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English will become 'Panglish' in the next hundred years
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by Amy Judd | March 27, 2008 at 09:49 am
1163 views | 10 Recommendations | 4 comments
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Language experts are predicting that within a hundred years, English will become 'Panglish', which is essentially a simplified form of English that will be spoken by billions of people around the world.
For example, 'the' will become 'ze' and 'send and friend' will become 'sen and frien'.
These replacement words come from the way that people who speak English as a second language pronounce those words now, and it is only a matter of time before those pronounciations become the norm.
The changes are not being driven by Britons, Americans or Australians, but the growing number of people who speak English as a second language, New Scientist reports.
According to linguists, Panglish will be similar to the versions of English used by non-native speakers. As the new language takes over, "the" will become "ze", "friend" will be "frien" and the phrase "he talks" will become "he talk".
By 2010 around two billion people - or a third of the world's population - will speak English as a second language. In contrast, just 350 million people will speak it as a first language.
Most interactions in English now take place between non-English speakers, according to Dr Jurgen Beneke of the University of Hildesheim, Germany.
By 2020 the number of native speakers will be down to 300 million. That's the point where English, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu and Arabic will have the same number of native speakers, according to predictions.
As English becomes more common, it will increasingly fragment into regional dialects, experts believe.
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 10:46 on March 27th, 2008
Wouldn't it also depend on who's teaching the language? A friend of mine, from Hong Kong, speaks with a normal Cantonese accent when speaking Cantonese, but with an RP (received pronunciation, i.e. "posh") accent when speaking English, since she was taught by RP-speaking teachers.
at 10:49 on March 27th, 2008
I suppose so, I never thought of that...
But if that way of speaking becomes the 'norm' then it will all be taught the same way.
at 13:45 on March 27th, 2008
This study is all fine and dandy but I still believe the future of language is going to be like it is in the cultish Sci Fi series Firefly where English is spoken for most everything but for cursing, which is in Chinese.
at 13:48 on March 27th, 2008
Interesting... I've never seen that series, but my brother is a huge fan.