Once we get good, universal real-time translation, we might start to see a new proliferation of local languages. And of small groups inventing their own cryptolects for privacy, trying to evolve them faster than AI can keep up.
Humans have a natural tendency to develop slang. Even in the internet age new slang and in-group languages/dialects are constantly formed
What might happen, is that, if people try to keep up with it, you’ll end up with older people fluent in dozens of various internet dialects
Spoken, live languages? Very damned few. Archived languages? We might do pretty well.
In my lifetime I’ve seen accents disappearing in America. Doing tech support in the early 90s, I played a game of guessing what state a person was from. Did quite well! I could almost always match their accent. (Midwestern was my kryptonite, very generic.)
We’re seeing regional accents and dialects disappearing very quickly due to the internet, and formerly, TV in general.
For example; I haven’t heard a deep Cajun accent in ages, unless I look for it on YouTube, and even then it’s mostly intelligible. I talked to people 25-30 years ago I could not comprehend, and I’m good at languages!
Another example; Go watch Steel Magnolias from 1989. (Great movie BTW!) That deep, propuh, Mississippi female accent is all but gone except for the oldest, and those women only use it amongst each other.
In any case, English seems to rule the internet, a modern lingua franca, don’t see that changing any time soon.
In any case, English seems to rule the internet, a modern lingua franca
Oh yea. I can’t imagine the alternate timeline where I was stuck in Mainland China and, not only firewall issues, but also the massive language barrier on top of that.
There are definitely still people with deep cajun accents but they likely never leave south Louisiana.
I think people are over estimating how long 100 years is.
No languages that are currently spoken by more than a couple thousand people are going to go extinct that quickly.
Remember 100 years is in the upper end of a human life span.
You underestimate how tiny the vast majority of languages are and how few speaks them.
I don’t actually, hence why I stipulated more than a few thousand speakers
Language is always a local phenomena. I suspect the golden age of the internet will enshittify rapidly creating increasing islands of local. Even as the population collapses due to climate change/ecological overshoot, I suspect more divergence. A fracturing of language and community.
linguists have estimated something like 31,000 languages have existed in human history (and that’s the lowest estimate). Currently, there are roughly six thousand languages spoken in the world. We don’t know exactly, because we’re just beginning to classify some languages in remote locations. But using conservative figures, something like 81% of all human languages have become extinct.
What worries linguists, however, is the current rate of language death in the world. Over half the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers; that’s about like the population of Wasilla, Alaska. Around 82% of languages have fewer speakers than there are people in Waco, Texas. Linguists estimate that at least half the world’s languages will become extinct in the next one hundred years. That means, on average, a language is dying about every two weeks.
Taken from a page on the University of Houston’s website.
I’d say around 3000 by 2125 and 1000 by 2225.
12
12
So you’re saying Cantonese, being the top 11 most popular, will survive?
Lets hope…
Yep! For 100 years.
But in 200 years, it’s down to 9 languages. And number one (by a lot) is Simlish. It’s a long story.
100 years: A lot of smaller languages will only be available from recordings. Less than a hundred language being still in use.
200 years: Maybe a dozen still being spoken: English, Chinese, Hindu, Spanish, French (they stick to their own language like crazy, at the total expense of communication with anyone around), and a handful of others. Everything else will be archived.
100 years: same amount as today minus a couple of dozen where no children currently speak them. Some people born today will be alive in 2125. (And I’m envious Idon’t get to see the future)
200 years? There is conscious effort to preserve minority languages , so hopefully the extinction slows down.
More. Francafrique will likely continue linguistically diverging from French. South Africa, Malaysia, and Scotland are diverging from English/American English. Spanish continues separating into parts.
So yeah maybe they won’t have separated enough to be separate languages yet that soon, but the European imperial languages don’t have the empires that kept them together
