So, American English will turn into German without the complicated grammar and with a Spanish accent? ;)

I don't think American English will lose mutual intelligibility with British English. If it were to happen, it would've been before the internet and global TV and radio. If anything, the increasing interconnectivity of the world might actually make the two groups of dialects to slowly grow _less_ distinct over time. P.S. My response to people proposing Y'all is that English doesn't lack a good second person plural pronoun. What we lack is a second person _singular_ pronoun, though we didn't always. I prepose we revive "thou" as the old second person singular pronoun before it got conquered by the plural form.

American English slowly becoming Dutch

A couple of things I think will permanently alter the course of language changes: 1. Audio/video recording. 2. Worldwide real-time communication. We've only had these for about a hundred years, give or take. We have no model for how they affect accents, dialects and languages.

That monologue sounds like a Russian trying to speak with an American accent

To your mutual intelligibility point: I'm British myself and could MOSTLY understand what you were saying, and I imagine that Future Brits would gradually get used to the Future American Accent alongside its natural development, so I doubt mutual intelligibility would be lost.

You are already speaking an American English different from the one I learned in the 1950's. You speak about 50% faster than me and you slur and slide words into the next. I have trouble understanding my grandchildren unless they slow down and enunciate.

I think Spanglish will actually become a more formalized dialect in the future. I kind of use a version in my day-to-day life where I combine the two to communicate, since I'm not yet fluent in Spanosh. Or if I'm asked something in Spanish, I'll respond in English, or vice-versa. My current girlfriend and I especially basically have our own way of communication like this to get past the language barrier.

The final version sounds very slurred. I think you probably got a lot of reductions and simplifications right, but I also think the language would compensate with new sounds. Props for thinking about this tho, first video I've seen tackling this subject!

At the end I was thinking "this sounds like French or Russian" but there's the Hispanic influence too. There already is a letter dropping, syllable crunching, western European language that sounds a bit Russian: It's Portuguese. Maybe this Future American is following the same evolution model but starting with English rather than medieval Latin. 🤔

Something I have been seeing is young Americans adopting UK vowels, especially young people exposed to British youtubers or TV. On the flip side, I also personally know several English people, who despite never leaving England, have since the advent of the internet their vowels have become more flattened liked Americans, still obviously British, but meeting in the middle. It's almost as though the invented mid-atlantic accent is sort of coming to life naturally because of the internet. However, also because of the internet people with different interests can really cater their content, rather than seeing the same California/New York produced media everyone used to consume, so I predict going forward there will be less dialectal unity among Americans and more geographic, subcultural, and maybe even political influences on dialects. A dialect expert in the not too different future may be able to tell with reasonable accuracy whether someone is a left wing anime fan Buddhist, or a right wing street-racing Orthodox Christian just by how they pronounce their words because each person's speech is dictated by their subculture membership.

this video already crossed the line of mutual intelligibility for me

A new “Spanglish” creole hybrid type of language already exists in Texas and the southwest. I do not think anybody has documented it formally, nor really talks about it in formal linguistical science circles. But it definitely exists and I definitely have coworkers who I hear speak it on a daily basis. I do not speak it though. Haha but my kids probably will.

Unless we are talking about a civilizational collapse with a near-complete lack of transatlantic communication, I find it extremely unlikely that American and British English will become mutually unintelligible, because we will read each other's books and watch each other's movies.

Can you do the future of Mexican Spanish! In northern Mexico we have a lot of English origin words in our Spanish that others in Mexico wouldn’t use, and then there are words that derive from English used all over Mexico like “Stalkear”

“No cap for real the sodie pop I drank was bustin’ no cap for real for real but the wamburger with cheesy wheezy was sus amogus for real for real.”

The most likely of these changes to happen is for y'all to become more common. I'm from near Chicago, where that word is never spoken except in AAVE, and did not pick it up from them. Instead, I've picked it up as a result of being in online communities so much that it's become difficult to avoid using the word. I give that shift a few generations to happen. As far as American and British English diverging, I highly doubt this will happen, as we communicate with them much more regularly now due to the internet age. The assumption they would be mutually unintelligible assumes isolation, which is not the case in the 21st century.

I believe that due to the fact American and British English speakers frequently converse on the Internet. British and American English will remain mutually intelligible until there is a isolation of one language

Wow I felt like someone who doesn’t speak english listening to this guy talk, something about how he’s almost slurring his words I thought he was speaking german for a minute I could not tell what he was saying unless he really enunciated a certain word. That is such an interesting phenomenon, I want to hear more of it

I don't know why this popped into my feed or what compelled me to watch all of it as this isn't necessarily the type of video I watch, but this was incredibly fascinating. Great video, keep up the great work!

