English will turn into Panglish in 100 years
English as it is spoken today will have disappeared in 100 years and could be replaced by a global language called Panglish, researchers claim.
New words will form and meanings will change with the most dramatic changes being made by people learning English as a second language, says Dr Edwin Duncan, a historian of English at Towson University in Maryland, in the US. |
According to the New Scientist, the global form of English is already becoming a loose grouping of local dialects and English-based common languages used by non-native speakers to communicate.
By 2020 there may be two billion people speaking English, of whom only 300 million will be native speakers. At that point English, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic will have an equal number of native speakers.
Dr Suzette Haden Elgin, a retired linguist formerly at San Diego University in California, said: "I don't see any way we can know whether the result of what's going on now will be Panglish - a single English that would have dialects... or scores of wildly varying Englishes, many or most of them heading toward mutual unintelligibility." How long will it take to find out? "My guess, a wild guess, is less than 100 years."
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