We all know language changes over time and so it won't be a surprise to hear that it's been predicted that in one thousand years, all of the current words in English will cease to exist. You may ask yourself now, with such an interconnected and globalised world like today's, how likely is this to be true? As we know, many predictions have been made throughout history and even to this day that have been wrong. Just think back to three years ago when we all thought the world was going to end in 2012 yet we're still here!
Well, the prediction has been made due to the current, rapid evolution in language that we are undergoing. With such an interconnected world, we pick up and create a vast amount of new words every year. But is this pushing out old words enough to give enough strength to their argument and is it likely that ALL current English words will be linguistically extinct in one thousand years? One thing's for sure, we won't live to find out, but we can think about its probability of happening and perhaps the best way to do this would be to travel back one thousand years to a time dragons and heroes and celebrations in mead halls!
Old English is completely incomprehensible to most of us now, but it is actually the English of yesteryear and the vernacular of one thousand years ago... yet it's still English and it still has words that can be translated easily into modern English. If you listen carefully enough, you can even hear some similarity to modern English words and pronunciation. The truth is, although the words have changed pronunciation since then, each word must still be connected to a similar concept as to what it was back then. Of course, massive changes in culture, lifestyle and relationships will have changed these concepts somewhat and so we can say that the next thousand years will change these concepts again, just like what they have done over the last thousand years.
At most, this prediction is unclear. What exactly does it mean when it says word? Which part of the word exactly? The pronunciation? The meaning? The concept in our brains? All of them? Pronunciation will definitely change, as will the meanings of some words for sure, but English, I believe, will still survive in some form and should still be translatable back to the English we speak now, but what do you think?
