#and it's very easy for someone without a background in linguistics to adopt in their writing

[ferusaurelius]

Nihlus Fic Headcanons

My latest fic, The husbandry of victory is blood (on AO3), is basically a Nihlus Kryik and Mass Effect mercenary/batarian culture headcanon backstory where @expertmakodriver reacted by asking me to ... please translate w/e I was on about.

So here it is! The English translation of my Nihlus Kryik worldbuilding art project.

In reality, this type of character sketch is something I would normally keep private. But since we need more Nihlus content, both it and the headcanon basis are all public and free to use and/or transform as you see fit without attribution.

Please, I’m begging anyone who might want to use any of these ideas in whole or in part: write it and save me from having to do it myself. You do not need to credit me, but I would appreciate a link to your work so I can promote it! :)

Tfw you actually need to annotate your own fic...

Long post - everything is under the cut!

Organized by the order each element is referenced in the fic, with the divided sections labeled as [NUMBER] on the left.

Edited 5/28/2021 because I forgot some things.

[Title] “The husbandry of victory is blood” - Taken from “Sparta Says No” by A.E. Stallings. I actually thought about using this as an alternative title for another fic, but I figured this background sketch for Nihlus more aligned with the themes. I strongly suggest you go and read the poem without taking my word for the following interpretation: the contrast between growth and destruction, and civilization built through conquest or through agriculture. I enjoy the high-level commentary on society. The metaphorical encounter between farming and war is something I wanted to bring to my work, and I wanted the title to color the tone of the epigraph from Virgil’s Georgics. On a more personal level -- my grandfather joined the military in part to seek out opportunities he wouldn’t have had if he’d stayed on a farm, and I decided to draw on that experience for Nihlus.

[Epigraph] - Virgil, Georgics Book I (tr. H. R. Fairclough) - I picked a public domain translation of the poem and went hunting around for a line that had juxtaposed farming and war imagery. It’s a fairly common classical motif! Wars often stopped and started based on the seasonal harvest and the necessity of feeding the community and supplying the troops. You can’t fight a war and gather in wheat at the same time. Digging up the weapons pf the dead in farm fields is a powerful image. My take on Nihlus draws on the tension between fighting and negotiation that I also connect to the symbolic opposition between agriculture and warfare. The Georgics are also just really neat.

[1] Half-face markings - I could write a whole headcanon post on turian colony markings and how mercenary modifications fit in with them (and I will at some point). You’ll see in this fic that I regularly use terms for how much ‘real estate’ the colony markings cover. My HC is that there are variations of colony markings that can be worn as minimalist (smallest critical details), half-face (upper or lower, may include simple full-face designs without a lot of paint), full-face (both, usually more elaborate), and full-crest (what it sounds like on the tin). These are all just different styles and up to personal preference, though there are a few cultural connotations or stereotypes about people who choose which version. Plus I felt really bad for people who might have super-complicated full versions of markings and wanted to give them something more aesthetically lightweight that would have the same meaning. 

[1] Batarian trader patois - An evolving lingua franca with many dialects. Nihlus is uncannily fluent at the one spoken in the Terminus, which is mutually intelligible with the dialect spoken in the Attican Traverse. This is a language without a formal codex that sounds a little strange even to batarians born into the Hegemony. Since batarians have been around and in contact with the Citadel and council races for ~1000 years longer than turians (true if the timeline on the wiki is correct, but I haven’t done the backdating myself), I HC that batarians have a more refined and developed spacer and trading culture. Traders and smugglers are infamous for liking to be beyond Hegemony control and when their government withdrew from Council space, they just kept up with business as usual. Many of them have a shared religion based on debate and argument over the meaning of the Pillars of Strength and the way to live an honorable life.

[1] Terminus languages - They exist, both with and without formal linguistic codexes available to ordinary citizens of Council space.

[1] Hierarchy basic - The common turian colonial language spoken in Hierarchy space. Nihlus was born outside turian space, so he had to learn it from his parents and from educational videos. While he has only a vague accent, certain words and phrases he uses come off as very strange to turians who were raised in Hierarchy space.

[1] Draughts - A popular ancient board game dating back to before the Romans. Pieces move by sliding on the board or jumping over each other to capture. I originally wanted to use river stones as a metaphor, but Nihlus at that age had never seen naturally flowing water. I figure everyone has a version of a capturing/marker/stones sort of game.

[1] Amma and appa - Batarian words for grandmother and grandfather. Nihlus is a bit of a ‘surprise’ baby for his parents. This nice older smuggler couple are longtime associates of the mercenary group and, while they have never done fighting themselves and have no children of their own, they are friends of his mother and father and are absolutely delighted to “adopt” him. He is their smol spikey grandson, they teach him to speak and act like a proper young batarian, and anyone who argues with them about how exactly he is related will end up on the wrong side of an airlock.

[1] Vatar - A canon planet in the Mass Effect universe with a cold and inhospitable environment, located a short relay hop away from Omega (“downtown”) in the Terminus Systems. Mercenary groups have outposts dug into the surface. I rolled with it. 

