The future of English

[Edric O]

[c=#00dd00]We have an unusual number of linguistically-inclined people here, so I thought it might be fun to speculate about the future of humankind's first universal lingua franca. English owes its current status to the fact that most of the world has been under the political, economic and cultural dominance of English-speaking nations for the past 200 years.

What will happen to English when that dominance is ended, one way or another? Will English break up into a family of languages, like Latin once did? Or will it be held together by the power of modern communications, and maybe even merge with one or more other languages to create a kind of Neo-Indo-European?[/c]

[SandChigger]

Interesting topic. :)

[c=#00dd00]What will happen to English when that dominance is ended, one way or another? Will English break up into a family of languages, like Latin once did? Or will it be held together by the power of modern communications, and maybe even merge with one or more other languages to create a kind of Neo-Indo-European?[/c]

Modern communications, higher literacy rates, and greater population mobility kinda throw a monkey wrench (adjustable spanner?) into the works and make it really difficult to predict much based on analogies with the past. Presumably a loss of political, economic, and cultural prestige would result in fewer non-native/foreign learners acquiring the language, but it might persist globally in certain specialized niches just as Latin remained the language of academic discourse in Europe, in addition to continuing to be spoken as a native language in various regions (countries). (Do you know any scientists or engineers who are going to be happy about having to learn to write up their work in Chinese?)

About the only thing we can say with absolute certainty is that languages continue to change as long as people use them.

I wouldn't hold out too much hope for a "Neo-Indo-European". Languages don't really "merge" all that frequently. (Or easily.) Generally what you get is one language acting as a substrate or matrix, providing the grammatical framework for example, while another (or several) provides the vocabulary, etc. (Think Franglais or Spanglish taken to extremes and passed down from one generation to the next.) True hybrids (or mixed or merged languages) require a high degree of bilingualism throughout a population. (And we'd be remiss in failing to mention here FH's Galach as "hybrid Inglo-Slavic", no? )

Here's a link to one guy's speculations about what American English might look like in 3000 AD:

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/futurese.html

[athanasios]

...humankind's first universal lingua franca.

This is questionable. Semitic (with its many local twists) was probably the first universal lingua franca.-If we can talk about lingua franca. Millions of Chinese and Indians don't speak English. So both the terms 'first' and 'universal' are questionable.

Nevertheless my guess is that we will return to semitic language.

[Lord J]

Gesturing and grunts?

[MrFlibble]

SandChigger is right to point out that the new technologies that allow instant communication over great distances have introduced new, unprecedented factors into the evolution of languages. There are always two opposite directions of language development, that is, divergence and convergence. For example, within one language, every speaker's idiolect is unique, even though individual differences might be barely noticeable to anyone except trained linguists; yet, on the other hand, there has to be a certain degree of uniformity of language for the speakers to achieve understanding. Presumably, one of the factors of language change is that already at the stage of acquisition, be it a child learning its first language or an adult studying a foreign language, the language acquired is not entirely an exact copy of the input received. The most striking thing here is not even the change in semantics (after all, every time a word is used in a new context, it gets a slightly different meaning) or the introduction of new words, but the change is pronunciation that happens across generations, with the speakers themselves being mostly unaware that they pronounce certain sounds differently compared to how their parents or grandparents do.

Getting back to the divergence/convergence tendencies, the former is usually thought to account for the split into dialects that has happened to any language so far. As a more or less homogeneous group of speakers becomes divided into several groups, due to migration for instance, the changes are no longer "synchronized" between the groups, and the dialects begin to develop in different directions. Of course, this is only one of the factors, the most common and natural one, - and throughout history other factors like conquest and assimilation, sociocultural trends, the impact of religions etc. etc. have been in play, influencing the evolution of languages in one way or another. The invention of the radio, television and the Internet seems to have greatly added to the resources of the convergence tendency. For example, the inhabitants of all regions of a country, however large, can be exposed to the language of a national standard variety on a regular basis thanks to TV and radio broadcasts. It is not to say that the divergence tendency is eliminated by TV and the Internet - far from it. But there is now a more powerful counterbalance to it, and the results of such a change are yet to be seen.

