Is English facing an extinction?

Every passing generation create their own terms and words as a way of expressing themselves or the times they live in. So, as our world changes, new words come and go. Columnist Thomas L. Friedman recent piece on “Four Words Going Bye-Bye” sparked a debate over a change in the meaning of words. According to Friedman, words such as “privacy,” “local,” “average” and “later” have found new derived meanings: for example, one cannot assume anything to be “private” anymore, because anyone can record, film or photograph.

Likewise, in today’s hyper-connected world, a word can immediately go “global”. So, nothing remains local and further, Friedman argues that “average” no longer exists as everything and everyone have re-engineered themselves to be above-average. Meanwhile, the concept of “later” is extinct as in today’s fast-paced world “later” is well, too late. Author of Kingdom Come, Aarti V. Raman believes we’re looking at a future filled with emoticons. “I agree that ‘Privacy’ and ‘Local’ have lost all its meaning but trending hashtags on Twitter give the word ‘NOW’ a new dimension too. So, the language has undergone a radical change and we may have to shorten our communication, while keeping it interesting. Who knows, someday English will be a mish-mash of abbreviations and smileys.”  

But what about emotions? Will there be a shorter version of, ‘I love you’? Harsh Warrdhan, author of When Hari met his Saali, says today, the world is capable of having an entire conversation without speaking a word, a single word. “English is supposed to evolve. A greeting card, a red rose, an expensive diamond ring, a hug, a flying kiss, a waving hand are all gestures built on top of the language. Today, we have translated these into symbols — smileys, alphanumeric symbols, stickers etc. These transcend language. In fact now we have vocalised English language with regular usage of words like ‘wohoo’, ‘huh’ and ‘tch’ and new ones like the ‘Duh!’ from the Simpsons. We now write English as we speak rather than trying to speak it. And one day, we may not even speak this language.”