[1] Falx - The turian name of the mercenary group Nihlus is born into. A falx is both a Roman entrenching tool and also the most overhyped Dacian curved blade weapon you’ll see in ancient art and literature. In essence? The word has been used to refer to both weapons and farming tools for a very long time. The group is a batarian-lead mercenary company with a very long history of turian cooperation, which enjoys stable political ties to other such batarian splinter groups. Traders and smugglers often form the links between them. The batarian word for members of this same group translates as “harvesters” or “reapers.” HAHA. And you thought this was a no-Reapers AU…

[1] Truce customs - A batarian mercenary outpost thing. If you’re friendly and in mechanical distress, or if you have something to trade, it’s not unusual to head to a known group of mercenaries and ask for truce on tightbeam broadcast to get someone to meet you or actively flag your ship with their ident codes (aka: make you temporarily register in local space as belonging to their ‘fleet’). This is usually for medical essentials, emergency mechanical trouble, and also serves as an informal way for Terminus merchants and traders to make a living without having to worry about being boarded every time they deliver the groceries. It’s considered a grave breach of etiquette to violate truce terms and those who do are hunted down as examples to the rest. Truce terms make “ordinary life” possible for outposts that are otherwise on the edge of traveled space.

[1] Trade-cloth - A canon quarian cultural object. Mentioned in the the fandom wiki and probably part of a quarian codex somewhere. Intricately patterned cloth is common on the Migrant Fleet, but the personal cloths are seldom given to outsiders. Nihlus’s gift is one used in trade, but displays a pattern with more ‘friendly’ cultural connotations than something that would be sold and mass-produced in a shop. It was made special for him by his childhood quarian friends. It’s something that it would be appropriate for him to wear like a scarf on formal occasions when he’s dealing with quarians, or when he’s invited to quarian parties or festivals.

[1] Colony crescents / Falx sickles - Yeah there’s some repetition here, but it’s mostly to contrast the two. I HC that Nihlus’s base colony markings are already curved. “Sickles” are embellishments which add a cutting or combative edgeline in some places and very overt stylized weaponry to standard colony markings. They are additions or alterations that are unique to mercenary groups and may read as “flamboyant” or “aggressive” because they are noticeably different in appearance to Hierarchy turians. This is more or less on purpose, and is a bit on the taboo side. One does not wear these additions or draw their markings in these styles without genuinely belonging to one of these groups -- the patterns are not easy to reproduce correctly or in the right places, and they are generally a source of stigma in Hierarchy basic training.

[1] Sand-bath - How you clean a turian when water is scarce and everyone has to share it.

[2] Draw and fire from retention - The shooting-sports specific term for “shooting from the hip.” Kinda. This breakdown of a scene from Collateral, one of my all-time favorite Michael Mann films, will give you an idea. All of the referenced gun techniques are also more or less real, and lining up your body posture so that it helps with aiming and putting the rounds where you want them to go is a real thing.  Nihlus has a great deal of practice in shooting as self-defense and was training alongside professionals from a young age. Going to the range is one of his hobbies (but not mine, I’m lame and that’s loud).

[2] Triginta Petra - A canon Mass Effect world that is a dustball home to hardscrabble turian farmers. Kavala Kryik’s family were some of the first colonists and they’ve been scratching a living from the surface since she was nine years old. They are very proud of this fact, since it gave them opportunities they wouldn’t have had on their native Oma Ker (also a canon turian world).

[2] Laskaris - Nihlus’s mother’s original family name. Kavala Laskaris. While I don’t have any particular headcanon about whether or not turians do the whole ‘changing surname’ thing when they marry or pair off or whatever, Kavala really liked both the alliteration and the overall aesthetic. Joked with Inaros Kryik, her husband and Nihlus’s father, that she only married him for his pretty colony markings.

[2] Lupulin - Literally, hop acids and the essential oils that you get from ‘hoppy’ beer. A direct reference to hops (Humulus lupulus) and brewing, because why not? Actually is a mild sedative and produces a bit of a chemical high.

[2] Stiletto - A pistol from Haliat armory (turian weapons manufacturer).

[2] Blooded sickles - Worn only by mercenaries who are full / fighting members of Falx or their direct allies. Batarians have their own culturally-coded marks, some of which have been adopted and/or adapted by their turian members as embellishments to colony markings. I HC that newer “commercial” groups like the Blue Suns and Nyreen’s Talons, without a shared cultural background, are imitating this style of marking rather than the other way around. Merc-born turians with old-style batarian trade connections tend to recognize each other through these symbols, which are used most often outside of Council space (i.e. the Terminus Systems and the Attican Traverse).

[2] Pillars of Strength - Canon batarian religious artifact. I treat them as a text or a particular philosophy that values free will and independent action as the signifiers of ‘strength.’ While I don’t have a fleshed out or specific HC for what the ‘tenets’ are, I do know that slave implants are treated as anathema.

[3] Struthious - A reference to Earth ostriches. Some kind of chicken-like prey animal that turians like to cook and eat. Mostly because the thought of Nihlus running around like a chicken to entertain his sisters made me laugh.

[4] Cutter - Bigger than a personal clipper and better armed, with living space for a crew. They come in various sizes and are smaller than frigates.

[4] Cup of mourning - A turian funerary ritual. On Taetrus, performed with a distinctive form of dark ale. Different colony groups have different cultural traditions.

[4] Thalia, Tomyris, and Traian - Nihlus’s three turian siblings. Thalia and Tomyris are his younger twin sisters. Traian is the youngest and his baby brother. While they’re only hinted at in this fic, I do plan to make some references to them in the Air Needing Light arc at some point. There’s also a chance they’ll get their own short!fic appearances.

[4] Hierarchy military grants - A HC pool of money that the Council races put up to fund large-scale basic training for anyone (turian or another client race) completing compulsory citizen service.

[5] Talons and suns - Generic references to other symbols that are common incorporations for mercenary groups. I HC that these were adopted and color-coded by the Blue Suns and the Talons rather than conceptually created by them! 

