The language of tomorrow
As language continues to change, I think it’s interesting and valuable to look ahed to where current trends will lead us, so that we can try to reinforce those trends or redirect them to a more practical and logical direction.
A hundred years from now, English is likely to be even more dominant across the globe, with nearly everyone—especially white collar workers—being schooled in it as a first or second language. With English more and more of a world language, and with no central authority like the Academie Francaise, these lerners are likely to make changes to the language–perhaps without even realizing it–to make it more consistent and logical.
Even with the spelling changes, spellcheck software will still be ubiquitous. A worldwide culture of texting will reduce the literacy rate to virtually zero. As a related side effect, cursive writing will surely become a lost art, as children go directly from printing to typing. Signatures, made mostly obsolete by electronic fingerprints and other technology for confirming identity, will become artful combinations of initials and fanciful wavy lines without inherent meaning.
These trends suggest that modest spelling reform is inevitable, particularly of the type that brings US and British English closer together. As Americans and Britons read more material written by non-US writers, the more they will come to accept the slite changes in spelling and punctuation. As always, this will be more true of young people than older people, and the usual generational rift of slang with include more unusual spellings. Young people play with language very casually, for example rite now using U for you, r for are, and so on. And just as slang becomes legitimized as its users get older*, so will these spellings.
* At one time say (as in “O say, can you see…?”) was considered hily informal slang, as were okay, contact as a verb, copacetic, gay, and cool.