Generally, I find the comparison of the situation with modern-day English to Latin quite appropriate, except that English is still a very lively language with considerable stats for native speakers (and it is also involved in many areas of popular culture, not just academic discourse). As such, it is inevitably undergoing the diverging process, with lots of dialects and local varieties within the native-speaking domain, and just as many versions of it being used (and taught on a regular basis) as a second language in different countries. On the other hand, the Internet provides, at least in theory, a powerful tool for convergence, because, unlike TV or radio, Internet offers a two-way communication, and the speakers inevitably have to follow at least some minimal standards to be understood and thus communicate successfully. It's really a very huge, real-time (and mostly uncontrolled) experiment, and the effects may not be even noticeable yet.

However, the divergence/convergence tendencies are active within one language, or at least of what it perceived to be a single language. As for the merging of two or more languages into one, it really requires a high degree of command of those several languages in a population (=polylingualism), as SandChigger already said above. That way, the structures of those languages will be able to interact and thus possibly produce a hybrid. If this condition is not met, I think the influence of several languages on one another will most probably be limited to the borrowing of words and/or expressions. This is what can be observed in reality, with lots of English words being borrowed into other languages not because the target language lacks a word, but because they are perceived as "trendy" (I was really appalled to find out that the conservative German language that had created, in the past, many words for new concepts from native elements where other European languages were content with borrowings, adopted the word "cool"). That being said, I suppose that the merging of several languages into one (and not just excessive use of shared vocabulary or word borrowing) is not a likely perspective, at least in foreseeable future.

[SandChigger]

Since no one seems interested in cleaning this mess up...

This is questionable. Semitic (with its many local twists) was probably the first universal lingua franca.

NO, it wasn't. There has never been a time when one Semitic language was spoken by some member of almost every group of humans on the planet.

-If we can talk about lingua franca.

Why couldn't we talk about them?

Millions of Chinese and Indians don't speak English.

So what? The point is that millions of Chinese and Indians DO speak English. The point is that there is no country on this planet where no one at all speaks English. There's someone EVERYWHERE. Why, there's even someone who speaks English (or at least uses it online) in the goat-herding mountain villages of backwater Greece!

So both the terms 'first' and 'universal' are questionable.

No, both terms are SPOT ON (correct). English is the FIRST language to be spoken and understood as widely AROUND THE WORLD as it is. "Universal" here doesn't mean that EVERY person in the world speaks it. Just that almost everywhere SOMEONE speaks it. Substitute "global" if "universal" is giving you sphincter spasms, m'kay?

Nevertheless my guess is that we will return to semitic language.

When Hell freezes over. There's no "returning" to be done.

But humoring your suggestion, I don't foresee the Israelis taking over the world any time soon, so Hebrew is out. And the Arabs are going to fade back into insignificance as soon as their oil runs out. So... which Semitic language are you thinking of? Amharic? Something sub-Saharan? DO tell. :)

(Of course, the question was, what will become of English, not "What will everyone end up speaking?")

[ErasOmnius]

I thought Rye's exposition about the future of English for the next thousand years to be very interesting. It assumes a continual and constant degrading of the level of literacy of English-speaking peoples.

[SandChigger]

It assumes a continual and constant degrading of the level of literacy of English-speaking peoples.

What specifically did he write that gave you that idea?

[athanasios]

... Why, there's even someone who speaks English (or at least uses it online) in the goat-herding mountain villages of backwater Greece!

Most English words are Greek or Semitic.

Greek evolved from Pelasgic which was a dialect of Semitic.

So... which Semitic language are you thinking of? Amharic? Something sub-Saharan? DO tell. :)

Greek.:P

...

Proto-Semitic as a second language

[SandChigger]

Most English words are Greek or Semitic.

No, they are not. Words of original GERMANIC Anglo-Saxon origin are in many cases cognate with Greek (and Latin) words, but the words of undeniable Greek (and Latin) origin are later LEARNED borrowings. Semitic is a completely unrelated language family and any words of Semitic origin are borrowings as well.

Greek evolved from Pelasgic which was a dialect of Semitic.

No, Greek is an Indo-European language, like English and Latin and Sanskrit and Persian. It's not Semitic, even if there are old Semitic loanwords in it.

Proto-Semitic as a second language

The keyword there being SECOND language. There's no denying there were linguistic exchanges between people who were interacting economically and culturally. There would probably have been a wide range of people with different language abilities, from those who could speak only a pidgin version sufficient for bartering, to full bilinguals. The Greeks learned to write from the Phoenicians, but that doesn't mean that Greek was also a Semitic language. (For comparison: the Japanese and Koreans learned to write from the Chinese. AND they borrowed a lot of Chinese words. But neither Japanese or Korean is "genetically" related to Chinese: they're from completely unrelated language families.)