[5] Fuck the cause, we’ll die for a drink! - Profane versions of the turian Hierarchy anthem are popular drinking songs among the merc-born. If it’s a patriotic and well-known song, you can pretty much guarantee turian mercenaries have parodied it.  Awkward for colony-born squadmates who find these renditions hilarious and catchy—but also a little horrifying.

[6] Optio Sideris, 85th Atrax Legion, Fifth Cohort Operations Section - A one-off turian Blackwatch OC I may bring back in another fic at some point because I ended up liking her. The Hierarchy military organization borrows from the HCs I use for the Air Needing Light AU: 85th Atrax Legion is a joint special forces organizing legion made up of six cohorts. The 5th Cohort is informally known as Blackwatch, while the “Operations Section” is a generic term used by intelligence operators. Optio is a mid-tier leadership rank.

[6] Batarian body language - Batarian language and manners are highly dependent on physical cues according to the Mass Effect canon. I took this one step further with a HC that Nihlus is essentially a native speaker of turian-adapted gestures that translate successfully into batarian social patterns. This physical vocabulary is most refined and most present in culturally batarian mercenary and trading groups with a strong history of turian association and recruitment. While older turians can learn and approximate the gestures, they are best learned and absorbed in childhood. Nihlus “speaks” a form of gestural batarian that places him as a native of the Terminus Systems.

[6] Interrogating batarian prisoners - No torture involved! Optio Sideris trains Nihlus in a more practical form of intelligence gathering that involves building rapport, establishing trust, and remaining consistent. Even pirates or smugglers who would not normally give information to a Hierarchy patrol flotilla can be convinced to—if not speak—occasionally offer hints about the locations and activity of slavers. Nihlus is notable for actually being conversant in traditional batarian moral interpretations of the Pillars of Strength, as well as being able to walk the fine cultural line between guarded respect and abject deference. 

[6] Merc Red - Nihlus’s batarian nickname among the patrol flotilla’s prisoners. A sign of individual respect, since it contains no profanity and is just blandly descriptive.

[7] Broken weapons - A traditional sign of thanks between two non-allied mercenary groups when one has agreed to truce terms. Mostly symbolic.

[7] Tattoos - The permanent marking method of choice when turians are full-grown and have developed a strong preference for the color and personal style of their colony markings. Nihlus decides on a complex ‘full-crest’ Taetran colony pattern embellished with Falx blood sickles. This is more or less him being loud and proud about both his colony origins and his mercenary background, as well as putting them on an even footing by tattooing the entire pattern: mercenary symbols and all.

[eurosong]

My grand final review

Hey there, folks! It’s exhilaratingly close to the big moment, the beginning of this year’s grand final! Here's my rundown of the Eurovision grand final songs, in running order. I call this a "lights and shadows" list, as, for the sake of nuance, I've added something positive and some criticism for every song on the list. For those who missed it, this is the semi-skimmed version of this full-bodied critique of all the songs. Let's go!

Israel + If the hosts' robotic intro has put people to sleep, this will wake them up. - The lyrics make less sense than your average Edward Lear poëm. Rank: 24

Poland + Kasia has a good voice and sings with passion and conviction. - The song is an absolute dirge with no real sense of direction, and those rhymes are ridic. Rank: 17

Belarus: + Instant cute happiness, this is just so squeeeee - They could have fit another verse in to make the song less repetitive. Rank: 3

Austria: + He put a lót of work into promoting himself and his song, which is admirable. His covers of former ESC songs made him seem like a fan of the contest, which puts you in good steed with fellow fans. I think he got in the final by sheer force of personality. - Saccharine, plim-plom song. Those "hey naaaww" repetitions annoy the hell out of me! And I always mistrust someone so perma-cheerful. It comes across as forced, not quite right and makes me feel he's got human heads in his fridge at home. Rank: 21

Armenia: + Majestic. This song soars like the eagle of Artsvik's name. This kind of song is precisely why I love Armenia, a perfect mélange of traditional and modern that sounds like nothing else in the contest. Artsvik herself has got a special, almost regal poise. Feels like this song dropped out of outer space, love it. - She could have made it even better by including more dancers to closer emulate the surreal video. Rank: 4

Netherlands: + Their live vocals are impeccable. And as for the song topic, losing a beloved relative after seeing them battle a disease something, unfortunately, to which so many of us can relate, so it does pull on my heartstrings. - If they were a less popular country amongst eurofans, would folk consider the girls to be using their mother's sickness for sympathy rather than sympathising with them? My internal jury is out on that one. As for the music, it is derivative and dated - their voices deserve something a few decades closer to "contemporary." Rank: 8

Moldova + They perform this song with verve and do their best to bring the party. - This band's continued success goes to show how far getting adopted as a meme by confused American non-viewers of Eurovision can get you in the competition. Rank: 15

Hungary + Perhaps the contest's best example of how one can use dance to make the story of a song understood beyond linguistic boundaries. One of the most original songs in the contest, performed with passion, emotion and defiance, and certainly some of the strongest lyrics. - Many folk have an automatic dislike to rap at the contest and may get the wrong idea of his bars, seeing them as angry rather than as the deep and moving lyrics that they are. Rank: 2

Italy + Francesco embodies easy-going charm, and his satirical lyrics are amongst the contest's best. - The Eurovision version of the song has much less impact than the San Remo one; it slipped down by rankings because most of those biting and ironic lyrics were removed, leaving only half a verse where there had been two. Rank: 7

