English: A beaded Necklace

30 to 50 years from today, the English language would look like a beaded necklace tied around a girl’s neck.

Looking at a beaded necklace, we can observe different colors and designs of beads tied to a string. The beads form a pattern so that the difference of each bead can match the other bead making the said accessory more pleasing to the eyes. This idea also goes thru with the English language. The color of the beads represents the variations that we use in English. This statement can be observed visibly in our real life. For example, when a British Harvard student says “Park the car in the Harvard yard.” as “Pak the ca in the Hava yad.” the semantic and syntactic aspect is still the same, however only its Suprasegmentals and Segmentals changed. From here we can see that only the color changes but not its being or to put if more specific, the pronunciation changes but not its meaning.

On the other hand, the design of the beads refers to the different elements affecting the English language, paving way to different variations. One of these elements is the technological advancements we have today. Most of the technological advanced countries and main producers of high-tech gadgets are countries from the expanding circle like China and Japan. If Japan were to make a name for a league of super hero robots, surely the Americans would borrow the said word since the Japanese are the ones dominating the robot-making world. Another element would be the economic status of the globe. Our world now is a battlefield where the person who makes the most money is the most powerful man alive. Even a penny these days can cause petty catfights among poverty areas. For instance, an American Salesman wants to sell a second hand car to a British customer, who pronounces the word car as “ca”, surely the salesman would just sell the “ca” and even imitate the pronunciation of the British customer just to sell the old car. No one would bother to complain or make correction when money is at stake. Thus, people learn to adjust their way of speaking just to have financial security.

The last and most influential element is Culture. Every country has its own culture and every culture varies from another culture. Culture as our way of life includes the food we eat, our language, our beliefs, our history and our traditions. Sake, sushi and pinakbet are only some of the foods around our globe that doesn’t have a direct English translation yet. Because of this, the English standardized dictionary was forced to adapt the actual name of the dishes, giving birth to new English vocabulary. There are also many actions that are molded by our culture, one of which is the hara-kiri, a form of honorable suicide of the Japanese. These are actions according to our culture’s belief; translating these words may slightly change its original meaning.

If the beads refer to the variations we have in English, the string represents the mutually intelligible aspect of English variations. One example of this is the British English, even though they don’t pronounce the letter R and put emphasis on their H sounds, we understand them. The Harry Potter Craze is one good proof that different races do understand the British English. Just like mutual intelligibility, the string connects all the beads of different colors and designs into one understandable design. It serves as the backbone of our understanding and interpretation of the English language.

The future of the English language is a pool of chaos and unity, it lives in a world, where colors combine yet contrast each other, where strings are firm but sometimes breakable and where there’s a never-ending cycle of change.