Either way, I don't see Greece ever again attaining a position of global dominance, so it seems very unlikely that the world will ever want to start learning Greek in a big way.

[ErasOmnius]

What specifically did he write that gave you that idea?

In his example, I did not see any language complexities occurring.

Such as the ones that happened in the Anglo world of the 1800s, during the great spreading of literacy that occurred in that century. He seems to be proposing a gradual shortening of words, a gradual loss of silent vowels.

[athanasios]

No, they are not. Words of original GERMANIC Anglo-Saxon origin are in many cases cognate with Greek (and Latin) words, but the words of undeniable Greek (and Latin) origin are later LEARNED borrowings. Semitic is a completely unrelated language family and any words of Semitic origin are borrowings as well.

Is something wrong with you? What's the difference? So according to wikipedia 30% from Greek or according to some works 100.000 - 200.000. Of course as time passes by and more research is done the number will increase.

And about cognate? Of course they are cognate because they are derived from Greek. They are NOT false cognates though.

No, Greek is an Indo-European language, like English and Latin and Sanskrit and Persian. It's not Semitic, even if there are old Semitic loanwords in it.

To what extend? Have you ever wondered? Because 'Arians' hide the truth?

The keyword there being SECOND language.

Is English FIRST language worldwide?

Greeks learned to write from the Phoenicians

What, what, WHAT? Where did you read that? Have you ever heard of Ideograms and Syllable Letters? The Greeks in later stages borrowed letters from the Phoenicians and formed the first true alphabet. Does 5260 BCE suffice? Or this? That is the origin of writing. By the time Phoenician alphabet developed there are scores of writings in Greece, Cyprus, and other countries.

Either way, I don't see Greece ever again attaining a position of global dominance, so it seems very unlikely that the world will ever want to start learning Greek in a big way.

The future will show, but with the rate Greek vocabulary is utilized to create new words for scientific and technical terms, it may even be the case right now! ;-)

[SandChigger]

In his example, I did not see any language complexities occurring.

Such as the ones that happened in the Anglo world of the 1800s, during the great spreading of literacy that occurred in that century.

I have no idea what you mean by "language complexities" or what you think happened in the "Anglo world" in the 19th century with the spread of literacy. Please explain more fully. But keep in mind that spoken language is primary and written only secondary, and that written language is usually more conservative and slower to change (=reflect developments in the spoken) than spoken language. The interactions between the two aren't simple, of course.

He seems to be proposing a gradual shortening of words, a gradual loss of silent vowels.

Yes? Why is that problematic? It's a phenomenon that Frank Herbert referred to when he shortened Arrakis to Rakis and Caladan to Dan.

You know that "Lord" you call out to in the darkness all the time? The word was originally hlāfweard "bread-keeper (lit. loaf-ward)". Shorter and fewer vowels now than then. Hmmm...

Anyway, I see no evidence from you that the author assumes "a continual and constant degrading of the level of literacy of English-speaking peoples." Literacy is the ability to read and write. People reading and writing shorter words than we use now does not mean they will be any less literate than we.

Unless you want to say that most of the modern world is illiterate because we don't read Latin?

[SandChigger]

Is something wrong with you?

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

—Thomas Gray

What's the difference? So according to wikipedia 30% from Greek or according to some works 100.000 - 200.000. Of course as time passes by and more research is done the number will increase.

A preponderance of Greek ROOTS in learnèd scientific and academic terminology rarely used by the majority of speakers does not make English a derivative of Greek. English is still a Germanic language.

And about cognate? Of course they are cognate because they are derived from Greek. They are NOT false cognates though.

No. For example, the English word father (OE fæder) and Greek word πατήρ are COGNATES because they derive from a common, older source (Indo-European). The English word does not derive from the Greek. By contrast, the word hydrogen is composed of Greek roots, but it's a later coinage. (And a borrowing, too, in BOTH English and Greek, since it was evidently coined in the late 18th century by a Frenchman! So not a cognate.)

To what extend? Have you ever wondered? Because 'Arians' hide the truth?