Denmark + What Anja does very well indeed is connecting with the audience. It's a song about intimacy, so the number of long close ups communicate that well - it feels as though she's singing right in front of us. - Musically generic, and the aforementioned intimacy is undermined by vox that are beyond the border of shouty. Rank: 13

Portugal + Magnificently moving, ethereal song that has the timeless quality of an instant classic. Sang beautifully in a way that shows nuance trumps power. I never thought a song from this decade's ESC could challenge to be my favourite ever Eurovision song, but this does. - Whilst his interpretation of the song through movement is a key part of its appeal to me, it distracts some folks. My own biggest problem is that I'd rather see Salvador (and Luísa) up on the stage for hours rather than three minutes. Rank: 1

Azerbaijan + Best Azeri entry ever. Something genuinely stylish, mysterious and modern. - The staging seems a bit "GCSE Drama" and gimmicky. Rank: 9

Croatia + It's impressive to be able to sing a duet with yourself in two completely different vocal styles. It's bloody hilarious, too. - This is the ultimate example of the saying: just because you cán, doesn't mean you shóúld. This is more cheese than a tower made of Camembert and his fake smiles are creepy. Rank: 14

Australia + As a piece of music, I quite like the style. With another singer, I might well enjoy this a fair bit. - He sings as though his nose has never been blown, and his forlorn looks to the camera that seem like that of a puppy dog who fears he's going to end up served in a dish of bosintang seem fake and are very disconcerting. Rank: 18

Greece + Only lasts three minutes. Demy must be a generous soul, given the way she allows the backing vocalists to sing more audibly than she. - It takes me about 20 minutes to walk from my home to my workplace or vice versa. In that time, I reckon I could write 4-5 songs of higher quality than this. Utterly generic and disposable pop with lyrics which are just a stream of thought-terminating clichés. Rank: 26

Spain + The song has brought me hours of amusement, because my kids have made a game of making mocking references to it whenever they can. Before a pronunciation face-to-face challenge, one lad psyched another out by saying "are you ready to do it... for your lover?" - Wasted money voting on other songs only for a jury of the "winner's" friends to overrule the public vote. So that they could force this masterpiece in which "do it for your lover" or "just do it" is said, on average, every four seconds. Grim. Rank: 25

Norway + I listened to the acoustic version of this and they sing it well, and it sounds much better acoustic. They seem like nice lads. - Cold, soulless, robotic, and with silly rhyming dictionary lyrics. Rank: 18

UK + The BBC has finally upped its game and tried to create an impressive show. Well done. - Shame the song itself is part sleeping pill, part excruciatingly annoying. "This maaadnnesss..." Rank: 23

Cyprus + For us linguaphiles and/or Armenophiles, there was a great moment in a video where Hovig and Artsvik spoke at the same time, he in Western Armenian, she in Eastern Armenian. That was cool. - Pales in comparison to Rag and Bone Man's "Human" from which the music was ripped off without mercy. Also, physicists across Europe are weeping as Hoving considers gravity to be something that lifts you up ánd halts your fall. Rank: 22

Romania + The second dose of "adorable couple" tonight. This shouldn't work, this unholy blend of rap and yodel, but for me, it so does. Mostly on how happy they are and how that transfers to me in the audience. They're just full on adorable. And you know, as much as it's great that Eurovision has a great many serious acts, I love that something so wild and just plain carefree can get so far too. There's a really good message of living for the moment in this, too. - Ilinca's vocals are powerhouse; Alex' are more underwhelming and that might see them penalised by the juries. Rank: 6

Germany + When she was in the final of that ridiculous national final, duelling against herself, it seems obvious Levina wanted the other, marginally less terribad Wildfire, and felt lumbered by the public's pick of Perfect Life. Despite that, she's done a great job of wholeheartedly promoting the song and has travelled far and wide. I respect the work ethic. She had by far and away the best vocals of the national final, too (shame she got this song which doesn't play to her strengths.) - Usually, I cannot look past the ripped-off Titanium intro. When I can, the lyrics blow my mind in the worst possible. Almost a sinner, nearly a saint, people... Rank: 16

Ukraine + I love a good rock song. This is not so great, but is like a mirage in a desert - giving sóme hope of refreshment, even if it ultimately doesn't deliver. - Runs out of steam after the first minute and becomes a bit of a sludge after a few repeated listens. Rank: 12

Belgium + Absolutely spellbinding studio version. 50-60 years ahead of last year's throwback from Belgium. Minimalist and moving. I hold out hope in a really good final performance. - Poor Blanche has looked as though someone was molesting her dead pet dog in front of her during the semi final. More traumatised than vulnerable. Rank: 5

Sweden + The music, whilst nothing special, is quite catchy. Especially the instrumental parts with the synth-based flourishes. - I find it hard to look past the ugly and forceful "rapey rhyme" style lyrics, or the cringeworthy stage show aptly and succintly referred to by a friend of mine as "fuckboys on treadmills." Rank: 20

Bulgaria + Polished and contemporary song, sung with confidence. - As anything other than background music, it leaves me cold. I really find the performer to be highly offputting, too. Rank: 11

France + Not as good or half as charming as Amir and his song, but not a bad effort. Very French, which from me can only be a compliment. - Feels quite inconsequential after they removed the most meaningful lines and replaced them with a cliché English chorus. Rank: 10

My pre-final top 10, thus: 1 - 🇵🇹 - Portugal 2 - 🇭🇺️ - Hungary 3 - 🇧🇾️ - Belarus 4 - 🇦🇲️ - Armenia 5 - 🇧🇪 - Belgium 6 - 🇷🇴️ - Romania 7 - 🇮🇹️ - Italy 8 - 🇳🇱️ - Netherlands 9 - 🇦🇿 ️- Azerbaijan X - 🇨🇵 - France

[ysawesomenotes]

The sound of 2066 (The Sound of Britain in 2066)

A report commissioned by HSBC

Written by Dominic Watt and Brendan Gunn

-

An Introduction

HSBC is launching voice biometrics as an element of its digital banking services.

