I noticed that in Cyberpunk 2077, the English spoken in that game is very heavy with the left-edge deletion. I thought that was a nice touch that emphasized the future setting of the game and the evolution of English.
I'm hispanic, born in america and raised and living in cities my life. I notice I will write to colleagues and never include pronouns. "Will work on that, gonna check on them, ok will talk to this person" etc
Hot take: it is very possible for (at least some dialects of) American English to continue accumulating more loanwords from Latin, however the words would be from Spanish instead of French due to the increasing cultural interactions between English and Spanish speakers in the USA. Also the grammar would definitely change to become more similar to Spanish at least slightly
And Spanish will be full of loan words from English that come from Latin rather than Germanic origins. This is why people loan a lot from English in Spanish, is just Latin.
I agree - this is true in any multilingual area, and given the rising Hispanic population, it's not just Texas, California, and Florida, but other states that are affected.
Similar thing happened in Swedish, except the other way around; our verbs lost a form. The grammatical suffix -en, used in verb forms for plural 2nd person, e.g. "Haven I fiskat?" - "Have you been fishing?", got unsuffixed and the N instead got attached to the pronoun giving the modern Swedish 2nd person plural pronoun "Ni" from "I", this together with the plural verb forms disappearing altogether giving modern "Har ni fiskat?"
Only issue with that is it would probably conflict a lot with other words in the language. For example, if you are trying to say “I’ll show” and you say lshow, it sounds a lot like the word also in pronounciation. There are definitely a lot of other better examples I am missing though
@@KaraShadows95Do they know how to write regular physical mail 🤓. I am 23 and I remember having an assignment to send physical mail to a friend as an assignment. But my sister didn't have anything like that.
As a non-native English speaker I can say that the different meanings of “let’s” and “let us” were thought to me more than 10 years ago. Be living in the future already.
It's actually interesting, because often the actual native speakers of a language won't notice some rules that they weren't specifically thought to them, for example I only realised later that a single 's' is pronounced like a 'z' unless at the start of a word, and an 'ss' is pronounced like the 's' we all think of, which is just like in german. Same thing with the existance of the twenty or so tenses that English technically has, but most people only know about three (at least in Ireland)
@@Dragonseer666 "a single 's' is pronounced like a 'z' unless at the start of a word" The Americans realised (or realized) the same, and replaced most of these Ss with Zs.
Out of curiosity, does your native language have a more natural first person plural imperative? I was taught the same difference but I suspect that's because in my language "do the thing" and "let's do the thing" are formed in a similar way so identifying that construction might be easier because we just expect it to exist.
So cool how a nasalized vowel can make it _feel_ like there’s an N there. Same thing happens with the spanish article “un”, when spoken quickly it just becomes a nazalized u, but at that speed it just sounds like “un”
My Mom is a school teacher, and I have a very smart younger brother who likes literature. One they had noticed is dying is -ly. For example we don't say "get over here quickly" we say "quick get over here" you don't say "go slowly when you reach the curb" we say "slow down when you reach the curb". -ly is going away, we still use it, but we are using it a lot less than we use to. If you watch School House Rock "Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here" you can easily notice how our language has changed since the show was made. Basically we are changing our adverbs and also verbs more than most other parts of our language. School House Rocks "Verb That's What's Happening" verbs are another one that's ageing too, although not nearly as much as adverbs. Great video thanks!
@@Kazelita The extent to which this is a thing varies from dialect to dialect, fortunately. Or perhaps unfortunately. English verbs change all the time because English will verb anything. As the common joke (that is also a completely serious statement of fact, and entirely valid grammar in English) goes: Verbing weirds language.
I now want time travel stories to include this time induced language barrier. "I see. Then, there is still a chance to save the future by returning to the past. My time. As for the shards, who has the will to venture into the woods?" "Algo." The character from the past is bewildered. They turn to the present character. "Translation?" "He's gonna go in there... question mark." "I'm sorry, I have yet to meet Mark."
2:30 On the topic of edge deletion, I greeted an older coworker one time with the normal "mornin' " to which he replied "so far!". Did that throw you through a loop? Me too, and if any ESL speaker knows what he meant congrats you're fluent. The full convo is "Good morning!" "It's been good so far!". Deleting words is useful for brevity and can even be fun but wow does it make for weird speech patterns
Depending on how old the person in question was, and their sense of humour, that 'so far!' may well have been 'yes, it is currently morning and has not yet ceased to be so, good of you to notice', said as a joke (probably, it'd be fairly obvious if it wasn't ment in good humour) in response to the fact that "morning" by itself is just a blank statement without any real meaning. In fact, given my life experience, I would actually expect this to be More likely as the intended meaning than "It's been good so far!"... but then again, I don't live in the USA, so, you know, dialects and all that.
We now need someone to make future English which has all of these and more fully implemented Imagine watching a movie where the time travel to the Future and it uses a grammatically correct future English
As a Hindi speaker, the channel name made me chuckle a bit: "Ling" is the word for the male genitals, so the channel name becomes "ThePenisOtter". Sorry, kinda childish but wanted to put that out there [oh and do you see what I did there with the grammar?]
i don't understand why some people in this comment section act disgusted or feel dreadful at the concept of a language changing, that is literally what languages do all the damn time, it's a living and breathing thing not some historical object to be preserved (we have literature for that anyways) speaking of which one change i'm expecting is 'i don't' turning into something like 'ion', it already happens in spoken language a ton (see all the variations on the phrase 'i don't know') so it only seems natural that it would evolve into a written word somehow
What’s funny is that many of the people I’ve met irl who think this way also tend to possess rural and regional American accents, which are just as looked down upon as AAVE is.
I've been thinking about how "You" started out as plural then became singular, which is what "they" is doing now. Eventually we started saying "You All" and "Y'all" to indicate if we were using you for a group. I both think it makes sense and see it happen sometimes where people use "They All" to indicate a group. This also means "Th'all" could be a thing which I love bc th'all is the most fun word to say.
“Thou” is connected to “you” because of the loss of Þ (called thorn, pronounced “th”) because there were too many letters for the printing press, so they switched Þ out for y, giving y 2 sounds in certain contexts, like c (see previous 2 words before comma). Eventually, Þe linguists (I’m assuming) made “th” the combination of letters for its sound. #bringbackthorn
TL;DR comments. An aspect of evolving/developing languages is the dropping of sounds in words. We see this in AAVE & indigenous dialects, like in ‘let’s go’ = ‘leggo’, & ‘He’s going to eat…’ = ‘He gon eeʻ…ʻ (ee’, where the appostrophe is a glottal stop, like in the British/Cockney way of saying bottle). Speculative future language/grammar development is fun😊
It's like how we can interpret a full sentence out of one grunt. "I do not know" becomes: >I don't know. >I dunno. >I uhnno. >I UH-uh/uh UH-uh And finally to "mMMm" or shorter "MMmm".
@@pardn I think my "idk" grunt is "MM-mm-mm" with the second syllable being slightly weaker [less stressed] than the third. Probably because I tend to say "I dunno" as if rhymed with "Idaho".
While this is true, sounds also get changed or added (in a semi-predictable way, in that there's a limited set of options for each situation, but no real way to guess which one will actually happen, and they can cascade) in much the same way, and inevitably Will if too much ambiguity builds up in the system. There's also a signal to noise issue, where background noise introduces ambiguity that must be compensated for as well (one of the reasons a lot of redundancy sticks around in langauges for longer than you'd expect), and all of these sound changes can cause various gramatical systems to collapse as too many of the markers are merged or deleted, causing new marking systems to be created (usually adding extra words... which over time wear down and fuse with the root word again...)
So happy you mentioned AAVE as the root of current changes in English; SO many people love to dismiss or be ignorant to that! Excellent video, and this is a curious thought experiment 🔥
It’s the most helpful for studying latin phrases like “sum” and instead of saying “I am” my brain goes “I be.” It’s the most genius way to simplify it, especially when looking at ‘sum’s’ conjugations.
Interesting idea about 'question mark' as a doubting particle, since we already use words like 'yes', 'no', and 'right' in a similar way. "He's at the park, no?" "I swear she was at the gym, right?" But in these cases, 'yes', 'no', and 'right' are being used in a confirmatory way, like asking the other speaker to affirm the statement, while 'question mark' is being used to express the speaker's own doubt without necessarily seeking confirmation from the listener. It feels weird to think that a three-syllable particle might be adopted over one-syllable particles, but the extra use could do it.
@@kody.wiremane the mandarin "-ma?" may get a head start in the western US, depending on how many refugees are generated in the next 20 years by the Han demographic collapse.
surely a doubting particle could be recreated with tone. i personally do this a lot, make a statement bust state it in an inquisitive tone. something like "oh yeah, he's not here. he's at the... store??" is that dissimilar to the idea of the doubting particle?
This is fascinating! As a non native English speaker, understanding the habitual tense would be a pain if it became a part of standard grammar. Fun fact. This is how romance languages developed their future tenses. Originally the future tense was a combination of the infinitive + have in the present tense. Over time, the conjugated verb have became a suffix with future meaning. If you haven't noticed before, compare the conjugation of the verb to have in the present in the romance languages with the future tense. The conditional tense uses the conjugation of the verb to have in the imperfect tense.