I don't believe that we will lose mutual intelligibility with the British. Media is far too prevalent in everyone's life these days, and it would just be too inconvenient if they diverged too far apart.

Also there's another thing that I'm pretty sure of: even after 500 years noone's gonna fix the spelling.

The section about AAVE is interesting. I know a bunch of gen z and many of them already talk with that accent. Apparently it’s happening in the Netherlands too, where young Dutch are talking in a way influenced by middle eastern immigrants

So cool, I hope we develop ways to live longer. Being 500 years old and seeing how different times will change. This is obviously me being optimistic considering current events. Despite that, I still don't think it's bad to dream or at least maintain hope in the chance that we do reach this far. No one knows what'll happen.

You think British and American English are going to drift farther apart? Personally I think they will become more similar. It's already starting to happen.

An interesting parallel to your prediction with w occured in (I believe) middle French, in which [w] -> [gw] and finally [g]. This is why we have doublets like ward and guard, warranty and guarantee, or Wales and Gaul

This is highly interesting. As a native Spanish speaker and speaker of other Romance languages, I can see this happening. Your version of Future American is very much how Galician and Portuguese sound to Spanish (Castilian) speakers. If I see those languages written, it is easier for me to understand, but when I hear them, I have a hard time understanding if they are speaking too fast.

As a native Spanish speaker I find some English sounds difficult to distinguish. We only have 5 simple vowels and not a lot of consonants so words like "through the mountains" are sometimes a challenge to me. I also cannot distinguish /h/ from /x/ very well, so my guess is that as English becomes lingua franca and more people adopt it as their second language, English is going to become more and more unified and simplified, e.g. the regularization of verbs and the reduction of vowels and consonants through "polarization" in order to create more contrast between similar sounds, like the sound ae→a, or th→d.

One interesting thing I remember learning a couple years ago, the divergence between American and Canadian English has accelerated in the past 20 years. While the two dialects are still similar, they were more similar to each other a century ago.

I think there's one thing not being factored in... the constant exposure to both sides of the pond via modern media IS having an impact on modern speech. For example, most regional accents in the US are far, FAR weaker than they were back in, say, the 40s.

I just discovered this channel and wow. I have kinda got interested in phonetics and lingustics, but i love how you explain it well, but not take too much time, but gosh, sometimes it's a little fast but i love it.

never knew i needed this but thank you & AAVE representation 🙏

I find this an interesting thought experiment but I feel that the vast interconnectedness caused by the internet is unprecedented in history and might have more a role over the development of future language than the variables which controlled the development of older languages, but then again I could be totally wrong.

i think that [h] to [x] before the vowels you mentioned would pretty naturally shift to a palatal fricative.

So Americans will all start speaking like Christopher Walken.

Yknow this is an awesome vid, but one thing that would be such a Bonus for me? When talking about current american, including a word with an example of that sound! And diff font color for where it occurs, for style. Very cool video, but not as engaging as it could be for non-phoneme readers

im dutch and i used to also make healthcare memes about america but lately i really start to feel something that is really cool about america i cant explain but i have to say you are my kind of people

Your future American accent sounds similar to current American English spoken with a heavy Israeli accent.

I, for one, welcome the regular use of y'all. It's just so useful. This sounds a bit like when Belters are speaking English in The Expanse.

Gotta say I've been seeing this in my recommendations for a while and I decided to watch it today. 2 minutes in and I'm just completely lost, like, this looks like you're programming something.

Just a linguist in college saying thank you! Good luck to all linguists out there :)

I think the biggest changes will be aspects of AAVE (pronunciation and slang) being considered standard, influences from Spanish, and a small amount of "British-isms." I don't think American and British English will diverge too much. They'll retain their own quirks, but I think there be a lot more exchange between the two. Hence, why I think Americans could pick up a few British-isms. I already catch myself and other people doing it a bit, but the biggest one for sure is how glottal stops are becoming way more common for Americans.

I am already noticing a th > d (sometimes t) sound shift. Wow very accurate already

Great video. Subbed. I am surprised you never directly mentioned the most natural development principle (unless I missed it), but I think you still utilized its four key tendencies in your predictions.

Considering how much American/British overlap exists on TV and the internet, I don't think we can say they are separated or even diverging.

11:15 Bro just got us back to dutch

This is just one of those times when I'm amazed at all the different things people can get super smart at. Neat!