The system verifes a caller’s identity using leading-edge voiceprint technology, allowing customers access to their accounts using a simple universal ‘pass phrase’.

As time goes on, voice-activated systems of this kind will be an ever more central part of our lives. 50 years from now, in 2066, we will only rarely interact with machines by pressing buttons, and the keyboard will have become obsolete.

Almost everyone can talk faster than they can type, and talking is the most natural communication system we possess. Speech recognition tools like Siri and Cortana are already part of our everyday lives, but these are only the beginning. Over the next decades the successors to these systems will become ever more reliable and ‘smarter’, as they take advantage of the boundless potential of the internet to train themselves to anticipate users’ needs and to respond effciently to our commands.

Our current speech technologies perform well under diffcult conditions. They can cope with high levels of background noise, or when the speaker has a head cold or a sore throat. Strong regional or foreign accents don’t affect their performance because the systems are trained to compensate for the numerous ways in which our speech varies. And impressive as these tools already are, they are improving all the time. In the future, our devices will understand everything we tell them. The way we interact with machines will converge on how we talk to other people, to the point where there will be no obvious differences between the two.

Balthazar Cohen, author of the ‘Totes Ridic-tionary’, described the internet as the place ‘where language goes to die’. In reality it’s just the opposite. The web is an inexhaustible wellspring of new words and phrases. Already we see how easily internet-inspired abbreviations like ‘LOL’ (laugh(ing) out loud), ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out), ‘FOLO’ (fear of living of?ine), and ‘brb’ (be right back) have been turned into words (LOL to rhyme with ‘doll’, ‘brb’ with ‘curb’). These aren’t just confned to the speech of the young, either, as shown recently by the jokingly vengeful use of ‘LOL’ by a Scottish judge as he passed down a prison sentence. Emojis have been embraced as part of written English, to the extent that the Oxford Dictionaries UK Word of the Year in 2015 was the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ symbol. We will fnd ways of integrating them into our speech too. There is even the possibility that in the near future, our computers will themselves invent new words and phrases, ones which we’ll start to use ourselves because they seem especially useful or pithy.

We tend to think of computers as things that sit on our desks or that we carry around in our pockets, but they are of course already all around us: in car engines, inside our washing machines, or controlling the heating in our homes. Very soon all these systems will be connected together. The era of the ‘internet of things’ is all but upon us. Our homes, workplaces and means of transport will be ever more interconnected, with each appliance communicating with the other devices in its local network, and with the wider world via the web. In a sense, we ourselves will become elements of that network, while keeping executive control over the important decisions. Smart technologies will learn and adapt by tracking how we humans change in our preferences and our habits, and because we will give instructions using our voices they must of course keep pace with changes in our speech and language.

Languages change constantly, and they do so whether or not we want them to. New words replace old ones, grammatical rules arise and fade away, and the ways we pronounce vowels and consonants are always shifting and mutating. English has changed enormously over its 1,500-year history. Even in the last 50 years we have seen big changes in the accents and dialects of the language, including Standard English. This leads us to ask: what will English be like 50 years from now?

In this report, we make a number of predictions about how some key accents of British English might sound in half a century’s time. Some of the changes we identify have in fact already started. In other cases we’re being more speculative, but by looking at how English has changed over the last 50 years, we can identify patterns that seem to repeat. For one thing, people tend to like to make talking as easy for themselves as they can, but without making life too hard for the hearer. So they knock off sounds at the ends of words (‘tex’ for ‘text’, ‘vex’ for ‘vexed’), they simplify complicated sequences of consonants (hardly anyone says ‘syoot’ for ‘suit’ any more), and they rub the sharp corners off sounds by making them ‘softer’. For example, although we say electric with a hard /k/ on the end, we say electricity with an /s/, and electrician with a ‘sh’ sound.

Languages also change when they come into contact with one another. English has borrowed thousands of words from other languages: mainly French, Latin and Greek, but there are ‘loan words’ from dozens of other languages in the mix. For instance, we wouldn’t say we’d spilled chutney and shampoo on the veranda of the bungalow without frst having borrowed these words from Hindi.

Our speech and language patterns are absolutely central to our individual identities, and we exercise ‘consumer choice’ over which new linguistic trends we buy into, much as we do when choosing music or clothing. We adopt new ways of saying things because they’re fashionable or cool, or because we want to sound like we’re a member of a particular group of people. We use language to tell others something about ourselves in a way that costs nothing and is very immediate: uttering just a few syllables can be enough to signal where you come from, and what kind of social groups you identify with or admire. Young people often try very hard to sound different from people of their parents’ generation. Using the right sort of words and pronunciations can be an enormously powerful symbol of belonging, of being cool, of having the right sort of knowledge, of being ‘now’. However, in time what was once the height of linguistic fashion comes to seem stale, staid, and conventional, and so new trends must be followed by those who want to seem the most up-to-date and street-smart.

We must always allow for the unexpected, too: by 2066 English may have altered in ways we hadn’t seen coming. This endless cycle of innovation and renewal is what makes the study of language change so fascinating.

The Homogenisation of English?