To me, it's hell on earth as I am from the East side of the USA, with ZERO AAVE influence. To me, his way of saying V sounds too close to B... That imperfect tense and conditional tense overlap always confuses me when writing in a romance tongue or when memorization shows up. A habitual tense either partially exists here as a glottalized schwa or a lack for it, maybe a proposed just vowel change in "Has/Have Been" as I noticed we are just going through an extreme Elision situation where we barely pronounce dental sounds unless there is a vowel after them. :X I wouldn't be surprised if we gain a vowel shift could happen to lead to a distinct Future/ Going ( for uncertain ), Will ( being predictive ) as the " i'll " does unintentionally influence of the dark L on pronouns often switching vowels or making stress/intonation mandatory to avoid the confusing mess of " Isle/Aisle vs. I'll " if mess up the vowel or intonation, it sounds hilarious to our ears. He'll vs. Heel due to the dark L sound, you better use the correct intonation, length, and pitch. I view grammar is very dictated on the phonology of the language as I notice a general pattern... This why you got a regularized Spottat/Spottade ut, but a very irregular spit out vs spat. As the vowels seem to allow regularization, while in English... NO, AS IT'S TOO HARD TO SAY ANYWORD WITH TWO OF THOSE, HENCE YOU GAIN IRREGULAR "QUITTED" To me it should be Qu(ɶ)t ( using ɶ's sound ) as Qu(æ)t too ridiculous. I have noticed how much the West USA speaks often gets too confusing due to. It would be the equivalent of your region being with 1800's pronunciation/expressions, but you must explain them to people 200 years ahead of you. Basically dealing with a case of merged sounds in one version of the language, the ancestral form didn't merge.
@@TheLingOtter Then again, I noticed in my English ( Eastern Southern + Appalachian ) in a fast conversation we typically use /β/, but V has a bad habit of turning front vowels unintentionally fronted. Often meaning /œ/ can occur, /y/ can also due to a more relaxed mouth position. The more urban, the more likely can occur, while we already had It makes it hard to understand AAVE due to more than half of the sounds in vowels aren't present. /œ/ does occur.Then again I swear brits are saying W's rather than R's nowadays.
excellent video! usually when people go about this topic, they talk about phonological changes and I don't find it that interesting. So im super happy that finally someone did the grammar-version of future english cause I love grammar, thx Mr. Otter
The problem with his analyze is that he didn't account for AI instructions so most these predictions are mostly inaccurate since AI uses precise English
3:17 In New Mexican English we delete the right edge too sometimes. Like in "(you,) shut the light (off)" or "(you,) put gas (in the car). As a native speaker idk the underlying structure in an articulable way but theres something there.
@@carlito6038 lol. If you're not from here I've heard it's very distinct and stupid sounding and confusing. 🤣 Nothing could sound more natural to my ears though.
The original word "willan" had the meaning of "to wish." So, I translated it into modern English by making the construction of "I have the will to eat" since it is similar to the original usage of "to wish." Later on, willan moved from meaning "to wish" and shifted towards indicating the future only
People have this misconception that Shakespearian English was how people actually spoke during that period; however, it has influenced the modern English we speak today by creating words that did not previously exist in the common tongue. Some examples: swagger, exposure, road, reliance. Additionally, while Shakespeare used bedazzled, it was already in use.
It would also be fascinating to look at other varieties of English like Hiberno, Australian, or UK , and how American English would further influence them as time goes on. Especially given the juggernaut force that Hollywood is. It would also be interesting to think if the varieties of English would come closer to each other or diverge further 🤔
I'm British but I do use a lot of American words, like y'all, I ain't never seen nu-in like dat, hol' up, hit me up, gettin all up in yo business, shut yo ass up boi, adding -ass after adjectives, etc.
I was wondering the same. I assume there would be at least some convergence, but given how much the British are opposed to "Americanisms", I'd give it a 50/50 that they diverge. I also feel like Australia is half way to making its own language already haha.
I think social media is gonna have 10x the influence that Hollywood does. There are more English speakers in the US than the rest of the anglophone countries....x2. Kids these days spend 6 hours glued to their phone screens
7:41 there's also the fact that question marks are being added to the ends of sentences to mark shock and confusion, e.g. "On our date he told me I looked okay???" ? is functionally being used as a wtf emoji
A lot of my fave linguistics youtubers delve into sound changes, which is lots of fun, but I really like your dive into English's grammatical future, especially the more wild speculitive stuff towards the end! Awesome video!! 🌸✨️
You missed the sakura in the garden: Loanwords! We're getting a ton of Asian loanwords due to the demystification of the far east over the last 100 years. Loanwords are what completely transformed English during the medieval period, and we could very well see Japanese and Korean words not only adding to the English language, but replacing old words entirely.
@@InventorZahran Yep that's why I didn't mention mainland China. Now Hong Kong and Taiwan did contribute a lot to English in the 70s but until the US and the PRC become more than frenemies it's unlikely that we'll get a lot of Chinese loanwords. But by the year 3000? I'd be shocked if we didn't by then.
@@sarysa One issue i see with the idea of Mandarin loanwords is that from a structural standpoint the amount of intelligible loanwords that can be transferred is severely limited compared to Japanese or Korean. This is because English isn't tonal like Mandarin, which means two words that woild be tonally distinguished in Mandarin would be indistinguishable in an English context. That said, i think some exist now. "Kung-fu" both refers to the martial art and, sometimes, the idea of harsh and extreme work ("intellectual kung-fu"), which is faithful to its literal translation.
I would of thought english would flatten out thanks to standardised spelling, but I'm now realising I've adopted almost all of these. Also, as a kiwi, the Algo conjecture is very plausible since that's what we currently do in casually speech, so it seems like a small final step for us to change the spelling
I agree, although I've heard "hafta" used in some contexts, like when advising others on something. Like, "you don't hafta go to the party tonight" sounds more normal than "you don't gotta go to party tonight", in my opinion, but I think this varies by dialect, because I do believe I've also heard "gotta" used in that context before -- just not by many people who I know personally.
@@theredazazelle6185 I think part of this may be due to the fact that a lot of folks who pronounce "have to" as "hafta" will generally still write it as "have to".
"-ma?" has brevity going for it. Also, depending on how badly the Han demographic collapse over the next 20 years will affect living conditions on the other side of the pacific, there may be another wave of "-ma?" users coming in as refugees, and adding to the US vocabulary again (chopsticks, lo-mein, tycoon, etc.).
Spanish speakers who play video games constantly use English terms conjugated in Spanish. to carry = carrear, to push = pushear, to drop = dropear, to stun = estunear...
@@crow9283Filipino takes this even farther and has both Spanish and English fully integrated into their ultra confusing conjugation cases. Some say thats what makes their conjugation so good, as it can incorporate loan words no problem, but honestly, it didn’t need to be so complex though!
One theory about why english grammar simplified and is simpler than other contemporary languages, is due to the necessity of it being spoken by different language groups i.e the saxons and the danes. This same pressure today may hold english grammar back from becoming more complex, as is hypothesized here.
You'll still get some complexity gain here and there, but generally only when the loss of complexity has reached the point of causing problematic levels of ambiguity.
In formal or business English maybe, but it's not gonna stop casual English from changing over time until there's a very clear distinction between formal and casual English (possibly). There used to be a much bigger distinction between the two in English (you vs thou, for example) but that got erased VERY recently (like around the 1800s). So maybe English is just going back to the historical status quo.
Me and my gaming buddies say this all the time lmfao, we also vocalize lmao lol and the rest of the common abbreviations, and we also replace random syllable onsets with j’s. “Jarius just took the jier two jower.” It’s all real useful and fun
One thing I have noticed lately is a lot of words that start with the letter "S" are now starting to make the "SH" sound instead of the "S" sound. The word street sounds like "shtreet". The word structure sounds like "shtructure". The word stream sounds like "shtream" and many more.
My stepmom says "period" and "question mark" at the end of sentences when she is using speech-to-text to write emails/texts. I could see this use of technology being a significant reason why people are adopting saying out loud such punctuation marks.
Interesting thing that may interest you. In Louisiana in Cajun Vernacular English we already use the proposed chart for the future of "to go" it sounds very much like it when I tried pronouncing it. Very interesting to see some of the predictions actually becoming true !❤
1:20 Oh hey! This is something that sorta already existed in Newfoundland English for a while! If you want to say that someone is somewhere or does something often you would say “be’s”. So you could say: “He be’s at the bar” or “She be’s at the fish”. (Side note: “at” on its own can refer to location OR action. “He’s at the bar” would mean that He is currently at the bar, “She’s at the fish” means that she is currently doing something related to fish. It’s even part of a fairly common greeting: “Whadd’ya at?” which means “what are you doing?”). Source: Am a Newfoundlander
Some other grammatical changes I can see English having in the near future. Becoming more like other Germanic languages, we will slowly lose the adverbial forms of adjectives (that is, the -ly form) and just use the adjectives uninflected on verbs as well as nouns. This is already the case in German, where most adjectives are also adverbs. This is likely in my view because it's already extremely common in spoken English. "Drive safe" (instead of drive safely), "say it loud and proud" (instead of say it loudly and proudly) for example. "Good" is very frequently used instead of "well" in spoken English, just like how German uses "gut" to mean both good and well. Conversely, becoming more like Romance languages, we will lose the -er and -est comparative/superlative forms for adjectives and start to use "more (ADJ)" and "most (ADJ)" for almost every adjective. Again, this is already extremely common in spoken English. "more thin" instead of "thinner." "more safe" instead of "safer." "most hot" instead of "hottest," etc. It may take a while for some, like "good" or "bad" (since we use better and worse very frequently), but it's possible even they will succumb to this regularizing pattern and become "gooder/goodest" and "badder/baddest"). Side note: "baddest" is already the most common superlative for "bad" in its slang definition of "confident and sexy," esp. in reference to a woman. After some time, singular "they/them/their/themself (or theirself?)" will become standard pronouns in English when referring to a person either when their gender is unknown or irrelevant. For example, a text saying "The right to counsel refers to the right of a criminal defendant to have a lawyer assist in their defense, even if they cannot afford to pay for an attorney themself" will become completely mundane and unremarkable in formal writing.
