Bonus 35: What might English be like in a couple hundred years? (Patreon)

We often look back at the origins of English words, but it's also weird to pause and realize that we're somewhere in the middle of the history of English, not at its ultimate destination. Which leads us to ask, well, what might this future English look like?  

Gretchen travelled to the 23rd century to write an op-ed piece for the New York Times about how English might have changed in 200 years, but how did she come up with those particular hypotheses? And what else have people projected into the future of English? We also talk about why the word for 'cool' tends to be unstable, what technology might have done to emoji use and how social media threads might be the birth of a whole new genre. 

The latest Patreon goal that we recently hit is to hire our producer Claire for more hours, to help with the administrative side of the show! Claire has been with us since the beginning as the silent audio editing hand and you can get to know Claire through the bonus episode that we did with her last year, about adapting your language to other people!  For you, our patrons, this also means that occasional polls will be showing up again, and a few other exciting things that we'll be announcing soon :)

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Bonus #23 - Adapting your language to other people - chat with Claire Gawne 
• How Can You Appreciate 23rd-Century English? Look Back 200 Years (paywall)
• PDF version of Gretchen's 23rd Century English article 
• Quick Draw With Google (we called it Google Draw in the episode)
• Gretchen tweeting about the new words in the article 
• New New York Times entries 
• Phatics (Wikipedia)
• Why “No Problem” Can Seem Rude: Phatic Expressions (Tom Scott and Gretchen)
• Trigedaslang 
• Belter Creole 
• Futurese 

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript is available for this episode as a Google doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page. Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All ThingsLinguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. 

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.