This dude speaks as though he has 12 min 16 sec to explain this before the world explodes

Brilliant video! One comment: NYC English does have that sound you said we don't, we just only use it in some positions. The wikipedia page on American accents used to have a delightfully complex run-on sentence trying to explain when & how, but it's why you'll hear a difference in the vowels between the pairs CAT & CAN'T, RAT & GRAB, PADDLE & PAN, DRANK & DRAG in the speech of NYC English speakers

One grammatical change that I feel almost certain will happen within the next generation is the loss of the past participle form of virtually all verbs. When I was a kid, people would say "I went to the party, but I wish I hadn't gone," but nowadays it's more and more common to hear people say "I went to the party but I wish I hadn't went." The same holds true across virtually all verbs: "she spoke the same way she had always spoken" is becoming "she spoke the same way she had always spoke," etc, etc, etc. I first started noticing this within the last seven years or so. Now it is becoming so common that I've even noticed myself doing it a couple of times recently without realizing it. And I've spoken [spoke?] to young adults (from privileged, highly-educated backgrounds) who, when I asked them about it, legitimately had never even HEARD the traditional past participle forms, and did not have the slightest idea what I was talking about. The only verb I haven't noticed this happening to is "to be." I think I still hear people say "I had never been there before," rather than "I had never was there before." Having been a linguistics major, I had always wondered what it must feel like to live through a period of prominently noticeable, quick language change, and I feel like now I know: it's really weird!

i was listening to this in the background. hearing phonetics used in full sentences is so trippy.

I personally think there will be a divergence of the American Dialect. People who use social media a lot will probably have a different development, from people who aren't as involved with it. Obviously, one of the big things in terms of developing a separate dialect is Isolation and Linguistic Imprinting from a young age. Which is how America English split with British English in the first place.

This was pretty interesting to watch. I feel like the version of American English that you used as a starting point was really idiosyncratic, not how I would describe American English nor what I've generally seen used for it, but that makes sense given that it's most useful to base something like this off of your own English. Specifically the monophthongization thing you talked about. I have never heard or heard about that, if anything I've seen much more regarding diphthongization in American English than monophthongization. Speaking of vowel shifts, there actually are ongoing large-scale chainshifts in various parts of the US, notably the Inland North, West Coast/California specifically, and the American South. Of the three, inland north and west coast are the most similar, and by the way you described vowel changes would be counter-clockwise. Front vowels are lowering and centralizing, that kinda stuff. Southern chain shift is the opposite with them actually raising, following a general pattern like what you described and that causing other cascade effects. I think most likely there'd be a split between these macro-regions kinda becoming the basis of three large over arching dialect groups.

This is really cool! It's the 1st thought experiment I've seen along those lines. I think under the circumstances that civilization has developed so far, it's likely that American and British English would keep diverging, but with the rapid pace of globalization, I really can't see them doing anything but converging over the coming centuries.

I have often wondered about this after heading about common sound shifts over time! Thanks for the well thought-out video with a speedy pace :) I thought the final version sounded like lazy simlish

the speech in future american sounds vaguely like john f kennedy speaking

it's like you turned back time to bring it back closer to its Germanic roots! certainly reminds me of dutch

I like how the questions at the end are a pitch-perfect parody of the questions Paul Jorgensen of _Langfocus_ asks at the end of _his_ videos. (The topic is fascinating, BTW-I'm surprised more people haven't tackled it.)

here are my thoughts on each prediction: 1. Affrication: I think we will see this trend continue, agreed 2. the consonant in "huge" actually the palatal fricative /ç/. What is very interesting is that you said /x/ would replace /h/ before front vowels, but what you pronounced was /ç/! this fronting is pretty common in germanic languages, and if anything this actually strengthens your argument lol. 3. wordfinal cluster simplification is totally plausible imo, but i think it would change the vowel quality rather than introduce consonant length. For example, with fox I think the vowel would be fronted if the k was lost. 4. I think in 'white' dialects of american english you would see assimilation into the tapped d intervocalically but into /v/ word-finally. so feather -> fedder, but breathe -> breave. I say this cuz it's largely how I already talk lol. Typing IPA vowel characters is hard and i am running outta steam so: One route for a sound shift is the shift from /ʏu/ to /ɪ:/

This was a really dope video Would love to see something similar with American Spanish maybe vs. Latin American Spanish

Very nice observations. Little cue from someone who has thought about similar ways how Germany may change in the future (being German that is, of course my primary focus): Language change usually aims to ease pronounciation. Commonly, this comes from dialects who do some simplification earlier, only to have this change later introduced to the standard language as an official rule. Look at local dialects and how they pronounce things, then look how far this influence goes, how easy it gets picked up by non-locals. That is a very easy way to see how a local change can spread to a national level, ending up becoming a new speech-pattern that gets standartised.