"They/them/their" etc are already standard pronouns in English when referring to a single person, as many style guides either accept or even prescribe its usage. It's also been in use in English for centuries. "Most hot" instead of "hottest" sounds very unnatural to me, like "he's the most hot guy I've met"? That does not sound natural to my ears as a Gen Z American English native.
@@gut5551 What is 'correct' on the pronoun and courtesy title front has fluctuated back and forth over centuries depending on what was causing more annoyance at the time. They vs He when number is known but sex is not, for example, have swapped places as 'correct' more than once (you have the choice between being almost certainly wrong about number vs a 50/50 (or close enough) chance of being wrong about sex, at least in a vaccum). As have Mrs. and Ms. (and some other alternatives) for married women, and ms. and miss. for unmarried adult women. Those younger than the age of majority have been 'miss' pretty consistently, with the use of 'miss' vs 'mistress' being a social class thing (though all of these are corruptions (for want of a better word) of 'mistress', just as all the male ones derive from "master").
@@deadlywafflez2131the difference between a “fursona” and an avatar is in the implication that the individual it represents wants to do degenerate things to the animal. I sincerely hope the otter is an avatar
I suspect that because of the internet and writing becoming a more dominant form of communication than speech, these changes are likely to not be reflected in the writing, or to only occur in some registers. So you'll have "Algo" as the correct form in casual text, but business statements will say "I'll go", in the same way that it's commonly acceptable to say "u" in text, whereas in a professional environment you'd write "you" in full.
And how acceptable 'u' is in text, even in casual contexts, varies. Chat in a game where it's important to get the message off quickly (as typing and controlling the game are mutually exclusive)? sure. Txt messages where you have character limits? sure. Contexts where you have no character limits or actually objective need to make the message as fast as possible? People's tollerance for it drops in accordance with how regularly they interact with properly written text vs txt messages, game chats, and illiterate twits. And then you get the fun part where people who have actually learned to type properly can type out the word you faster than they can shift gears in their head to type only the letter u in isolation (as muscle memory is an important part of how you get high typing speed.)
This may be unrelated, but if we're going to progress with English we should use accents to tell if a vowel says it's name or if an "e" is silent or someother case
Some others have already mentioned it in other comments but Spanish is likely to have a big impact on American English so there is a chance this will happen.
You can remove the vast majority of the ambiguity just by marking the actual primary stress in the word. Suddenly all the rules about what reading should be applied to which letter go from 'blatant nonsense' to 'this actually make sense', because they all assume you already know the stress pattern, and thus which readings are Already Forbidden, and thus the spelling only needs to disambiguate between readings that are valid in the same stress position. Which would be fine... if English ever Actually Marked The Primary Stress (You only need to mark the primary because all others are an alternating pattern from that point). Bringing back some variant on thorn and/or eth for th would help (no longer pretending this two character string acts as a single charcter for vowel interactions), as would sorting out v (which counts as two charcters for vowel interactions AND is not permitted word finally despit the sound blatantly Occuring word finally, leading 'v' as a word final sound to be spelled as either ve or f, with the former necessitating that v be treated as two characters for vowel interaction and the latter requring that one write ff when one Actually Means the sound the letter f is supposed to represent...), and similar. I mean, you Could introduce a bunch of extra accent markers... or you could make much simpler changes that achieve the same result with less confusion.
I love the idea of getting a full conjugation table in English with different forms for each pronoun, like Spanish! It would also feel like a completely different language though x)
7:46 I also sometimes say the words “exclamation point” and “question mark” at the end of quotes from other people, when speaking those quotes aloud. I’ve noticed at least one other person doing this very recently (whom I’ve never met), so this might also be something that slowly gets adopted like the use of “question mark” at the end of spoken sentences. As for what I usually use these phrases to mean, it’s often when dryly or flatly stating the quote without the intonation found in the original quote, so the meaning of the quote requires additional clarification at the end of it. This often happens when first reading a quote aloud, before getting a chance to read it alone. In English, it’s not possible to exactly tell what a sentence’s tone is before you start reading it, so having that spoken demarcation at the end of the sentence helps convey that original meaning. Also, I often just use it for humorous purposes by intentionally adding it to the end of sentences redundantly, for added emphasis 😆
4:40 i consistently omit the word "have" from this tense when using the the verb "to be". i do it (and hear it) most commonly on 1st and 2nd person singular pronouns, but sometimes on other pronouns. its not "how have you been?" its "how you been lately?" its not "i have been doing good" its "i been doin good."
I'm pretty sure that "have" becomes "'ve" (which, depending on a few things, might sound like 'if', 'of', or just 'v' (because English spelling hates ending words in V, so you get 'f' or 've' for 'v' sounds and 'ff' for 'f' sounds because dumb) in the vast majority of dialects.
This is weird to me because I'm just 23 years old and not a native speaker and whenever I did the latter, I lost a few points in my English Test. This made me very aware of these kinds of mistakes and now it's really hard to not just view those sentences as "wrong".
8:03 This phenomenon is why I've always been interested in one of Hervé Bazin's proposed punctuation marks, the doubt point. This would be used for sentences that are in the declarative case, but have the doubtful tone of a question, like the example you provided. You're not asking the listener if he's at the park, but you're questioning yourself whether or not the statement is true.
The habitual tense is also used in informal Irish English, and more traditionally, even like old people use it, it's probably somewhat based on the Irish language, but idk I'm not good at it.
Really interesting topic and great predictions! I think English is changing so quickly because the whole world is speaking it, and everyone adds their own way of speaking, which may or may not become part of everyday language. A good example is subject-auxiliary inversion, or the lack of it. I’ve been hearing a lot of sentences like “You are going to the shop?” with rising intonation to indicate a question. This subject-auxiliary inversion is primarily found in Germanic languages, so it would make sense if it gradually fades out over time.
8:08 in Afrikaans we have the word 'Ne' (pronounced: næ) which serves this exact purpose. It also serves a few more functions similar to "You don't say?" and "I told you so," based on how you use it. The words been adopted into South African English and I'm assuming a few of the languages I don't speak, but it's interesting to see something similar being adopted into American English. Can't wait to see ya'lls eventual equivalant to the seven uses of 'Now' (just kidding, but its still interesting to see)
For the part talking about “will” the “‘ll” part would probably be added like this- I lleat. Instead of I will eat. Produced like “I-yalleet” like in Italian where the is added onto words like “L’italia”
alternative Hypothesis regarding -'ll and its future. I'd personally see it as potentially being reinterpreted as starting the verb, as opposed to ending the pronoun ; I'll eat => I leat ; and then maybe something like epenthetic schwa or a similar vowel gets put into consonant-initial places: I'll go => I lgo => I lago So then you have eat | ate | leat ; go | went | lago ; jump | jumped | lajump using this and a few other sound & grammar changes... "The man jumps over the lazy dog, and the dog'll be mad soon" => taman chomp tadogof lezi'n tadok labe mat son
I'm so glad you mentioned "slash" and "question mark", both things I've been using for years but only inferred why based on context. Thought it was just with friends, good to know it's taking hold more universally.
It's so much fun trying to analyse the grammatical consequences of colloquial constructions. The fact that English seems to be heading in the direction of inflecting the subject of a sentence rather than the verb is honestly really cool, as is the fact that we've managed to conjure up a brand new conjunction. Slash did have an equivalent prior to being spoken, which was "and/or", but as you can see, while it's usually not pronounced, it's still usually written with a slash anyways. I was initially confused by the spoken "question mark", but then you showed how it's used and it instantly made sense.
One book I've read predicted that language would evolve into whole separate dialects based on profession - for instance, Mathematics would be one, Physics another, Medicine, Computers, Music, Science, etc, and to communicate between there would be a "Universal" language that also evolved alongside. To cite this, they pointed out the difference between them, how difficult it already is to communicate between professions with the various lingo and acronyms that are unique to each. Of course, this language evolution took 400 years in context.
That future English really looks like the current state of French, especially the part that words are clumped together like "Q'est-ce que c'est ça?" that's actually pronounced "Kesk'sé sa?"
@@laurencefraser physical keyboards, sure, but most software already include «¿» and «¡». People who use Gboard can easily type them by long pressing «?» and «!». I dunno about iOS though
I already do almost all of this lol. "algo," "d'y'ave..."(do you have...), "didj'y'ave..."(did you have...), "you'll-be reading"(the dark /l/ lenites and lowers the /u/ to a velarized /o/) ,"gonna"(first vowel is a schwa), "going-to"(pronounced the same as 'gonna' in rapid speech but with an /o/ vowel instead).
i do, but that's most likely because I mainly write English, i rarely speak it verbally because I don't live in an English speaking country. habits from writing leak into my speech. id write something like "I saw a bear(?)" to indicate I think I saw a bear but I'm not entirely sure. and that can end up in speech like "I saw a bear question mark?" for me
11:20, interesting comparison to Aus English. We use a separate verb form for "going to" in terms of referring to a destination. To use your sentence as an example: “We are going to the park.” - an Australian could say “We('re) gahn the park.” *note: “gahn” is just one of the many spellings. You can also find: "gan, garn, garnna, gahna" and probably more.
