreigners that need to

learn it now

a little linguistic revolution happens

now that is what you do if you teach in

the past

that is how we’ll be spelling gnome

instead

and that is what we’re actually

pronouncing rhythm like

another phenomenon we could see happen

is a semantic shift

a shift in the meaning of a word now

i’ve seen this happen myself at home my

parents are from malaysia

and there are a few words that

malaysians have

adopted from the english language but

have changed the meaning of slightly

one of these words is happening

native english speakers will know that

this is the present participle of the

verb to happen

when we use it at home though it’s an

adjective we used to describe

fun hip sing situations and whatnot

you could argue that this is a lot like

slang we take pre-existing words

change the meaning of them then use them

in casual situations

could this happen in the future of

course

again let’s get back into our contacts

mindset and randomly pick a word that

we’ve heard quite a lot recently

maybe lockdown right now it means a

state of isolation for

safety or security as time goes on we’ll

start to use that word more and more

often and

with that increase in use comes a

widening of its meaning

so maybe in the course of a few years

we’ll find that lockdown is not just a

state of isolation

but a boring event that drains happiness

seems pretty accurate right there’s one

more shift

that we haven’t encountered for spoken

language

to sign language

now it’s time for a little bit more

exaggeration again i’m taking the

example of thick masks

apart from speech hand gestures are a

crucial part of human communication

with harder to hear speech naturally our

gestures could become more pronounced

more noticeable we could start to

associate specific gestures with

specific words

then our range of gestures could grow we

could put them in certain orders we

build more and more sentences and soon

we might have no need whatsoever for

spoken language

this is exactly how natural sign

language develops

if we’re exposed to the right conditions

so to speak

we could very well follow in the

footsteps of signers

so three parts

three ways in which we could approach

conlanging our little linguistic fortune

telling

phonology colloquialism and manner of

communication

this isn’t just the result of some 14

year old boy rambling on about some

niche topic

this is proof of just how fascinating it

can be to peer into the future of

language

it’s proof of just how much language can

say about us

it’s proof of just how much power we

have over the way we speak

and it’s proof of just how rapidly

language is developing

sure you could argue that conlanging is

just

a daydream of what could be but how

could you deny the tantalizing glimpses

of the linguistic possibilities that it

offers

tell me can you imagine calling these

your farts

greasing your friends by wishing them a

clean sanitized day

writing english in a heavily simplified

way like this

or even signing to your friends that

language has the potential to change

every single time someone opens their

mouth

it’s up to us as speakers to drive that

potential forward

with the help of that little tool called

conlanging you’ve all seen the future in

the past 10 or so minutes

now it’s time to speak it thank you for

[Applause]

listening