We can think of the dialect map of the UK as a jigsaw in which the pieces were once very small. Individual districts, towns and villages had their own dialects. Over the last century or so, the jigsaw pieces have grown larger, as dialects have become more focussed on the bigger urban centres such as Newcastle or Manchester. These days it can be harder to tell where someone is from on the basis of his or her speech than it was a couple of generations ago: the dialect distinctions between Yorkshire and Lancashire, or between Merseyside and north Wales, are becoming more blurred. This is usually put down to greater mobility, with people moving sometimes quite large distances to other towns and cities to study or fnd work, or relocating from the cities into the countryside in search of a better quality of life or more affordable housing. But it isn’t the case that we’re all starting to sound alike. As we’ll see below, new varieties are taking root in different parts of the country. It’s mainly the traditional rural dialects that are becoming less distinct from one another.

We’re not all becoming more standard in our speech, either. Over the last 50 years we have also seen Standard English and Received Pronunciation (‘Queen’s English’) lose some of their status. Where once it was more or less obligatory to speak these for anyone wishing to enter the professions, the clergy, the upper ranks of the military, acting, or broadcasting, these days, non-standard accents and dialects are much more widely accepted. We’ve come to realise that speaking in such-and-such a way isn’t necessarily a sure sign of someone’s intelligence or competence. This improves opportunities for people from a wider variety of social and educational backgrounds. It’s sometimes forgotten that even the standard forms of English are always changing. Today we laugh at the way announcers spoke in TV news programmes from the 1960s because it seems so stiff and old-fashioned. It would sound odd if someone born in 1966 ? say, David Cameron ? were to speak like someone of his grandfather’s generation. We don’t expect young members of the Royal Family to speak in the same way as old ones do. The Queen’s English spoken by Prince George as he grows up is not going to be the same as the Queen’s English spoken by the Queen.

Looking more globally, Chinese and Spanish seem set to become yet more in?uential worldwide, leading to large numbers of words and phrases from these languages coming into mainstream use in English. Other major languages, such as Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic or Russian, may boost English vocabulary by donating names for new concepts.

‘Informalisation’ of English: talking to machines and listening to Americans

As we’ve seen, high technology is a very rich source of new words in English. In turn, English provides other languages with new terms they need in this area. Young people everywhere now use the English words app, troll, or hashtag rather than the equivalents in their own languages. English is the language of the latest trends in social media, and computer users know that being in command of the latest terms will allow them to participate in a globally connected world. Though the science that underlies systems such as Twitter and Facebook is advanced and hugely complex, the innovators and designers behind these brands want to keep the image of social media as relaxed and informal as possible. The terms that are used for common functions and ways users can interact (like, friend, follow, retweet, block) are therefore short, simple and memorable ones. The fact that so many innovations in computing come from California is undoubtedly linked to this relaxed and unpretentious approach.

A preference for informal, chatty and jokey language in the technological and scientifc domains is a recent phenomenon, but it’s one which makes these areas seem more accessible and less po-faced, and we are likely to see more and more of it. After all, there’s really no good reason we shouldn’t name features on the surface of Pluto and its moon Charon after characters from Star Wars, Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings, or call underground bacteria snottites because they look like nasal mucus dangling from cave roofs, or name an Antarctic research vessel Boaty McBoatface, just for the fun of it. A glance at the online Urbandictionary testifes to the endless creativity and humour of English speakers. Freeing ordinary language users up to invent and share new words and phrases like this is a mark of how much more democratic and liberated our linguistic lives have become.

With all of these factors in mind, we turn now to ask what the English of 2066 might sound like in different cities around the country.

London

It’s often said that traditional working-class London speech ? Cockney ? has more or less died out. We can now hear a hybrid accent known as ‘Estuary English’ (EE), which combines older London features with more standard-like speech forms. EE is recognisably south-eastern, but it can be very hard to locate a speaker within that region. It also seems to blur the class divide, leading to accusations that some middle-class speakers ? politicians such as Nigel Farage and celebrities like Jamie Oliver ? ‘dumb down’ their speech so as to conceal a privileged upbringing or to sound more like they are ‘one of the people’. EE has similarities to another newcomer on the UK dialect scene, ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE). MLE incorporates pronunciations from Englishes spoken by people from ethnic minority groups, particularly from the Caribbean, West African and Asian communities. Given this mix, and the status of London as the linguistically most in?uential city in the English-speaking world, we can expect to see signifcant changes between now and the middle of the century.

For example, there are signs that /h/ is being restored. Generations of Londoners have dropped /h/ from the beginnings of words like hat, Highgate, Harrods, Hampstead Heath, or Henry Higgins. Another feature of London speech is the treatment of the two ‘th’ dental consonants, as in words like thin and this. We see either ‘TH-stopping’ (dis and dat) or ‘TH-fronting’ (fnk for ‘think’, muvver for ‘mother’). In future we’re likely to see the standard ‘th’ sounds being lost altogether. Fin and thin will no longer be distinguished even in careful speech, and bother will always rhyme with hover. This may come as a relief to foreign learners of English, who struggle with the dentals more than any other pair of sounds.

Saying dook for ‘duke’ or nooze for ‘news’ is already pretty frmly established in London, but this habit, known as ‘yod-dropping’, may continue so that even words like cute or beauty are affected, as they are in East Anglia, where they’re pronounced the same as coot and booty. Simplifying clusters of consonants like this is one way English has changed over its history. We don’t say the /k/ at the beginning of ‘knee’ or ‘knight’ any more, or the /w/ that used to occur at the beginning of ‘wrong’ (these letters are now silent, but we haven’t ever bothered to change the spelling). We’ve lost some other great consonant clusters since the earliest days of English: the word for ‘to sneeze’ in Old English, for example, had a very sneezy-sounding /fn/ sequence at the beginning.