I like this idea. Just going by what the final product sounds like I'd guess that's closer to the 300 year range than the 700 year range. Historically English has changed very quickly compared to other languages and that might still be the case in the future. But it's fascinating to see what your region might sound like in the future. I have a similar conlang based on my dialect that takes a very different trajectory just due to the differing influences on the region. Would love to talk to you about it.

I wish people in the future will find this and compare it to their actual speech. That is, if we will still exist in the predicted time frame.

I was mostly able to follow, but wow, you used some many words and symbols I had never heard before. That was like drinking from a firehose

Most of this info was way over my head, but I have to say great video! You deserve way more subscribers than you have, the way you explain this stuff is top notch.

I’m pretty sure some southerners already pronounce feather as feader.

The end sounds like the daily dose of internet guy

literally been waiting for a video about this glad i found it just now lol

I don't think that British English and American English will become unintelligible because in this day and age we are very interconnected with eachother globally, and we'll probably get influenced by each other and other languages instead.

/p/ to /f/ has happened in a dialect of Benagli, known as Sylheti - for example, /pani/ (Standard Bengali) "water" is pronounced /fani/ (Sylheti variant). This is a bilabial fricative and sounds a lot like the English phoneme /f/ which is a labio-dental fricative but has a somewhat softer sound.

That was fascinating. Your monologue was very interesting because for a moment there, I thought I was listening to Dutch.

i think this divergence or whatever its called will not happen as quickly as it did because we have many readily accessible resources for everybody and language is just going to get more standardised

It’s cool to see you noticed the AAVE influence on modern American English. It seems like there’s been a slight vowel change in younger generations because of that (ex. The ‘u’ sound in words like “food” have become narrower to an /u/ sound)

4:35 That's already the Plautdietsch word for fox lol

Your end monologue was just a drunk yinzer😂😂😂 I can’t wait for future American

"Past tense will become regularized" The internet: yeet / yote

This was an absolutely excellent analysis and projection for American English in the future! If you have the time, I’d like to share some notes on it. (I apologize in advance for the length, but I hope you read it). A few things that do stand out to me are: 1) Spelling and it’s effects on spoken vernaculars: The standardization of spelling slows the rate of language change, at least within specific sociolects, and unless people either start altering our orthographic habits or are reduced in literacy, the existence of a “standard” dialect closely resembling our own today isn’t likely to change anytime soon. 2) Vowel Centralization: The other thing about your construction that I noticed is how it (however admittedly low-confidence) projects that many vowels will feature lowering or centralization, (or at least clustering in the middle). This is certainly a trend in rapid speech, and could spread to all vowels, the effect would render a bewildering number of homophones, even accounting for consonant changes. Thus, I have mixed confidence in this prediction. 3) Glottalization: One element you didn’t touch on is the occurrence of Glottalization and the glottal stop. There seems to be a pattern to English intervocalic vowel-hiatus which shows that if a final-vowel is identical to the following initial-vowel, and stress falls on the initial-vowel’s syllable, a glottal stop is inserted (marked below by an apostrophe [‘] ). However, if the stress is not on the initial-vowel, a glide is inserted and the initial vowel may or may not undergo lowering. For example: “He saw autumn.” >> He saw ‘áwtum “He eats” >> he ‘éets “He emotes” >> He ʸemótes > ...or ‘ar nót

8:31 If I'm not mistaken there is currently a new chain vowel shift happening to certain dialects in California right now

Maybe one of the hardest concepts to approach. But I would love to hear your take on "martian". Since it appears we may have sooner than later many humans there I think it's worth a shot. Obviously there is no current trend in a martian language since right now there isn't anyone on Mars, but you may choose american english as the base and countries of high international space activity as influence. (france, germany, italy, japan, etc.. Later on if things calm down maybe russia and china)

I really think the the changes will be accelerated in the Southern US, especially the Southeast where accents are already strong and extremely varied (some people get strong accents, some don't, even within the same city) and a very high population of Black and Hispanic folks. And I'm very excited to see "y'all" become more common, we desperately need a distinctly plural form of you. German has it (typically Ihr but also Sie), and I taught my German best friend to use it as a replacement, LOL.

Changing only the pronunciation and regularizing inflected forms does not make a new language. I would rather believe that instead of a dramatic sound shift there might be a tendency to avoid closed syllables. E.g. bid becoming /bi:/ and bit becoming /bi/. So dropping the last consonant triggers the development of tones and where the resulting homophones are unsustainable new words will be formed e.g bin becomes dabi (dust bin) and big becomes bibi (big big). But it is impossible to predict anything here.

I feel that American English and British English will relatively stay similar for as long as two conditions are met 1. America and Britain are still countries that exist 2. America and Britain have some form of true contact I personally think the 'Future American' you prescribed would probably end up happening to British English in a slightly different way, but still be able to understand each other

I’m going to come back to this video in 300 years and see if you’re right.

i think these videos need to be preserved

I agree with all of this apart from the over importance you give AAVE in effecting the shift, this effects some younger people in some areas of the USA, but in a lot of places most of the younger generation doesn't talk like this.

When you postulated the shift away from commonality between Brittish English and American English, I think you neglected to account for the effect of standardization of language through media. Because of shared media, the majority of native speakers seem to emulate what may be called a more 'standardized accent (i.e. Southern is less southern, New York is less New York etc). An small example of this effect was seen a while back when there were many American children that picked up a Brittish accent because of the popularity of Peppa Pig. It's the isolation of a population that creates linguistic differences. If we continue to be globalized, while we may have some regionalism in slang, the base, formal language will likely become more universal.

A year late to the video but I’m curious about how digital media will effect language change. Homogenization seems to already be happening, but I think that there’s a potential for it to slow down language change. This effect could come from both watching or listening to digital media and the more active way that Alexa/Siri/ etc. virtual assistants have fixed voices and will only listen if you speak the way they were trained.

My sister who is 14 and grew up in the south never used "ya'll" until she got tiktok. Plenty of people in our extended family use it, just not in our immediate, but tiktok was more influential than family.

Based on the example at the end, it sounds like the future will be pretty drunk.

Cool fanfic!! I would have mentioned the ongoing Northern Cities Vowel Shift at 8:39 alongside the NZE shift that already happened. It's also a clockwise shift in the US, but it keeps the vowels relatively low as opposed to the relatively high southern hemisphere English vowels. The wiki article is a good read!

As a fellow language nerd, there are 2 phonological changes here that I don't ever see happening in Future American. 1, [h] becoming [x] before [i] and [ɪ]. This one just puzzles me. I have never seen a language that specifically changes [h] to [x] only before front vowels. How did you get to this conclusion? Wouldn't all instances of [h] become silent? 2, [w] becoming [ɣʷ]. You said that this is due to Spanish influence, but Spanish already has [w], it's , like in , and I've never heard any Spanish people replace [w] for [ɣʷ]. Granted, your confidence here was pretty low, but you still put it in the end. Other than those 2 though, I agree with you on everything else said.

Speaking as a native Texan from Occupied New York Urban District, an Ondie, these changes are mostly correct but you really missed the spelling & grammar changes that came form the 2247 adoption of what y'all call emojis. That was big, had a hard time reading this until I got my AI Patron to grant me access to books. Thank you, Mr. Llama-sir, I won't abuse the privilege...

For me (a non native english speaker) the end of the video sounded like just another weird English accent 😅

Love the concept of future American when your speed and accent is already difficult for me to follow as a brit 😂

If you’re watching this in 2700, let us know how accurate he is!

I was recommended this video and this is simply not the right kind of content for me. Idk why youtube thought I could understand this, but i'm sure it's very well made and informative!

I've thought of this for a story I wrote a while back, taking place hundreds of years in the future where the main characters spoke a descendent of English spoken on a distant colony world. Though there are no examples of how they speak in the story, in one chapter, the main character mentions the differences between modern American English and its descendent, at least in grammar, pointing out how in some areas the language got simpler (lack of present tense verb endings), but in other areas it wasn't so much (more contractions). A few things I can see happening you didn't mention in this video: 1) loss of present tense of "to be", so zero copula, much like in Russian. This would probably make it so the present continuous is just a participle, again, much like how Russian treats its past tense. 2) more contractions arising and the current ones becoming obligatory in speech (if not affected by the zero copula change above). Not sure what these would be, though I can see them arising from the reduction of vowels in modal verbs. Maybe something like Ic'n or I'n from I can, I't from I might, etc. These could eventually develop into new prefixes for verbs in the shift from an analytic to an agglutinative structure. 3) loss of natural gender distinction in pronouns, merging he and she into they. "It" could also end up lost and absorbed into they as well. This would necessitate a new plural third person pronoun, th'all, mirroring y'all. This mirrors the loss of pronoun gender in languages such as Persian.

Your closing statement made me think you were going to tell me plants crave electrolytes.

Hopping on all these now. Gotta get ahead of the curb.

Just wait for the great grammar shift of 2065