WOT do u fink of dis?

The way we speak is changing. If you’re a language purist, or a pronunciation pedant, then look away now.

Linguists are predicting that within 50 years the ‘th’ sound will have completely disappeared in London.

It will be replaced by ‘f’ - so ‘think’ will be pronounced ‘fink’ and ‘thick’ as ‘fick’.

‘Mother’ will be ‘muvver’, ‘brother’ ‘bruvver’ The Sound of 2066 is a study into the way language is evolving. Researchers attribute the predicted changes to the fact there are so many foreigners living in London who are unable to pronounce the ‘th’ sound.

Interdental consonants, apparently, and it is the sound made when you press your tongue against your upper teeth.

Or not. Which is why increasingly you hear people say ‘I fought vat’ instead of ‘I thought that’. Expect to hear it more and more in the years to come.

Now, if all this unsettles you, read on.

No matter how much you want to throw your protective arms around your beloved grammar, syntax and punctuation, there’s no escaping the fact that language is an organic thing.

It is always in flux; it is always evolving and changing.

It was ever thus.

You might be wondering: are we at risk of losing the following?

‘This above all: to thine ownself be true.

And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ As beautiful and lyrical as Shakespeare’s words are, it’s a long time since anyone said ‘thine’ and ‘canst’ in everyday conversation.

Language - or more accurately, communication - has changed beyond all recognition over centuries.

We are always finding quicker ways of communicating. I believe human creativity will always find new and moving forms of expression.

Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange invented Nadsat, the slang used by his teenage ‘droogs’ in a frightening vision of the future. Burgess experimented with Russian words to manufacture his strange jargon.

The wonderful thing about that book is once you overcome the initial awkwardness of the language, you soon become fluent and it takes on a weird beauty.

What do you think of text speak? Does it make you LOL? Or does it leave you thinking WTF?

The thing is, abbreviations are nothing new.

What about ‘posh’ (port out, starboard home)?

New technology always leads to new means of communication. But the impulse to say something is as old as mankind.

The advent of Twitter has led to the rise of tweeting poets. There is some great, lyrical stuff out there, captured in 160 characters.

But Japanese haiku writers were doing it 2,000 years ago.

Right, time to sign off. L8ters.