You're even less subtle in pulling out your conspiracy theories, outright prejudices and nationalistic agenda than ErasOmnius. (Aren't you embarrassed pulling out such a feeble thing in public for everyone to see?)

Is English FIRST language worldwide?

Did anyone speak Proto-Semitic in Norther Europe? In China? In North or South America? There were people worldwide who lived out their entire lives without ever hearing a single word of the language spoken.

What, what, WHAT? Where did you read that? Have you ever heard of Ideograms and Syllable Letters? The Greeks in later stages borrowed letters from the Phoenicians and formed the first true alphabet.

"Borrowing letters" and "learning to write"... what's the difference? The links you edited in after I started writing this are to an object from about three millennia before the Greeks arrived in Greece. (Or is that an "Arian" thing again?)

The future will show, but with the rate Greek vocabulary is utilized to create new words for scientific and technical terms, it may even be the case right now! ;-)

Greek roots may be used to coin new technical terminology, but it won't make the language Greek.

[athanasios]

From now on it gets pointless to reply to your comments...

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

—Thomas Gray

...

For example, the English word father (OE fæder) and Greek word πατήρ are COGNATES because they derive from a common, older source (Indo-European).

Good example to prove your ignorance and that of the majority of swallow water linguists.

The world is NOT of Indo-European origin.

The word is of Semitic origin:

Root verb f.t.r. : create, give birth, give start,, give existence. Passive: created, produced, ...

... sorry no time to expand now as theme is very long, but in brief:

father: physical father

ab, ebou, abou: legal father

... and from the same root comes the English be.

[ErasOmnius]

You're even less subtle in pulling out your conspiracy theories, outright prejudices and nationalistic agenda than ErasOmnius. (Aren't you embarrassed pulling out such a feeble thing in public for everyone to see?)

As far as this thread goes, I am not sure I understand what you think I'm trying to accomplish. I simply said that the Author of the future history of the English language seemed to be indicating there would be a gradual degradation of the language. Or maybe it's not degradation to lose non-pronounced letters in words?

What is sad to see is the loss of using specific words that are more accurate in meaning due to creeping illiteracy.

[SandChigger]

From now on it gets pointless to reply to your comments...

You didn't realize that I was just humoring you to draw out more of the idiocy you've bought into, did you?

Good example to prove your ignorance and that of the majority of swallow water linguists.

"Swallow water"? Is that a Greek expression? I think maybe the word you wanted was "gullible". Look in the mirror.

The world is NOT of Indo-European origin.

The world? I wasn't talking about the world. I was talking about the English and Greek languages.

The word is of Semitic origin:

Root verb f.t.r. : create, give birth, give start,, give existence. Passive: created, produced, ...

Utter nonsense. If we were talking about mother, that might be more convincing semantically.

What is interesting about FTR, though, is I believe it was the source of futar in Dune. :)

... sorry no time to expand now as theme is very long, but in brief:

father: physical father

ab, ebou, abou: legal father

Huh?

... and from the same root comes the English be.

No. be and been derive from the same root as Latin fui and fio and Greek φύω/φύειν.

Seriously, where are you getting all this crap from? Is there a book by some whackjob Greek academic or fringe website you're referring to?

[athanasios]

Which root dude? You are ignorant.

And you are right for my spelling errors. Loosing sleeping time to answer to people who don't understand is not a good idea.

[SandChigger]

As far as this thread goes, I am not sure I understand what you think I'm trying to accomplish.

I think that if let run free you would eventually bring it round somehow to the crap I've seen you post in other threads.

I simply said that the Author of the future history of the English language seemed to be indicating there would be a gradual degradation of the language. Or maybe it's not degradation to lose non-pronounced letters in words?

And I'm saying that there is no such implication. Language change is not "degradation". That's a value judgment that linguists don't make. Change is change.

"Non-pronounced letters" actually make learning to read and write more difficult; losing them might actually facilitate the process. For example, most speakers of English have not pronounced the fricative consonant that used to follow the vowel in "night" for at least a couple of centuries now, but we still write that "gh" when we could just write "nite". (Compare German "Nacht". And notice that even "nite" retains a silent "e" at the end to indicate how the quality of the "i".) That's what I meant about writing being conservative: our standard orthography preserves the pronunciation of hundreds of years ago. (Of course, the English situation isn't as bad as in Chinese, where the limited parts of the characters that do reflect pronunciation record the language of thousands of years ago. Since sound change is regular, some of the characters still "rhyme", but the majority have diverged widely. And Japanese before WW II was the same as English is today: it preserved the pronunciation of the Heian classical period around the end of the first millennium. So Japanese children had to learn to write tefutefu for what they called chôchô "butterfly". The Japanese seem to have survived a major change in orthography without too much psychic scarring. But then, it was forced on them.)