If we can't have anglish then we shall have a new version of english that's more interesting than the boring one they teach in schools. Gonna subscribe!
Just stumbled across this channel today, it’s fascinating! Very excited to see what more you can teach us about linguistics. Also, the cute fursona helps a lot haha
felt so targeted when you mentioned people ending their sentences with "Question mark?". i do that all the dang time!!! i find myself saying it if i don't intonate my question enough, or sometimes because i just find it really funny. fascinating stuff as always!
Yeah I didn't know it was more common. felt called out. I mainly use it humorously. Like the statement itself is goofy and adding "question mark" adds to it. Though, thinking about it, I never say question mark for genuine questions. Just statements that express shock. "He really did that question mark?" "Are you serious question mark?"
Awesome video, really interesting. The insight I had when you talked about gonna, is that there’s a distinction that speakers often don’t think about between “to” in “to {noun phrase}” and “to {verb}”, the first being a proper preposition for direction and the second acting as an infinitive verb marker. As speakers we usually don’t consciously make that distinction, but our brains do and tell us that “gonna” only works for the second case, when going is a modal and not a verb of motion. If “going to {place}” were to develop a contraction it’d likely take a different form like “goinna”, which it kinda does already in rapid speech, but likely would take a lot more before it made its way into written English.
We like to drop a lot of vowel sounds for the “uh sound” (the upside down V in IPA) We use the tap r a lot in words like water (wada) waiter (waida) etc. Glottal stops are very prominent in words ending with plosives aswell as the opposite where they become ejectives
Maybe one day my question mark with a comma may be used. Quite often the flow of a conversation with a question I want to ask the question and then add a little extra for the reader after they know what the question is asking. I use “?,” to denote it as question mark with comma doesn’t exist. “How does it fit into your schedule?, I thought you didn’t have time.” “What are you doing tomorrow?, I don’t have any plans.” “What do you think about a question mark comma?, I think it’s neat.” “Isn’t it weird that people can just pick up the meaning of the symbol?, when using it I rarely have to explain what it means.” “What’s your favourite food?, don’t say fingernails.” - this kind of question is actually fairly common in speech, but it relies on pacing which doesn’t quite work with a plain question mark. Maybe in a few hundred years we’ll have it.
@@skylark.kraken I feel like I've seen question marks / exclamation points used in the middle of a sentence like that before, but without the comma. Probably mainly exclamation points, but it could absolutely work for a question mark. It might look like: "Dear goodness! that tree nearly fell on my car!"; "Really? that's my favorite artist too!" Honestly, it feels a little archaic to me; probably because I only really remember seeing it in books, and I'm used to those punctuation marks being exclusively sentence-final.
@@solveforx314 I have also been used to them being as ends of sentences, but I've found that often for the flow of what I'm saying I want to say the question and then add more that has full knowledge of the question as otherwise this extra stuff beforehand has to either be a mystery of where it's going or reference a question that is to come. It is confusing to use a sentence final question mark to do this, the reader will assume that up to that point they have been told everything relating to the question. I do think it needs to be a new punctuation mark to do this, question mark comma I feel is essential, I guess exclamation mark comma could also be useful but I never even use exclamation marks.
I don't think the left edge deletion is specifically from AAVA; I grew up in new york and new jersey and this is just how some people talk, of many stripes. It's more of a sociolect since it relies on a certain personality type.
Oh I didn't mean to imply that left-edge deletion comes from AAVE. Sorry if that was unclear. The AAVE part was just for the habitual aspect part of the video
You also have to consider that terms and stuff from AAVE have been moving into general English for decades. Yes, many people talk with AAVE despite not being African American - that's the whole point of it being adopted by general English.
I found your channel recently and absolutely love it. You awakened an interest in language in me, I didn't know I had. Keep up the amazing (and cute) work. ❤
Left-edge deletion? Been there. Done that.
XD
Good one.😂😂
@@raventenebris5344 Complimented the joke, perfect
lmao. cackling
Loved the joke
I noticed that in Cyberpunk 2077, the English spoken in that game is very heavy with the left-edge deletion. I thought that was a nice touch that emphasized the future setting of the game and the evolution of English.
Omg so I wasn't the only one who thought of that!
I did not notice that much before having it pointed out because it just felt like being in a big city today
I'm hispanic, born in america and raised and living in cities my life. I notice I will write to colleagues and never include pronouns. "Will work on that, gonna check on them, ok will talk to this person" etc
Definitely noticed the number of times V started a sentance with "gonna"
@@tlaloqqI do this too, oddly enough I’m hispanic too but I’ve lived in more rural areas. I never thought of it much until seeing this video
Hot take: it is very possible for (at least some dialects of) American English to continue accumulating more loanwords from Latin, however the words would be from Spanish instead of French due to the increasing cultural interactions between English and Spanish speakers in the USA.
Also the grammar would definitely change to become more similar to Spanish at least slightly
Considering e.g. Miami English, I feel you're correct 🤔
I suspect socal, Texan, and Floridian speech will probably take on spanish characteristics
And Spanish will be full of loan words from English that come from Latin rather than Germanic origins. This is why people loan a lot from English in Spanish, is just Latin.
I agree - this is true in any multilingual area, and given the rising Hispanic population, it's not just Texas, California, and Florida, but other states that are affected.
Hot take, English will have loan words from Japanese because of weebs. They may start memey, but after a while they will become normal
I don't think eat'll will happen. But maybe Leat? I'll eat > I leat. Then further left edge is dropped, "Leat later, m'busy"
I was actually thinking the same… a conjugation that’s a prefix instead of suffix. Maybe il- or el- so it can stand on its own
Idiocracy
Similar thing happened in Swedish, except the other way around; our verbs lost a form. The grammatical suffix -en, used in verb forms for plural 2nd person, e.g. "Haven I fiskat?" - "Have you been fishing?", got unsuffixed and the N instead got attached to the pronoun giving the modern Swedish 2nd person plural pronoun "Ni" from "I", this together with the plural verb forms disappearing altogether giving modern "Har ni fiskat?"
@@christopherlee9026read the Canterbury tales, and try telling me that people back then were any smarter.
Only issue with that is it would probably conflict a lot with other words in the language. For example, if you are trying to say “I’ll show” and you say lshow, it sounds a lot like the word also in pronounciation. There are definitely a lot of other better examples I am missing though
To the pain of future teachers, teaching how to write your e-mails . "Let's make a meeting. I'mma be in your area"
As a teacher, they can't even write emails now 😭 they don't even know polite texting
@@KaraShadows95Do they know how to write regular physical mail 🤓. I am 23 and I remember having an assignment to send physical mail to a friend as an assignment. But my sister didn't have anything like that.
@@alok.01 probably because physical mails are kind of irrelevant nowadays
@@swayam-8073How so?
@@PhazerXP emails, texting apps online and offline, easier and faster modes of transportation🚇🚍🚋
As a non-native English speaker I can say that the different meanings of “let’s” and “let us” were thought to me more than 10 years ago. Be living in the future already.
well yes its not new haha
It's actually interesting, because often the actual native speakers of a language won't notice some rules that they weren't specifically thought to them, for example I only realised later that a single 's' is pronounced like a 'z' unless at the start of a word, and an 'ss' is pronounced like the 's' we all think of, which is just like in german. Same thing with the existance of the twenty or so tenses that English technically has, but most people only know about three (at least in Ireland)
@@Dragonseer666 "a single 's' is pronounced like a 'z' unless at the start of a word"
The Americans realised (or realized) the same, and replaced most of these Ss with Zs.
@@Dragonseer666My *bus* that runs on *gas* is offended :(
Out of curiosity, does your native language have a more natural first person plural imperative? I was taught the same difference but I suspect that's because in my language "do the thing" and "let's do the thing" are formed in a similar way so identifying that construction might be easier because we just expect it to exist.
i'm pretty sure i've seen "guh" written as "gon" quite a bit. which i guess makes sense because it's a shortening of "gonna"
At least since “IT’S GON RAIN”
So cool how a nasalized vowel can make it _feel_ like there’s an N there. Same thing happens with the spanish article “un”, when spoken quickly it just becomes a nazalized u, but at that speed it just sounds like “un”
@@blew1t That’s basically all of Portuguese, haha
Não, João, etc.
@@scifisykomão, maçã, anã...
Yeah, here in the southeast I usually use, hear, and see it pronounced/written as "gon"
My Mom is a school teacher, and I have a very smart younger brother who likes literature. One they had noticed is dying is -ly. For example we don't say "get over here quickly" we say "quick get over here" you don't say "go slowly when you reach the curb" we say "slow down when you reach the curb". -ly is going away, we still use it, but we are using it a lot less than we use to.
If you watch School House Rock "Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here" you can easily notice how our language has changed since the show was made. Basically we are changing our adverbs and also verbs more than most other parts of our language. School House Rocks "Verb That's What's Happening" verbs are another one that's ageing too, although not nearly as much as adverbs.
Great video thanks!
When I speak, I don't really rephrase the sentences, id just say: get over here quick! Or more realisticly "get here quick"
I don't even rearrange the sentence when I do that, I would just say "get over here quick" or "go slow when you reach the curb"
aww, as a native Spanish speaker, I tend to use -ly a lot :p
@@Kazelita The extent to which this is a thing varies from dialect to dialect, fortunately. Or perhaps unfortunately.
