So what does the future of English hold? Change, confusion, arguments, dilettantes of the dictionary fuming and kneejerking, Swiftian dictates to embalm the language and Shavian efforts to streamline it. It’s perhaps odd to evoke such figures of the past to invoke and perhaps provoke the future, but with all due respect to the antiplatitudinous, everything old is new again.
Various projections have been made about whither goes the language (and whether it will wither), ranging from the deteriorating distinction between using singular and plural verbs to loss of whom entirely, to failed attempts at kompleet fonetik speling over- hawl (thru! nite!) engaging in raged battles with failed attempts to preferveft [De marvelous Englisc Tonge ( through! night!), we thankest |aee (and the fact that my cute archaisms here are garbled at best is further proof of how futile both efforts will be).
In the future we will see the loosening of rules, and the tightening of rules. We will see debate over change, and we will see change slip past us as we continue to worry about lightning rods like hopefully and impact and sentences that end with infinitives or splitting prepositions or whatever the hell the argument is about this week. And we will pass the new language, as in the title of a classic Moody Blues album, To Our Childrens Childrens Children — except the band used apostrophes, and I didn’t on purpose, as you see as we peer into our “childrens” few-chore!: