Mcwhorter's What The World Will Speak In 2115

Alondra Cervantes

McWhorter’s What the World Will Speak in 2115

September 5th, 2016

Lifeless, somber, and with complete absence of sound we find ourselves in a “hole,” existing but not living. As we begin to interact with one another through basic sounds and meager words we realize the “hole” is much larger now. In fact, it is no longer a hole but more like a vast stretch of land. Spectrums of color explode into the sky as life forms begin to emerge and take shape and we begin to speak a common “language,” the language that is the sunshine in an otherwise gloomy, desolate world. Language is the method of communicating using spoken or written words between individuals within a community or country. According to McWhorter (2015),

As a result of China’s growing economy, it is believed that Mandarin Chinese will become the official language of the world. This however, proves to be overly optimistic because the language is too complex for adults to learn if they are not native to the country. It is primarily up to the adults within the culture to pass down the native languages so that they do not disappear over time. The reasons for disappearing are because they are used infrequently, lost in urbanization, and are too complex. Once the language is no longer written and taught to the future generation, it becomes a thing of the past. Urbanization and complexity go hand in hand due to the fact that most of these children’s parents were forced to relocate and learn the dominant system of communication. In doing so, these parents adapted new ways of interacting that were not as difficult as the ones they were accustomed to thus allowing them to neglect their own. Yiddish however, is the exception to these clauses. According to McWhorter (2015), “Yiddish is often described as a dying language” (p. 4). Although the language is still being taught to young children, it is not being written down as often thus allowing for the idea that it is not a “true”

Although most firms now conduct business in English, they still speak their native language within the country. Many of these firms learn just enough to be able to conduct business transactions because the nonnative English speakers find that it is difficult to learn the entire language when their native language has different values and meaning to the same word. Indian English for example, is difficult to learn for non-Indians because of the differences in sentence structure, indirect style, and accents and pronunciations. This is similar to the example in McWhorter’s article that explains how words and phrases are developed as people pick up habits and create buzzwords. These new simplified versions of vocabulary and grammar become streamlined as future generations of children are taught in schools and influenced by the media. With English as the common language for communication it will to some extent effect the primary language used. McWhorter (2015) stated that “All of the optimized languages remain full languages in every sense of the term” (p. 7). With that said, although these languages do remain full they are not used “fully” in terms of the simplification. These new languages will become mixtures of both English and the language native to their