Again, though, it's a question of orthography and literacy, not basic language change. Languages change.

What is sad to see is the loss of using specific words that are more accurate in meaning due to creeping illiteracy.

I think it's sad when people don't pay attention to what they're writing or take the time to be more careful, but I don't see the demise of Western civilization (or the "Anglo world"?) anytime soon because of it.

[SandChigger]

Which root dude? You are ignorant.

The same Indo-European root, moron. NOT a Semitic root.

I ask again: what's the source of all this crap you spout?

[athanasios]

Those writings are too precious to share with those who lack proper knowledge and respect . Do your own research.

If you want crap research/studies here you go:

www.georgiadesbooks.com/ (The bookstore/editions of a Member of the Greek Parliament.)

http://www.liako.gr/ (The bookstore/editions of a fanatic Greek Orthodox who was previously working for NATO.)

Yet you can find some useful stuff even there. Especially in the first one. The latter is mostly copying from fringe web sites.

[Edric O]

For once, Chigger, I can applaud you for making such a serious effort to fight ignorance. I'm not even sure what argument Athanasios is trying to make: That Indo-European and Semitic languages belong to the same family? That Proto-Semitic is at the origin of all present languages on Earth? In any case, it's so ridiculous that it doesn't even merit response. Kudos to you for responding anyway.

Now, back on topic:

SandChigger is right to point out that the new technologies that allow instant communication over great distances have introduced new, unprecedented factors into the evolution of languages.

So would you say that we are currently going through a major turning point in the evolution of human language, in the sense that future language change will be profoundly different from the change seen in the past?

Getting back to the divergence/convergence tendencies, the former is usually thought to account for the split into dialects that has happened to any language so far. As a more or less homogeneous group of speakers becomes divided into several groups, due to migration for instance, the changes are no longer "synchronized" between the groups, and the dialects begin to develop in different directions. Of course, this is only one of the factors, the most common and natural one, - and throughout history other factors like conquest and assimilation, sociocultural trends, the impact of religions etc. etc. have been in play, influencing the evolution of languages in one way or another. The invention of the radio, television and the Internet seems to have greatly added to the resources of the convergence tendency. For example, the inhabitants of all regions of a country, however large, can be exposed to the language of a national standard variety on a regular basis thanks to TV and radio broadcasts. It is not to say that the divergence tendency is eliminated by TV and the Internet - far from it. But there is now a more powerful counterbalance to it, and the results of such a change are yet to be seen.

This is more or less what I was thinking. In the future we should expect to see less linguistic diversity, both within languages (fewer dialects) and between them (fewer languages).

This trend towards convergence may be obscured by the fact that, as one language spreads and replaces others (thus reducing overall diversity), that language may acquire new dialects - and therefore give off the superficial impression of increasing diversity. I'm thinking of English here. The number of English dialects is probably increasing. But this is because English is slowly replacing other languages. Speakers of those languages switch over to speaking a new dialect of English instead. So the general trend is towards convergence (people that used to speak different languages move towards speaking different dialects of English).

I suppose that the merging of several languages into one (and not just excessive use of shared vocabulary or word borrowing) is not a likely perspective, at least in foreseeable future.

Ok, but what about English replacing other languages, while at the same time absorbing much of their vocabulary?

This is what can be observed in reality, with lots of English words being borrowed into other languages not because the target language lacks a word, but because they are perceived as "trendy" (I was really appalled to find out that the conservative German language that had created, in the past, many words for new concepts from native elements where other European languages were content with borrowings, adopted the word "cool").

This is pure politics at work. English is the language of the world's rulers. Therefore English words are imbued with an air of superiority - what you call "trendy". To speak English is to identify yourself as a member (or aspiring member) of the privileged classes. To use native words instead of English borrowings is to identify yourself as a commoner.

