Can linguists project how a language will change in the future?

[raccoon]

And narrow it down according to where it's spoken? I mean, projecting British English, AMerican English, etc.?

[SheilaT]

1. Personally, I doubt it.

I know that there are some serious attempts out there to do so, but it's my feeling that language change is far too idiosyncratic to predict.

I am aware of some kind of project which tracks on going language change in the spoken form, by doing periodic interviews which include recording people. I do know it has tracked pronunciation changes that the users are generally unaware of. I saw a show about this on PBS a decade or more ago. Perhaps someone could look at several decades of that research and attempt to project into the future.

[raccoon]

2. I'd love to see that PBS show. Do you recall the title? nt

[SheilaT]

3. Have no idea.

It was probably ten years or more ago.

What I was fascinated by was the way they were tracking how actual individuals' pronunciation -- accent -- changed over time.

[geardaddy]

7. I think it was called "The Story of English"

[Odin2005]

4. Not really, but I projected English 2000 years into the futire for the heck of it.

http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Eridanian

[raccoon]

5. You must've studied linguistics to come up with all that. nt

[Odin2005]

6. No professionally, just an interest of mine.

:)