/w/ and /r/ are already very similar for many southern English talkers (e.g. Roy Hodgson, Chris Packham, Jonathan Ross), so the two may collapse together completely, so that wed and red are no longer distinct. We may also see consonant+/r/ clusters smushing together into sounds more like ‘ch’ and ‘j’, so trees and cheese, or dress and Jess, sound more alike.

At the ends of words, /r/ was dropped centuries ago, and /l/ is likely to follow suit by turning into a vowel. So words like Paul, paw and pool could be indistinguishable, as they already are in Cockney. Lastly, the glottal stop pronunciation of /t/ ? a brief catch in the throat rather than a sound which involves the tongue tip closing against the roof of the mouth ? will be the default pronunciation. People in 2066 will be mystifed as to why Tony Blair, Ed Miliband and George Osborne were slammed so mercilessly by the press for having been caught saying voters without using a ‘proper’ /t/ in the middle.

Liverpool

The Liverpool accent is highly distinctive but it’s not an especially old one. It mixes local Lancashire features with ones imported from Ireland during the 19th century. The in?uence of Liverpool speech is wide: there are towns on the coast of north Wales in which people speak with accents which are strongly coloured by Scouse. All the same, Liverpool speech will probably start to fall into line more closely with the accents of other major northern cities. The ‘tapped’ /r/ sound in words like green and brown, or four and five, is likely to go the way of this consonant in Scottish or Yorkshire English.

One of the very distinctive things about Scouse is the way that /k/ and the other ‘stopped’ consonants /p/ and /t/ are produced. At the end of back you’ll hear a ‘ch’ sound like the one in Scottish loch or German Bach. A lot of people say they dislike this habit, but it’s actually a very natural sound change, and quite common across other languages. It’s quite possible that we’ll see more of this softening of the stop consonants not just in Liverpool but in other accents around the country.

Liverpool, like all the other northern cities, has an accent in which pairs of words like put and putt are pronounced alike. A great number of the changes we see in current English involve a levelling out of local differences, however, and it’s possible that by 2066 the northern accents will have come into line with the global norm for these vowels. At present there are many northerners who would wince at the thought of saying cup or bus anything like southerners or Americans do, so as a compromise they may start to use some intermediate ‘fudged’ vowel in these and other putt-class words instead. The very suggestion that the north and the south could converge linguistically always meets with heated argument, but it’s not so outlandish an idea ? in fact, the process has already been happening for many centuries.

Glasgow

In Glasgow, and lowland Scotland generally, English sits at one end of a language spectrum. At the far end is the Scots dialect, which is so different from most sorts of English that some call Scots a full-blown language in its own right. It seems clear, though, that the urban Scots spoken in Glasgow is on the wane. Surveys of Scottish schoolchildren show that they aren’t familiar with many of the Scots words and phrases that their parents and grandparents would use (bampot, clarty, glaikit, stooshie, and thousands of others). Some of the dialect words will remain, though it’s impossible to say which will survive. Pronunciations like gless ‘glass’, hame ‘home’, bane ‘bone’, or ft ‘foot’ may soon come to seem too old-fashioned for young people to use.

Dropping of /r/ after a vowel is already well underway among working-class Glaswegians, meaning that pairs of words like hut and hurt can now be hard to tell apart. As in London, wordfnal /l/ is also disappearing (so Paul and paw are more alike), and the ‘th’ consonants are turning into /f/ and /v/.

On the other hand, if a second independence referendum were to go in favour of Scotland’s separation from the UK, the picture could be very different in the Glasgow of 2066. Because language and identity are so closely tied together, it might be that the Scots language lobby would step their efforts up a few gears, as a way of highlighting the separateness of Scotland’s culture and heritage. Making the language of the new state seem as distinctive as possible is exactly what the Norwegians did when they split from Denmark a hundred or so years ago. One of the big unknowns when trying to map out how languages will develop in the future is the effect of political upheavals. The history of English is full of these: think of the arrival of the Vikings, or the Norman Conquest.

Newcastle

British people tend to nominate one of two accents when they’re asked which is the hardest to understand. Glaswegian is one, and Geordie is the other. There are some in the north-east of England who claim that Geordie and the dialect of Northumbria are the closest forms of English to Anglo-Saxon. Though this is an exaggeration, there are features of Geordie which hark back to when Middle English was spoken (hoose for ‘house’, neet for ‘night’, and so on).

These are becoming scarcer, though. The general pattern is for Geordie to sound more like other northern dialects. The characteristic pronunciations of ‘face’ and ‘coat’ (‘fee-uss’, ‘coo-ut’) are much less common than they were two or three generations back. These days, more generic northern-sounding vowels are preferred. Over the next 50 years we predict that they will sound close to what is found in southern England. The characteristic ‘hiccuping’ Geordie pronunciation of /p/, /t/ and /k/ in words like caper, waiter, and baker may go the same way.