This means that the fate of English loanwords and other borrowings may well depend on how American global dominance is ended. If the United States simply passes on the torch to a friendly power - or if America collapses and is mourned and seen as a lost beacon of civilization (like the Roman Empire was) - then English may very well remain associated with positive qualities for many more centuries. It could remain the language of science or other elite pursuits. In that case, English borrowings would entrench themselves into their adopted languages and probably every language in the world will end up sounding at least a little bit English.

On the other hand, if American dominance is overthrown, either physically (through war and revolution) or symbolically (the new global hegemon defines itself as hostile to the old American order for whatever reason, even if no actual blood was shed between them), then English may suddenly find itself perceived as the language of the defeated oppressors. In that case, we can expect English borrowings to be purged out of the host languages. English would still be spoken as a first language by a significant fraction of Humanity, but its influence over other languages would come to an abrupt end.

So in other words, the fate of English may well depend on whether the Chinese choose to define themselves as the heirs or the grave-diggers of the American empire. :)

[Edric O]

I simply said that the Author of the future history of the English language seemed to be indicating there would be a gradual degradation of the language. Or maybe it's not degradation to lose non-pronounced letters in words?

Of course it isn't. It's spelling reform. It makes it easier for people to learn the language, and reduces confusion by making spelling errors far less common.

My first language (Romanian) is one where spelling and pronunciation are almost perfectly aligned. When I learned English spelling, I couldn't believe what a messy piece of crap it was. Your vowels are all wrong! To my continental European ears, it seems that you pronounce a like ei or ea (or a number of other things), e like i (except when it's not), u like iu, and of course oo is u... gah! No wonder so many children can't learn to spell. No wonder it's difficult to avoid mixing up right and write and rite. English is even worse than French, with its obsessive hatred of word-final sounds.

Siriəsli, Inglish wud bi far iziər tu lərn if yu rout it laik dhis.

What is sad to see is the loss of using specific words that are more accurate in meaning due to creeping illiteracy.

Such as...?

And by the way, what is this nonsense about "creeping illiteracy"? You do realize that literacy means being able to read and write, yes? Writing "incorrectly" (by whatever standards you care to use) is NOT a loss of literacy. As long as you can write in a way that makes your intended readers understand you, then you are literate. End of story. It does not matter if you write proper English grammar or l33tsp34k. The purpose of language is to convey meaning; the precise way in which it does that is unimportant.

You can be sure that people in the future will write and speak in ways that are not understandable to us. Just like Old English is not understandable to you:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,

þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

...so what? As long as they can understand each other, that's what matters.

[SandChigger]

One final point, Edric:

Those writings are too precious to share with those who lack proper knowledge and respect .

So you don't even have enough confidence in the things you've read and gullibly believed to post links or the names of the authors and their books? That says all I needed to know. If you have to have "proper knowledge and respect" [read: indoctrination and mindless acceptance?], I think I'll pass: the knowledge I've had for thirty years still serves me quite well.

Do your own research.

Always have.

[SandChigger]

So would you say that we are currently going through a major turning point in the evolution of human language, in the sense that future language change will be profoundly different from the change seen in the past?

This was directed at MrFlibble, but if I may... I don't think the nature of linguistic change will differ much, just the speed. Communications media will exercise a leveling effect, but at the same time they'll allow innovations to spread much more quickly. How much change occurs how quickly will depend on the balance that evolves between those two competing effects.

This is more or less what I was thinking. In the future we should expect to see less linguistic diversity, both within languages (fewer dialects) and between them (fewer languages).

Maybe. But don't forget the "sociolects" or "group dialects" that people create or emphasize and maintain as badges of group identity... they'll remain a source of diversity. Even if it's just minor diversity within a single language.

Ok, but what about English replacing other languages, while at the same time absorbing much of their vocabulary?

There's a limit to how much permeation can be achieved beyond the region of absorption, though. Even if the global English lexicon grows to millions of words, the average literate speaker only recognizes between 100,000 ~ 150,000. (There are a lot of estimates out there, btw, and I'm just using a fuzzy/fudgy one off the top of my head. ) Someone in New Mexico probably won't be exposed to much of the Hindi-based vocabulary of Indian English.

This is pure politics at work. English is the language of the world's rulers. Therefore English words are imbued with an air of superiority - what you call "trendy". To speak English is to identify yourself as a member (or aspiring member) of the privileged classes. To use native words instead of English borrowings is to identify yourself as a commoner.

I don't agree that "trendiness" is simply a function of politics, but no argument with what you wrote about the fate of English borrowings in other languages.