Can linguists project how a language will change in the future?

raccoon

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Tue Dec-08-09 12:08 PM
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Can linguists project how a language will change in the future?

And narrow it down according to where it's spoken? I mean, projecting British English, AMerican English, etc.?

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SheilaT

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Tue Dec-08-09 08:24 PM
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1. Personally, I doubt it.

I know that there are some serious attempts out there to do so, but it's my feeling that language change is far too idiosyncratic to predict.

I am aware of some kind of project which tracks on going language change in the spoken form, by doing periodic interviews which include recording people. I do know it has tracked pronunciation changes that the users are generally unaware of. I saw a show about this on PBS a decade or more ago. Perhaps someone could look at several decades of that research and attempt to project into the future.

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raccoon

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Wed Dec-09-09 09:04 AM
Response to Reply #1

2. I'd love to see that PBS show. Do you recall the title? nt

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SheilaT

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Wed Dec-09-09 11:52 PM
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3. Have no idea.

It was probably ten years or more ago.

What I was fascinated by was the way they were tracking how actual individuals' pronunciation -- accent -- changed over time.

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geardaddy

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Mon Feb-15-10 03:29 PM
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7. I think it was called "The Story of English"

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Odin2005

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Sat Dec-12-09 12:06 AM
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4. Not really, but I projected English 2000 years into the futire for the heck of it.

http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Eridanian

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raccoon

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Tue Dec-15-09 01:51 PM
Response to Reply #4

5. You must've studied linguistics to come up with all that. nt

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Odin2005

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Tue Dec-22-09 06:41 PM
Response to Reply #5

6. No professionally, just an interest of mine.

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