I base today's issue on "What Language Is" by John McWhorter (2011, Gotham books
Evolution: The science channel special performed an experiment to show how language evolves over time. For the experiment they provided a series of pictures featuring colors, and objects and gave them made up names. Then they had an individual look at each picture, try to memorize the name and then after about 15 minutes of memorization try to look at the picture and say the memorized name. Of course most of what they said may have been wrong, but this experiment was to demonstrate on an accelerated scale how language evolves. So the next subject had to do the same thing in the experiment except for one difference. The mistakes on the names that the first person made became the new names. This process was repeated over and over until the names could be remembered by each following subject. What the experiment proved was that language over time simplifies itself through the errors that the language speakers make.
Using capitols: What if a language got rid of all of its silent letters. An example is "bite" with the silent "e" acting as a modifier to make the "i" say its name. But when we capitalize a letter it also says its name, and as such bite can be spelled "bIt" with the capitol "I" saying its name. That is one example, but how about another. "Bait", as in shark bait. Instead of the "i" acting as a modifier it would look like this "bAt" as "A" would say its name and thus make a similar sound compared to the existing word. It would not be confused with "bat" as the "a" here does not say its name (and is not capitalized to do so). Of course capitol letters may be removed entirely as well, so "bite" may turn into "bi`t" instead with the accent mark making the "i" say its name instead. Interesting right.
Removing silent letters and unneeded letters: "Quite" has a silent "u". So what if we got rid of the "u"? It would look like this "qite". It would still mean the same thing only because "q" comes from the sound that "kw" makes together. Of course "kwite" could also result as "q" comes from the combination of "kw". Thus there would no longer be a need for the letter "q". Likewise the letter "c" or "k" may disappear as they make similar sounds. So our language may remove two of them and just keep the one. Or it may even reassign the letter "c" to making the sound that "ch" makes together as another possibility making words like "channel" become "cannel".
Letters that make sounds they should not: Have you ever wondered why the "ti" in nation sounds similar to the sound of "sh". Well what if we did this: "nashon" instead. Or how about replacing the "gh" and "ph" in words where they make the sound that "f" makes with an actual "f". Part of the reason that English is so hard to learn is that different letters in combination make the same sounds as other letters. So you can spell "fish" as "ghoti" with "gh" the "f" sound from "enough", the "o" sounding like "i" from "women" and the "ti" the "sh" sound from "nation". Basically some people may just make the language more phonetic.
Word replacement: Some times we have words that are spelt the same or even spelt different but ultimately sound the same. So let us use the words "see" and "sea" and "bear and bear". It is possible to substitute words in English with words from other cultures like Spanish or Japanese. The reason is that English is very flexible when it comes to adopting new terms like "ghetto" or the name "Sean" as our culture takes in not just the immigrant but their language as well. So we may for example have bear (for grizzly bear) spelt as "kuma" which is Japanese for bear, while leaving the word bear to mean something along the lines of "bear skin". Likewise "sea" could be called something else entirely or just be replaced by the word "ocean". Though most languages tend to simplify words and thus smaller easier to say words take hold more often when describing something.
Conclusion: Stuff like slang terms from different cultures and groups of people may become common terms like "floordrobe" which has been added to the dictionary (found this out through national geographic magazine). Language is a communication tool that evolves to meet peoples every day challenges, but that is because mistakes made, like spelling "cat" as "kat" may become the new way to spell things. Even letters like "A" may loose its horizontal line in the middle or "K" loosing its vertical line to look like this "<" may occur. We really do not know what the future of our language is or how other languages may evolve along side it (or even fuse together for that matter). All I can say is that the possibilities are as endless as they are fascinating.
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