“Futurese: The American Language in 3000 AD” is an interesting extrapolation of where linguistic trends will take the language over the next 1,000 years. It’s a useful reminder that the English we speak is in a state of constant change.
One thing I will note, however, is that “Futurese” seems to be postulating a shift in English over the next 1,000 years that’s fairly equivalent to the shift in the language over the last 1,000 years. In doing so, I think it’s ignoring two vital factors:
First, the advent of print and widespread literacy had a significant effect in slowing vocabulary shifts.
Second, film and television seem to have had a massive arresting effect on pronunciation shifts.
William Shakespeare provides a valuable example of the former: His works are 400 years old and are definitely filled with archaisms. But the differences between modern English and Shakespeare pale in comparison to the differences between Shakespeare and the stuff written in 1200 AD. In fact, the vast majority of the shift away from Shakespeare’s English happened in the 100-150 years after his death: You can read commentators in the mid-18th century and the vast majority of the passages we have difficulty with in Shakespeare today are the same passages they were having difficulty with then. At the midpoint between us and Shakespeare is Jane Austen, whose English is essentially modern.
The baseline for the second point is obviously much shorter and might just represent a coincidental lull period in the evolution of pronunciation. But I don’t think so. I think the fact that we are regularly listening to words spoken 50 or 80 years ago is providing a consistent pressure that prevents (or at least radically slows) significant shifts in pronunciation which were common prior to the advent of sound recordings.
Your first point is something I’ve suspected for a while now, though I didn’t have enough knowledge of historical literature to prove it. You mentioned Jane Austen, but I’d point to Gulliver’s Travels as an even earlier example. The syntax is much more formal and wordy than modern English, but the vocabulary is nearly all recognizable, despite being more than twice as far-removed from modern times than from Shakespeare’s day.
Regarding your second point, something else I’ve wondered about is the “old-timey” American accent heard in old newsreels, radio broadcasts and movies. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone speak like that in modern movies or TV shows (unless they’re set in an earlier time-period). I don’t know whether that means that actors and broadcasters of the era deliberately adopted a particular cadence that was different from how people normally spoke, or whether it represents a genuine accent that has faded away over time. What are your thoughts?
I think our vocabulary is expanding or at least changing rapidly, but grammar has been largely codified. Some backlash has occurred against grammar fascists, but generally having uniform grammar rules helps maintain the utility of a language (clarity in communication over time and space). Slang and trendy expressions come and go, only some surviving long enough to become standard.
The expansion of vocabulary is an important point: If you dropped Jane Austen into a time machine and popped her out of it today, she would struggle with a multitude of unfamiliar terminology. The technology stuff is obvious, but there will be plenty of examples that would take us by surprise. (Although she’d probably also pick up on it pretty quickly.)
For example, my mother — who wrote a multitude of award-winning 15th century historical novels under the name Margaret Frazer — tried to stay as true to actual 15th century vocabulary as possible. She was constantly being surprised by the words that were missing. For example, her characters couldn’t commit suicide (18th century) or be insane (16th century).