English verbs change all the time because English will verb anything. As the common joke (that is also a completely serious statement of fact, and entirely valid grammar in English) goes: Verbing weirds language.
@@alphanightmare3001 I’d say “c’mere, quick!” or maybe “c’mere, fast!” But the latter is mighty unnatural 😂
I wouldve loved to hear an excerpt in both formal english and the theoretic future english to appreciate how difficult it may be understand
I should have done that! It completely slipped my mind
@@TheLingOtterYeah, I was expecting this at the end as well. But the video was super cool to watch anyways, thank you for making it! :)
I'd loved to hear that. "Lovedha hear'd."
@@TheLingOtter Timeta remake the video and have all the text be in Shavian Script to further complicate things kekw
@@TheLingOtterMaybe make a sequel? Bet it'd be appreciated.
I now want time travel stories to include this time induced language barrier.
"I see. Then, there is still a chance to save the future by returning to the past. My time. As for the shards, who has the will to venture into the woods?"
"Algo."
The character from the past is bewildered. They turn to the present character. "Translation?"
"He's gonna go in there... question mark."
"I'm sorry, I have yet to meet Mark."
This would be a comedy masterpiece.
2:30 On the topic of edge deletion, I greeted an older coworker one time with the normal "mornin' " to which he replied "so far!".
Did that throw you through a loop? Me too, and if any ESL speaker knows what he meant congrats you're fluent. The full convo is "Good morning!" "It's been good so far!". Deleting words is useful for brevity and can even be fun but wow does it make for weird speech patterns
Bro I'm a native English speaker and I have no idea what that was supposed to mean until you explained it 💀
Honestly I got it on first read, didn't seem too weird
I can read it as both "affirmative, it is currently morning" and also "good so far!"
I didn't have any trouble understanding it when I read it
Depending on how old the person in question was, and their sense of humour, that 'so far!' may well have been 'yes, it is currently morning and has not yet ceased to be so, good of you to notice', said as a joke (probably, it'd be fairly obvious if it wasn't ment in good humour) in response to the fact that "morning" by itself is just a blank statement without any real meaning.
In fact, given my life experience, I would actually expect this to be More likely as the intended meaning than "It's been good so far!"... but then again, I don't live in the USA, so, you know, dialects and all that.
We now need someone to make future English which has all of these and more fully implemented
Imagine watching a movie where the time travel to the Future and it uses a grammatically correct future English
Been done sort of. The flip side of Dominick Hide.
I think Paper Girls attempted to do this.
the otter is so cute omg
As a Hindi speaker, the channel name made me chuckle a bit: "Ling" is the word for the male genitals, so the channel name becomes "ThePenisOtter". Sorry, kinda childish but wanted to put that out there [oh and do you see what I did there with the grammar?]
I agree :3
I bet he's cute in real life :3 (No Homo)
a significant one!
Yea very goober
i don't understand why some people in this comment section act disgusted or feel dreadful at the concept of a language changing, that is literally what languages do all the damn time, it's a living and breathing thing not some historical object to be preserved (we have literature for that anyways)
speaking of which one change i'm expecting is 'i don't' turning into something like 'ion', it already happens in spoken language a ton (see all the variations on the phrase 'i don't know') so it only seems natural that it would evolve into a written word somehow
Because then they would need to adapt to something that was not from their childhoods
maybe the “i don’t” will written as iun for less confusion with ion in science thingy 😂
Generally due to bigotry over the cultural origins of a lot of these words and changes.
@baneofbanes yeah, that's definitely a part of it sadly
What’s funny is that many of the people I’ve met irl who think this way also tend to possess rural and regional American accents, which are just as looked down upon as AAVE is.
I've been thinking about how "You" started out as plural then became singular, which is what "they" is doing now. Eventually we started saying "You All" and "Y'all" to indicate if we were using you for a group. I both think it makes sense and see it happen sometimes where people use "They All" to indicate a group.
This also means "Th'all" could be a thing which I love bc th'all is the most fun word to say.
thalgo t'da pahk (They all will go to the park)
>doing now
Singular they is older than singular you
Waiting for We to replace I
Whenever I see people say that I never see them reference “yous” is that only a kiwi thing?
“Thou” is connected to “you” because of the loss of Þ (called thorn, pronounced “th”) because there were too many letters for the printing press, so they switched Þ out for y, giving y 2 sounds in certain contexts, like c (see previous 2 words before comma). Eventually, Þe linguists (I’m assuming) made “th” the combination of letters for its sound. #bringbackthorn
TL;DR comments. An aspect of evolving/developing languages is the dropping of sounds in words. We see this in AAVE & indigenous dialects, like in ‘let’s go’ = ‘leggo’, & ‘He’s going to eat…’ = ‘He gon eeʻ…ʻ (ee’, where the appostrophe is a glottal stop, like in the British/Cockney way of saying bottle).
Speculative future language/grammar development is fun😊
It's like how we can interpret a full sentence out of one grunt.
"I do not know" becomes:
>I don't know.
>I dunno.
>I uhnno.
>I UH-uh/uh UH-uh
And finally to "mMMm" or shorter "MMmm".
@@pardn I think my "idk" grunt is "MM-mm-mm" with the second syllable being slightly weaker [less stressed] than the third. Probably because I tend to say "I dunno" as if rhymed with "Idaho".
Pretty sure it’s a general trend in other Germanic languages, such the dropping of the “th”.
While this is true, sounds also get changed or added (in a semi-predictable way, in that there's a limited set of options for each situation, but no real way to guess which one will actually happen, and they can cascade) in much the same way, and inevitably Will if too much ambiguity builds up in the system. There's also a signal to noise issue, where background noise introduces ambiguity that must be compensated for as well (one of the reasons a lot of redundancy sticks around in langauges for longer than you'd expect), and all of these sound changes can cause various gramatical systems to collapse as too many of the markers are merged or deleted, causing new marking systems to be created (usually adding extra words... which over time wear down and fuse with the root word again...)
"I mũh, you gũh..." got me cracking up. Great video.
I've never clicked on a video that said "no views" before
I have (plot twist it was my video)
I have! *heavy breathing*
yes you have
Look up a video "img" and then input any 4 digit code. If you scroll down, you could easily find a video never seen before.
@@Fqtl relatable 😔
So happy you mentioned AAVE as the root of current changes in English; SO many people love to dismiss or be ignorant to that! Excellent video, and this is a curious thought experiment 🔥
It’s the most helpful for studying latin phrases like “sum” and instead of saying “I am” my brain goes “I be.” It’s the most genius way to simplify it, especially when looking at ‘sum’s’ conjugations.
Interesting idea about 'question mark' as a doubting particle, since we already use words like 'yes', 'no', and 'right' in a similar way. "He's at the park, no?" "I swear she was at the gym, right?" But in these cases, 'yes', 'no', and 'right' are being used in a confirmatory way, like asking the other speaker to affirm the statement, while 'question mark' is being used to express the speaker's own doubt without necessarily seeking confirmation from the listener. It feels weird to think that a three-syllable particle might be adopted over one-syllable particles, but the extra use could do it.
imo, needs some shortening: qyumark, qyu, qyuly, etc.
@@kody.wiremane the mandarin "-ma?" may get a head start in the western US, depending on how many refugees are generated in the next 20 years by the Han demographic collapse.
@@kody.wiremane if you say "question mark" fast it can get shortened to something like "queshmah"
surely a doubting particle could be recreated with tone. i personally do this a lot, make a statement bust state it in an inquisitive tone. something like "oh yeah, he's not here. he's at the... store??" is that dissimilar to the idea of the doubting particle?
This is fascinating! As a non native English speaker, understanding the habitual tense would be a pain if it became a part of standard grammar. Fun fact. This is how romance languages developed their future tenses. Originally the future tense was a combination of the infinitive + have in the present tense. Over time, the conjugated verb have became a suffix with future meaning. If you haven't noticed before, compare the conjugation of the verb to have in the present in the romance languages with the future tense. The conditional tense uses the conjugation of the verb to have in the imperfect tense.
To me, it's hell on earth as I am from the East side of the USA, with ZERO AAVE influence. To me, his way of saying V sounds too close to B... That imperfect tense and conditional tense overlap always confuses me when writing in a romance tongue or when memorization shows up. A habitual tense either partially exists here as a glottalized schwa or a lack for it, maybe a proposed just vowel change in "Has/Have Been" as I noticed we are just going through an extreme Elision situation where we barely pronounce dental sounds unless there is a vowel after them. :X I wouldn't be surprised if we gain a vowel shift could happen to lead to a distinct Future/ Going ( for uncertain ), Will ( being predictive ) as the " i'll " does unintentionally influence of the dark L on pronouns often switching vowels or making stress/intonation mandatory to avoid the confusing mess of " Isle/Aisle vs. I'll " if mess up the vowel or intonation, it sounds hilarious to our ears. He'll vs. Heel due to the dark L sound, you better use the correct intonation, length, and pitch. I view grammar is very dictated on the phonology of the language as I notice a general pattern...
This why you got a regularized Spottat/Spottade ut, but a very irregular spit out vs spat. As the vowels seem to allow regularization, while in English... NO, AS IT'S TOO HARD TO SAY ANYWORD WITH TWO OF THOSE, HENCE YOU GAIN IRREGULAR "QUITTED" To me it should be Qu(ɶ)t ( using ɶ's sound ) as Qu(æ)t too ridiculous. I have noticed how much the West USA speaks often gets too confusing due to. It would be the equivalent of your region being with 1800's pronunciation/expressions, but you must explain them to people 200 years ahead of you. Basically dealing with a case of merged sounds in one version of the language, the ancestral form didn't merge.
