The Evolution of Language

After looking at my last post, I'm struck by something entirely different. I am amused (and often annoyed) by the fact that there is a trend to use the letter "z" rather than an "s" to form the plural of words. This makes me think of language in general. Being a Classicist and having studied Latin and ancient Greek, languages that are over 2000 years old, I can't help but wonder what people are going to uncover about the English language 2000 years from now. Imagine some future archaeologist digging in the dirt of a collapsed U.S. empire. Imagine if he or she were to uncover some of the things we have around us right now--newspapers, magazines, e-mail, instant messages, and, yes, even blogs. What will they think of the evolution of the spelling of boys to boyz or cool to kewl? And what of the severely shortened forms of are to just r and you to just u? Will things like "lol," "lmao," and "imho" look like strange hieroglyphics to them? Will they think those strange Bratz dollz (with a "z") are some kind of strange fertility relic? Was this woman, Paris Hilton, who appears everywhere, this society's goddess? The surviving literature of the future might not be anything like Homer's Odyssey and uncovering strange toys and cell phones might not be like uncovering Agamemnon's Mask, and Paris Hilton is no Athena, but it will all be interesting and fascinating nonetheless. I can only imagine what future generations will think of the society we live in today. Will things get better in the future? Will things spiral downhill? One can only wonder...