The invention of new ways of speaking is one surprising consequence of migration to Europe.

The story of languages is, by and large, one of extinction. Some estimate that in a hundred years only a few hundred languages will survive, as urbanization, globalization, and international media lead ever more people to adopt a few dozen “big” languages. Still, though the disappearance of languages is the dominant trend, interesting new dialects have been emerging in cities worldwide, and it’s young people—specifically, the children of immigrants—who are driving the trend. One of the surprising consequences of the current wave of mass migration into Europe is, in fact, likely to be the development of ever more new ways of speaking in the future.

To see this, consider Germany, which expects to see as many as 1.5 million asylum applications from Syria and elsewhere this year, and which also has a large and well-established population of Turkish immigrants. If an adult immigrates to Germany, chances are that his or her German will always be imperfect. A language that, like German, forces you to remember that forks are feminine, spoons are masculine, and knives are neuter seems designed to resist anyone speaking it well if they learn it after adolescence. On the other hand, that immigrant’s children, growing up amid native German-speakers, will likely be able to speak perfect German. But they might also speak something else. More.

See: The Atlantic

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