@@MaoRatto His V sounding like B is likely because he's a native Spanish speaker
I never realized I did this! I think I might be saying [β] rather than a [v]
@@KenikoB Though when I hear speakers with an accent like AAVE, it does to me sound like that B as well.
@@TheLingOtter Then again, I noticed in my English ( Eastern Southern + Appalachian ) in a fast conversation we typically use /β/, but V has a bad habit of turning front vowels unintentionally fronted. Often meaning /œ/ can occur, /y/ can also due to a more relaxed mouth position. The more urban, the more likely can occur, while we already had
It makes it hard to understand AAVE due to more than half of the sounds in vowels aren't present. /œ/ does occur.Then again I swear brits are saying W's rather than R's nowadays.
excellent video! usually when people go about this topic, they talk about phonological changes and I don't find it that interesting. So im super happy that finally someone did the grammar-version of future english cause I love grammar, thx Mr. Otter
The problem with his analyze is that he didn't account for AI instructions so most these predictions are mostly inaccurate since AI uses precise English
@@southcoastinventors6583???
i find phonological change interesting
3:17 In New Mexican English we delete the right edge too sometimes. Like in "(you,) shut the light (off)" or "(you,) put gas (in the car). As a native speaker idk the underlying structure in an articulable way but theres something there.
sounds worse than left edge deletion. idk why
@@carlito6038 lol. If you're not from here I've heard it's very distinct and stupid sounding and confusing. 🤣 Nothing could sound more natural to my ears though.
12:15 Did it though? I'm pretty sure in old English "willan" was a verb and already had a future-intentive meaning, like "Hwæt lā wilt þū dōn?"
Cognate with "wollen" in German as well
And "willen" in Dutch
yeah im pretty sure he's juat completely wrong here
The original word "willan" had the meaning of "to wish." So, I translated it into modern English by making the construction of "I have the will to eat" since it is similar to the original usage of "to wish." Later on, willan moved from meaning "to wish" and shifted towards indicating the future only
Ah Þe Inglis æls þe
2:23 is so funny to me. I've never considered how that sounds with traditional grammar.
Watching this in the year 2124. Great tutorial. Algo share this with all my class fellows.
People have this misconception that Shakespearian English was how people actually spoke during that period; however, it has influenced the modern English we speak today by creating words that did not previously exist in the common tongue. Some examples: swagger, exposure, road, reliance. Additionally, while Shakespeare used bedazzled, it was already in use.
It would also be fascinating to look at other varieties of English like Hiberno, Australian, or UK , and how American English would further influence them as time goes on. Especially given the juggernaut force that Hollywood is. It would also be interesting to think if the varieties of English would come closer to each other or diverge further 🤔
I'm British but I do use a lot of American words, like y'all, I ain't never seen nu-in like dat, hol' up, hit me up, gettin all up in yo business, shut yo ass up boi, adding -ass after adjectives, etc.
I was wondering the same. I assume there would be at least some convergence, but given how much the British are opposed to "Americanisms", I'd give it a 50/50 that they diverge. I also feel like Australia is half way to making its own language already haha.
@@louiserocks1all that is mostly AAVE
I think social media is gonna have 10x the influence that Hollywood does. There are more English speakers in the US than the rest of the anglophone countries....x2.
Kids these days spend 6 hours glued to their phone screens
@@widgity That's what I was thinking as well 🤔
7:41 there's also the fact that question marks are being added to the ends of sentences to mark shock and confusion, e.g. "On our date he told me I looked okay???" ? is functionally being used as a wtf emoji
A lot of my fave linguistics youtubers delve into sound changes, which is lots of fun, but I really like your dive into English's grammatical future, especially the more wild speculitive stuff towards the end! Awesome video!! 🌸✨️
You missed the sakura in the garden: Loanwords!
We're getting a ton of Asian loanwords due to the demystification of the far east over the last 100 years. Loanwords are what completely transformed English during the medieval period, and we could very well see Japanese and Korean words not only adding to the English language, but replacing old words entirely.
You can thank the K-Pop and anime industries for a lot of the East Asian influence on western culture.
"I love you, oppa-senpai"
@@nathangamble125 Unironically I could see Japanese familiar suffixes joining the English language. Nothing else fills that role.
@@InventorZahran Yep that's why I didn't mention mainland China. Now Hong Kong and Taiwan did contribute a lot to English in the 70s but until the US and the PRC become more than frenemies it's unlikely that we'll get a lot of Chinese loanwords.
But by the year 3000? I'd be shocked if we didn't by then.
@@sarysa One issue i see with the idea of Mandarin loanwords is that from a structural standpoint the amount of intelligible loanwords that can be transferred is severely limited compared to Japanese or Korean. This is because English isn't tonal like Mandarin, which means two words that woild be tonally distinguished in Mandarin would be indistinguishable in an English context.
That said, i think some exist now. "Kung-fu" both refers to the martial art and, sometimes, the idea of harsh and extreme work ("intellectual kung-fu"), which is faithful to its literal translation.
I would of thought english would flatten out thanks to standardised spelling, but I'm now realising I've adopted almost all of these. Also, as a kiwi, the Algo conjecture is very plausible since that's what we currently do in casually speech, so it seems like a small final step for us to change the spelling
>would of
I’m gonna be honest, I’ve never heard anyone say “hafta”. what usually happens is “have” is replaced by “got”, so it becomes “gotta”.
I agree, although I've heard "hafta" used in some contexts, like when advising others on something. Like, "you don't hafta go to the party tonight" sounds more normal than "you don't gotta go to party tonight", in my opinion, but I think this varies by dialect, because I do believe I've also heard "gotta" used in that context before -- just not by many people who I know personally.
I don't know how often I use hafta instead of gotta, but I do use it.
I see Gotta much more frequently, but I do hear Havetuh or Haftuh pretty regularly still
@@theredazazelle6185 I think part of this may be due to the fact that a lot of folks who pronounce "have to" as "hafta" will generally still write it as "have to".
I feel like phrases such as “It is going to rain” that have turned into “it’s gonna rain” will turn into “it gon rain” and finally, “igo rain”
tbh "it gon rain" is already used sometimes
@@nidgithmused a LOT
That’s funny in Nigerian broken/pidgin English has something similar like this “e go rain”
At least for me, it comes out like "sknerain" where the e is a devoiced schwa.
I would like this video for other languages like spanish or french
Could be a whole series. Of course, that can get intimidating for non-natives though lol.
I’d expect a lot more English loan words for one.
I just remember “THE END! QUESTION MARK?” from Angry Beavers, haha.
"-ma?" has brevity going for it.
Also, depending on how badly the Han demographic collapse over the next 20 years will affect living conditions on the other side of the pacific, there may be another wave of "-ma?" users coming in as refugees, and adding to the US vocabulary again (chopsticks, lo-mein, tycoon, etc.).
English verbs with spanish conjugation would be so cursed...
to drink
Future singular: Aldrink, Yuldrink, Heldrink/Sheldrink
Future plural: Weldrink, Yawldrink, Theldrink.
Present singular: aydrink, yudrink, hedrink/ shedrink.
Present plural: wedrink, yaldrink, thedrink
Past singular: aydrank, yudrank, hedrank/ shedrank
Past plural: wedrank, yaldrank, thedrank
Spanish speakers who play video games constantly use English terms conjugated in Spanish.
to carry = carrear, to push = pushear, to drop = dropear, to stun = estunear...
It would kinda make it similar to Welsh, as they conjugate the beginning and not the end
Yawldrink to dat
@@crow9283Filipino takes this even farther and has both Spanish and English fully integrated into their ultra confusing conjugation cases. Some say thats what makes their conjugation so good, as it can incorporate loan words no problem, but honestly, it didn’t need to be so complex though!
@@DanksterPaws Give me an example.
One theory about why english grammar simplified and is simpler than other contemporary languages, is due to the necessity of it being spoken by different language groups i.e the saxons and the danes. This same pressure today may hold english grammar back from becoming more complex, as is hypothesized here.
You'll still get some complexity gain here and there, but generally only when the loss of complexity has reached the point of causing problematic levels of ambiguity.
In formal or business English maybe, but it's not gonna stop casual English from changing over time until there's a very clear distinction between formal and casual English (possibly). There used to be a much bigger distinction between the two in English (you vs thou, for example) but that got erased VERY recently (like around the 1800s). So maybe English is just going back to the historical status quo.
I love adding punctuation in parentheses "Hello(?)" "Hello(!)"
I've never heard a single person say "question mark" out loud before, it sounds like a war crime
me too
It's not necessary in speech. The upward inflection at the end of a phrase is enough to indicate it's a question.
Me and my gaming buddies say this all the time lmfao, we also vocalize lmao lol and the rest of the common abbreviations, and we also replace random syllable onsets with j’s. “Jarius just took the jier two jower.” It’s all real useful and fun
I've only heard it to be silly
I’ve said it, but pretty rarely. Definitely did it more as a teen rather than as an adult.
we should start to add the word choom and eddies into english so it’d be prevalent in the future
You're a rising star within the linguistics content scene, may you continue to grow exponentially
One thing I have noticed lately is a lot of words that start with the letter "S" are now starting to make the "SH" sound instead of the "S" sound. The word street sounds like "shtreet". The word structure sounds like "shtructure". The word stream sounds like "shtream" and many more.