Geordies used to pronounce the vowel in words like ‘nurse’ as an ‘aw’ sound, so that shirt sounded the same as short. Words like ‘talk’ were pronounced ‘taak’. These differences are the basis of the story in which a Geordie with an injured leg goes to see the doctor. The doctor bandages the Geordie’s leg and says, “Now then, do you think you can walk?” The Geordie replies, in disbelief, “Walk? Ah can hordly waak!” (= “Work? I can hardly walk!”). These pronunciations can still be heard when you’re oot and aboot in the Toon, but they now have an old-fashioned ?avour. ‘Walk’ now tends to rhyme with ‘fork’, and ‘work’ with ‘jerk’. However, there’s a change going on in which the ‘jerk’ vowel is moving forward in the mouth. It seems to be linked to the habit of pronouncing the ‘coat’ vowel as something like ‘er’. So we fnd jokey spellings like ‘turtle’ for ‘total’, ‘terst’ for ‘toast’, ‘jerk’ for ‘joke’, ‘serp on a rerp’, and ‘The Perp’ (that’s the head of the Catholic church).

Manchester

Some of the same changes that we’ll see in Newcastle are also liable to take place in Manchester. ‘Turtle’ for ‘total’ has spread westward through urban Yorkshire and already seems to have crossed the Pennines into Manchester. The iconic vowel pronunciation at the end of Manchester (something like ‘Manchest-or’) seems fairly new, but whether it will last is an open question. Not all sound changes stick. Another feature of Manchester and other parts of the north-west (though not Liverpool) is the vowel at the ends of words like happy and city. At the moment, in Manchester it’s more ‘eh’-like than ‘ee’-like. The vowel in many British accents is now frmly an ‘ee’ sound ? happ-ee, rather than happ-ih. Mancunians may in time start to use the ‘happ-ee’ option, making them sound more like Scousers in this respect.

As mentioned earlier, the Liverpudlian habit of producing /k/ as the Scottish-like ‘ch’ is a very natural thing to do, phonetically speaking. So is saying /t/ as an ‘s’-like sound, so that ‘mat’ and ‘mass’ sound very alike. It’s conceivable that Mancunians could start producing these sounds the same way. This convergence might seem improbable, what with Mancs claiming to despise Scousers and vice versa, but in reality the rivalry between the two cities isn’t necessarily a barrier to their dialects becoming more similar. There are pairs of cities around the country in which people say they loathe one another (e.g. Derby and Nottingham), but the dialects spoken in them may become so alike that they’re hard to tell apart.

Birmingham

By virtue of being the closest to London of the cities listed above, Birmingham is likely to adopt the new trends in London speech before the others do. Examples might include the following.

If we are right about the restoration of /h/ in London, we might expect this to trickle down to Birmingham, so that by 2066 it’s being used in Brum with at least some consistency. Glottal stop for /t/ will be the default pronunciation (except at the beginnings of words; tea will still need a /t/, but won’t won’t!). TH-fronting (fng for ‘thing’, bovver for ‘bother’) has a frm foothold in the Midlands already, and a /w/-like pronunciation of /r/ is also common. These forms will increase in frequency, and the other features listed for London may also come to dominate Brummie speech.

We could see the phasing out of localised features like the ‘velar nasal plus’, where an audible /?/ is produced at the end of sing and wrong, and where singer (‘sing-guh’) and fnger rhyme. This habit is common in the West Midlands and in north-western cities including Manchester and Liverpool. People in these areas often say that they think they’re using the correct, standard way of saying ‘ng’ at the ends of words and syllables. In fact, it isn’t the way Standard English speakers pronounce these words. Brummies are probably being in?uenced by the spelling here, and so believe that the ‘proper’ pronunciation involves a sequence of two sounds at the end of sing instead of just one.

As with the northern varieties described above, we may see a split between the words of the put and putt sets, bringing the vowel system more closely into alignment with southern accents.

Conclusions

Over the course of the next ffty years, our lives will be transformed by technology at least as much as they were over the past ffty years.

We may see the rate of change accelerate, with each decade bringing an ever wider range of technologies to make our social and working lives easier, safer, and more effcient. The impact of these developments on society will result in new ways of using language. We will need to coin new terms for new inventions and concepts at a rapid pace, of course, but we will also interact with one another, and with the machines that will surround us in all areas of our lives, in ways that may at frst feel unfamiliar. The era of voice-activated computer systems, which are faster, smarter and more secure than ever before, is already upon us. These will not force us into particular ways of speaking, because they are designed to be responsive to our vocal patterns. They are not judgemental about how we speak and make no distinctions between accents or dialects: to them, all languages and their subvarieties are equal, and there is no ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ way of speaking. We can talk to them however we please. In short, the latest generation of secure voice biometrics systems will let you be you.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for their input: Maciej Baranowski, David Britain, Georgina Brown, Urszula Clark, John Coleman, Karen Corrigan, Volker Dellwo, Holly Dunnett, Shivonne Gates, Philip Harrison, James Hoyle, Paul Kerswill, Adrian Leemann, Kirsty Malcolm, Alan Reading, Richard Rhodes, Devyani Sharma, Jane Stuart-Smith, Kim Witten, and Jessica Wormald.

Dominic Watt, Author of the report

Senior Lecturer

Department of Language and Linguistic Science

Dominic Watt was appointed Lecturer in Forensic Speech Science in 2007, and teaches mainly on its new MSc programme in that subject.

Watt has an MA (Hons) from Edinburgh and a PhD from Newcastle, and has held teaching and research positions in phonetics, speech acoustics and audiology, phonology and sociolinguistics at universities in Germany and around the UK, including York (2000-2002) and Aberdeen, where I was Director of the Phonetics Laboratory for five years.

Brendan Gunn, Co-author of the report

Brendan Gunn holds an MA and a PhD in linguistics. He began working as a Dialogue and Dialect Coach in 1986 after leaving the University of Ulster where he was a Lecturer in Linguistics.

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