Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that time travel was possible and, ignoring the grandfather paradox along with countless other paradoxes and predicaments associated with time travel, you went back to the roaring 20’s and decided to speak standard English to a random passer-by. Other than your outrageously inappropriate attire and treatment of women, there wouldn’t be much that could single you out as unusual. However, should you whip out a bit of MLE (Multicultural London English) — my generation’s new-fangled dialect — you may receive some strange looks. Pronunciation alone would likely baffle most around you. As for lexis, let’s say I don’t see your comment regarding your fellow interlocutor’s “fresh drip” being perceived as intended.
Okay, so you don’t have the MLE dialect. New dialects aren’t the only thing holding you back from landing you your very own repressed 1920s housewife. Seeing as the microchip won’t be invented for another 30 years or so (70 years for the first text to be sent) remarking “lol” at her joke is also liable to get you nowhere. We’ve been swimming in technological advances in the past 100 years and with that comes a tidal wave of neologisms like “iphone”, “microprocessor”, “lol”, “DVD” and, my personal favourite, “Beer can” (1935). While you may look a bit of a twazzock, or mentally unhinged, to Jane or John Smith, you would still be able to have a conversation with them… albeit a warily distanced one.
The booming exponential growth in technological advances that we’ve experienced these past 100 years is expected to continue. So surely the change in language will be exponential too? We’ve seen the emergence of SMS texts, emails, Snapchats, Skype, and Facebook updates from racist uncles. These new modes of communication have bred their own language with acronyms and logograms like “wyd” and “@” to save on time and, more likely, prevent precious little fingers of teenagers across the globe from getting too tired. But could this laziness evolve into a hyper-efficient language, standardised across the twelve quadrants of Humanity’s Galactic Empire with modes of communication inconceivable to us now that allow us to warn each other that Gorblax the Foul is inbound to reclaim his homeworld from the clutches of the imperialist Humans, or tell Nan that her holo-porridge has gone cold.
In summation, there’s no way to be certain of how language will have changed in the coming century. It may evolve into the hyper-efficient variant that I mentioned earlier. However, it may devolve into a cacophony of gurgles and farts emitted from our deformed radioactive faceholes. Let’s just see how the next few weeks go, hey President Putin?