It's called S-retraction or S-Backing, it happens in STR consonant clusters
Makes me wonder if ‘dragon’ was ever pronounced as [d’rag’n] instead of [jrag’n]... sounds weird but who knows
My stepmom says "period" and "question mark" at the end of sentences when she is using speech-to-text to write emails/texts. I could see this use of technology being a significant reason why people are adopting saying out loud such punctuation marks.
I do too. There isn't much of different to do it.
I doubt people will use it much beyond English.
@@fixedfunshowwhy would English adopt it but not other languages?
Interesting thing that may interest you. In Louisiana in Cajun Vernacular English we already use the proposed chart for the future of "to go" it sounds very much like it when I tried pronouncing it. Very interesting to see some of the predictions actually becoming true !❤
1:20 Oh hey! This is something that sorta already existed in Newfoundland English for a while! If you want to say that someone is somewhere or does something often you would say “be’s”. So you could say: “He be’s at the bar” or “She be’s at the fish”. (Side note: “at” on its own can refer to location OR action. “He’s at the bar” would mean that He is currently at the bar, “She’s at the fish” means that she is currently doing something related to fish. It’s even part of a fairly common greeting: “Whadd’ya at?” which means “what are you doing?”).
Source: Am a Newfoundlander
Some other grammatical changes I can see English having in the near future.
Becoming more like other Germanic languages, we will slowly lose the adverbial forms of adjectives (that is, the -ly form) and just use the adjectives uninflected on verbs as well as nouns. This is already the case in German, where most adjectives are also adverbs. This is likely in my view because it's already extremely common in spoken English. "Drive safe" (instead of drive safely), "say it loud and proud" (instead of say it loudly and proudly) for example. "Good" is very frequently used instead of "well" in spoken English, just like how German uses "gut" to mean both good and well.
Conversely, becoming more like Romance languages, we will lose the -er and -est comparative/superlative forms for adjectives and start to use "more (ADJ)" and "most (ADJ)" for almost every adjective. Again, this is already extremely common in spoken English. "more thin" instead of "thinner." "more safe" instead of "safer." "most hot" instead of "hottest," etc. It may take a while for some, like "good" or "bad" (since we use better and worse very frequently), but it's possible even they will succumb to this regularizing pattern and become "gooder/goodest" and "badder/baddest"). Side note: "baddest" is already the most common superlative for "bad" in its slang definition of "confident and sexy," esp. in reference to a woman.
After some time, singular "they/them/their/themself (or theirself?)" will become standard pronouns in English when referring to a person either when their gender is unknown or irrelevant. For example, a text saying "The right to counsel refers to the right of a criminal defendant to have a lawyer assist in their defense, even if they cannot afford to pay for an attorney themself" will become completely mundane and unremarkable in formal writing.
"They/them/their" etc are already standard pronouns in English when referring to a single person, as many style guides either accept or even prescribe its usage. It's also been in use in English for centuries.
"Most hot" instead of "hottest" sounds very unnatural to me, like "he's the most hot guy I've met"? That does not sound natural to my ears as a Gen Z American English native.
@@gut5551 What is 'correct' on the pronoun and courtesy title front has fluctuated back and forth over centuries depending on what was causing more annoyance at the time. They vs He when number is known but sex is not, for example, have swapped places as 'correct' more than once (you have the choice between being almost certainly wrong about number vs a 50/50 (or close enough) chance of being wrong about sex, at least in a vaccum). As have Mrs. and Ms. (and some other alternatives) for married women, and ms. and miss. for unmarried adult women. Those younger than the age of majority have been 'miss' pretty consistently, with the use of 'miss' vs 'mistress' being a social class thing (though all of these are corruptions (for want of a better word) of 'mistress', just as all the male ones derive from "master").
“Ay, G’’ve a pa’y next’nd. G’go questi’mark? ‘Cuz’s g’be pr’y fire, ’re g’ve red/white dependin’ w’w’get. Y’be’a. Y’ll’ve fun! ‘Nyway, g’go! S’ya the pa’y/the 20th! xx”
i like your otter fursona thing he is very cute
I don't think that's a fursona
@@hellokastquestioner-un5mv it’s an anthropomorphic animal persona that he uses to represent himself so idk what else it would be.
The typical word is “avatar”
So is your PFP! Mind giving me the source?
@@deadlywafflez2131the difference between a “fursona” and an avatar is in the implication that the individual it represents wants to do degenerate things to the animal. I sincerely hope the otter is an avatar
I suspect that because of the internet and writing becoming a more dominant form of communication than speech, these changes are likely to not be reflected in the writing, or to only occur in some registers. So you'll have "Algo" as the correct form in casual text, but business statements will say "I'll go", in the same way that it's commonly acceptable to say "u" in text, whereas in a professional environment you'd write "you" in full.
And how acceptable 'u' is in text, even in casual contexts, varies. Chat in a game where it's important to get the message off quickly (as typing and controlling the game are mutually exclusive)? sure. Txt messages where you have character limits? sure. Contexts where you have no character limits or actually objective need to make the message as fast as possible? People's tollerance for it drops in accordance with how regularly they interact with properly written text vs txt messages, game chats, and illiterate twits.
And then you get the fun part where people who have actually learned to type properly can type out the word you faster than they can shift gears in their head to type only the letter u in isolation (as muscle memory is an important part of how you get high typing speed.)
This may be unrelated, but if we're going to progress with English we should use accents to tell if a vowel says it's name or if an "e" is silent or someother case
Some others have already mentioned it in other comments but Spanish is likely to have a big impact on American English so there is a chance this will happen.
You can remove the vast majority of the ambiguity just by marking the actual primary stress in the word.
Suddenly all the rules about what reading should be applied to which letter go from 'blatant nonsense' to 'this actually make sense', because they all assume you already know the stress pattern, and thus which readings are Already Forbidden, and thus the spelling only needs to disambiguate between readings that are valid in the same stress position. Which would be fine... if English ever Actually Marked The Primary Stress (You only need to mark the primary because all others are an alternating pattern from that point).
Bringing back some variant on thorn and/or eth for th would help (no longer pretending this two character string acts as a single charcter for vowel interactions), as would sorting out v (which counts as two charcters for vowel interactions AND is not permitted word finally despit the sound blatantly Occuring word finally, leading 'v' as a word final sound to be spelled as either ve or f, with the former necessitating that v be treated as two characters for vowel interaction and the latter requring that one write ff when one Actually Means the sound the letter f is supposed to represent...), and similar.
I mean, you Could introduce a bunch of extra accent markers... or you could make much simpler changes that achieve the same result with less confusion.
Language change and the theories behind are always so madly interesting. I quite enjoyed your speculation towards the end too.
I love the idea of getting a full conjugation table in English with different forms for each pronoun, like Spanish! It would also feel like a completely different language though x)
7:46 I also sometimes say the words “exclamation point” and “question mark” at the end of quotes from other people, when speaking those quotes aloud. I’ve noticed at least one other person doing this very recently (whom I’ve never met), so this might also be something that slowly gets adopted like the use of “question mark” at the end of spoken sentences.
As for what I usually use these phrases to mean, it’s often when dryly or flatly stating the quote without the intonation found in the original quote, so the meaning of the quote requires additional clarification at the end of it. This often happens when first reading a quote aloud, before getting a chance to read it alone. In English, it’s not possible to exactly tell what a sentence’s tone is before you start reading it, so having that spoken demarcation at the end of the sentence helps convey that original meaning. Also, I often just use it for humorous purposes by intentionally adding it to the end of sentences redundantly, for added emphasis 😆
4:40 i consistently omit the word "have" from this tense when using the the verb "to be". i do it (and hear it) most commonly on 1st and 2nd person singular pronouns, but sometimes on other pronouns.
its not "how have you been?" its "how you been lately?"
its not "i have been doing good" its "i been doin good."
I'm pretty sure that "have" becomes "'ve" (which, depending on a few things, might sound like 'if', 'of', or just 'v' (because English spelling hates ending words in V, so you get 'f' or 've' for 'v' sounds and 'ff' for 'f' sounds because dumb) in the vast majority of dialects.
This is weird to me because I'm just 23 years old and not a native speaker and whenever I did the latter, I lost a few points in my English Test.
This made me very aware of these kinds of mistakes and now it's really hard to not just view those sentences as "wrong".
As a french person, this is really helpful ! Thanks for the explanations
The thumbnail was so different I barely recognized this was a lingotter video! lol
8:03 This phenomenon is why I've always been interested in one of Hervé Bazin's proposed punctuation marks, the doubt point. This would be used for sentences that are in the declarative case, but have the doubtful tone of a question, like the example you provided. You're not asking the listener if he's at the park, but you're questioning yourself whether or not the statement is true.
The habitual tense is also used in informal Irish English, and more traditionally, even like old people use it, it's probably somewhat based on the Irish language, but idk I'm not good at it.
Really interesting topic and great predictions! I think English is changing so quickly because the whole world is speaking it, and everyone adds their own way of speaking, which may or may not become part of everyday language. A good example is subject-auxiliary inversion, or the lack of it. I’ve been hearing a lot of sentences like “You are going to the shop?” with rising intonation to indicate a question.
This subject-auxiliary inversion is primarily found in Germanic languages, so it would make sense if it gradually fades out over time.
8:08 in Afrikaans we have the word 'Ne' (pronounced: næ) which serves this exact purpose. It also serves a few more functions similar to "You don't say?" and "I told you so," based on how you use it.
