Question: What is the future of language? Will we communicate using a more complex form of speech, or will it all be simplified?

Hannah Little answered on 19 Jun 2013:

This is a very interesting question and actually both are probably true in different languages. Languages with very big speaker populations with large numbers of second language speakers (like English) are more likely to become more simple in their structure, and languages with very small or shrinking numbers of speakers can become more complex in their structure. Why this is is still a big debate in linguistics. Do any of you have any theories?