Håkan Lindgren wrote:
>An educated guess what English (or your mother tongue) could sound like 500
years from now would be exciting to read. Have there been any serious
attempts at doing this?
Whether they can be called _serious_ attempts may be debatable, but several
members of the CONLANG-list have made stabs at "Future Englishes" of one
sort of another. Some quite well thought out, others frankly jokey. My
favorite involved a busload of Cockney tourists abducted by aliens; after
several centuries on a distant planet, their principal deity was [daj], and
they had several fetish objects-- yellow, brick-shaped things-- called
[nokja] ;-)
(One has to be a member of CONLANG to post there; if you are really
interested, let me know off-list and I'll be happy to forward your question.
I guarantee a variety of interesting responses.)
And M. Iacomi wrote:
>Were the phonetic changes predictable by some mechanism, your idea
would have some practical basis. Unfortunately this is not the case.
One may try to predict something only for already known tendencies,
that is not too far in the future.
Quite correct. But never an obstacle to the truly inventive (or obsessed)
with time on their hands.....;-)
Roger Mills