The words been adopted into South African English and I'm assuming a few of the languages I don't speak, but it's interesting to see something similar being adopted into American English. Can't wait to see ya'lls eventual equivalant to the seven uses of 'Now' (just kidding, but its still interesting to see)
Boar speak*
@@ugwuanyicollins6136 Boer* and yeah, that is our language
For the part talking about “will” the “‘ll” part would probably be added like this- I lleat. Instead of I will eat. Produced like “I-yalleet” like in Italian where the is added onto words like “L’italia”
alternative Hypothesis regarding -'ll and its future. I'd personally see it as potentially being reinterpreted as starting the verb, as opposed to ending the pronoun ; I'll eat => I leat ; and then maybe something like epenthetic schwa or a similar vowel gets put into consonant-initial places: I'll go => I lgo => I lago
So then you have eat | ate | leat ; go | went | lago ; jump | jumped | lajump
using this and a few other sound & grammar changes...
"The man jumps over the lazy dog, and the dog'll be mad soon" => taman chomp tadogof lezi'n tadok labe mat son
I love this
I'm so glad you mentioned "slash" and "question mark", both things I've been using for years but only inferred why based on context. Thought it was just with friends, good to know it's taking hold more universally.
I really want Algo to become a thing ❤
It's so much fun trying to analyse the grammatical consequences of colloquial constructions. The fact that English seems to be heading in the direction of inflecting the subject of a sentence rather than the verb is honestly really cool, as is the fact that we've managed to conjure up a brand new conjunction. Slash did have an equivalent prior to being spoken, which was "and/or", but as you can see, while it's usually not pronounced, it's still usually written with a slash anyways. I was initially confused by the spoken "question mark", but then you showed how it's used and it instantly made sense.
8:30 I think if that does happen, then it'll probably get shortened at some point. Maybe something like just saying "mark"?
One book I've read predicted that language would evolve into whole separate dialects based on profession - for instance, Mathematics would be one, Physics another, Medicine, Computers, Music, Science, etc, and to communicate between there would be a "Universal" language that also evolved alongside.
To cite this, they pointed out the difference between them, how difficult it already is to communicate between professions with the various lingo and acronyms that are unique to each.
Of course, this language evolution took 400 years in context.
That future English really looks like the current state of French, especially the part that words are clumped together like "Q'est-ce que c'est ça?" that's actually pronounced "Kesk'sé sa?"
I’m from a francophone part of Ontario, Canada and we’d just say “C’est quoi ça?”
this is your best video ever. please do more long form videos 🐐❤
"imagine this scenario"
"you and your bestie are being kidnapped"
So good to hear you talking, strangely smooth and calm.
Left edge deletion is probably gonna cause the English Language to definitely start considering using the Spanish «¿» aperture sign eventually
If it involves modifying the keyboard, it pretty much isn't happening without government intervention.
Money, you see.
@@laurencefraser physical keyboards, sure, but most software already include «¿» and «¡». People who use Gboard can easily type them by long pressing «?» and «!». I dunno about iOS though
for me, saying/writing 'question mark' became comfortable from using voice to speech dictation on my phone
0:20 becuace the letters are also diffrent
I already do almost all of this lol. "algo," "d'y'ave..."(do you have...), "didj'y'ave..."(did you have...), "you'll-be reading"(the dark /l/ lenites and lowers the /u/ to a velarized /o/) ,"gonna"(first vowel is a schwa), "going-to"(pronounced the same as 'gonna' in rapid speech but with an /o/ vowel instead).
I have never heard or seen online someone who ends their sentence with "question mark?" I'm so curious which demographics are talking like this :0
I'm guessing it's a thing more common in valley girl accent or with really silly lesbians (I don't mean that in a herogitory matter)
i do, but that's most likely because I mainly write English, i rarely speak it verbally because I don't live in an English speaking country. habits from writing leak into my speech. id write something like "I saw a bear(?)" to indicate I think I saw a bear but I'm not entirely sure. and that can end up in speech like "I saw a bear question mark?" for me
Youth
@@xavierwedel4691 congratulations for making me feel old with one word 😂
@@Newee Simplicity
11:20, interesting comparison to Aus English. We use a separate verb form for "going to" in terms of referring to a destination.
To use your sentence as an example: “We are going to the park.” - an Australian could say “We('re) gahn the park.”
*note: “gahn” is just one of the many spellings. You can also find: "gan, garn, garnna, gahna" and probably more.
If we can't have anglish then we shall have a new version of english that's more interesting than the boring one they teach in schools. Gonna subscribe!
I have the will to subscribe as well
Modern Ingush isn’t that boring if you look into roots and if you enjoy that stuff
Alguhsub too
We take current English for granted, therefore it’s boring.
That's wonderful! Pls stay in touch!
I honestly do not know what is wrong with speaking completely formal.
This is perhaps the most fun I’ve had watching a UA-cam video in a long time!
He's explaining a whole interestting topic, while I'm just thinking "Man thar otter looks really cute!"
Just stumbled across this channel today, it’s fascinating! Very excited to see what more you can teach us about linguistics. Also, the cute fursona helps a lot haha
felt so targeted when you mentioned people ending their sentences with "Question mark?". i do that all the dang time!!! i find myself saying it if i don't intonate my question enough, or sometimes because i just find it really funny. fascinating stuff as always!
Yeah I didn't know it was more common. felt called out. I mainly use it humorously. Like the statement itself is goofy and adding "question mark" adds to it. Though, thinking about it, I never say question mark for genuine questions. Just statements that express shock. "He really did that question mark?" "Are you serious question mark?"
Awesome video, really interesting. The insight I had when you talked about gonna, is that there’s a distinction that speakers often don’t think about between “to” in “to {noun phrase}” and “to {verb}”, the first being a proper preposition for direction and the second acting as an infinitive verb marker. As speakers we usually don’t consciously make that distinction, but our brains do and tell us that “gonna” only works for the second case, when going is a modal and not a verb of motion. If “going to {place}” were to develop a contraction it’d likely take a different form like “goinna”, which it kinda does already in rapid speech, but likely would take a lot more before it made its way into written English.
"Aight, algo the stō."
"We guh go ...question mark"
"Yo mama do onlyfans slash real work, or what?"
...ugh
Future English losing rhotics?
@@tentothepowerof10 Pobably, I dunno I'm not a mathematician
The fucking "question mark" is sending me 😭😭😭😭
I hate it lol
"We gooning Ohio gyatt question mark?"
We like to drop a lot of vowel sounds for the “uh sound” (the upside down V in IPA)
We use the tap r a lot in words like water (wada) waiter (waida) etc.
Glottal stops are very prominent in words ending with plosives aswell as the opposite where they become ejectives
Maybe one day my question mark with a comma may be used. Quite often the flow of a conversation with a question I want to ask the question and then add a little extra for the reader after they know what the question is asking. I use “?,” to denote it as question mark with comma doesn’t exist.
“How does it fit into your schedule?, I thought you didn’t have time.”
“What are you doing tomorrow?, I don’t have any plans.”
“What do you think about a question mark comma?, I think it’s neat.”
“Isn’t it weird that people can just pick up the meaning of the symbol?, when using it I rarely have to explain what it means.”
“What’s your favourite food?, don’t say fingernails.” - this kind of question is actually fairly common in speech, but it relies on pacing which doesn’t quite work with a plain question mark.
Maybe in a few hundred years we’ll have it.
I didn’t create question mark with a comma nor the usage of “?,”, but it was created by a friend and I’m all for it
@@skylark.kraken I feel like I've seen question marks / exclamation points used in the middle of a sentence like that before, but without the comma. Probably mainly exclamation points, but it could absolutely work for a question mark. It might look like: "Dear goodness! that tree nearly fell on my car!"; "Really? that's my favorite artist too!"
Honestly, it feels a little archaic to me; probably because I only really remember seeing it in books, and I'm used to those punctuation marks being exclusively sentence-final.
@@solveforx314 I have also been used to them being as ends of sentences, but I've found that often for the flow of what I'm saying I want to say the question and then add more that has full knowledge of the question as otherwise this extra stuff beforehand has to either be a mystery of where it's going or reference a question that is to come. It is confusing to use a sentence final question mark to do this, the reader will assume that up to that point they have been told everything relating to the question.
I do think it needs to be a new punctuation mark to do this, question mark comma I feel is essential, I guess exclamation mark comma could also be useful but I never even use exclamation marks.
usually i don't watch videos about language, but this was very interesting and well made, keep it up
this is so far my favorite future english prediction
6:42 Some languages already do this with "and/or". But "slash" simplifies it to just one word.
11:51 this just sounds like "gon" in AAVE lol
It is
"I'mungry, Gon'neat."
The to in going to is apart of the verb. It’s called a infinitive
I don't think the left edge deletion is specifically from AAVA; I grew up in new york and new jersey and this is just how some people talk, of many stripes. It's more of a sociolect since it relies on a certain personality type.
Oh I didn't mean to imply that left-edge deletion comes from AAVE. Sorry if that was unclear. The AAVE part was just for the habitual aspect part of the video
You also have to consider that terms and stuff from AAVE have been moving into general English for decades. Yes, many people talk with AAVE despite not being African American - that's the whole point of it being adopted by general English.
I found your channel recently and absolutely love it. You awakened an interest in language in me, I didn't know I had.
Keep up the amazing (and cute) work. ❤
I think this is my favorite linguistic vid on UA-cam. I muh watch all your other vids now ;)
Your Mandarin/Kanji handwriting is so good!
is everybody gonna ignore how cute his fursona is???
Wait, is he a furry?
@@IsaaacWithThreeA prop