Global English is splitting into mutually unintelligible regional variants like Latin did

Evidence

The people who speak English throughout the world also increasingly speak different Englishes. English is indigenized and takes on local colorations which distinguish it from British or American English and which, at the extreme, make these Englishes almost unintelligible one to the other, as is also the case with varieties of Chinese. Nigerian Pidgin English, Indian English, and other forms of English are being incorporated into their respective host cultures and presumably will continue to differentiate themselves so as to become related but distinct languages, even as Romance languages evolved out of Latin. Unlike Italian, French, and Spanish, however, these English-derived languages will either be spoken by only a small portion of people in the society or they will be used primarily for communication between particular linguistic groups. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 167

Categorization

• SEED: Possible essay angle: ‘Latin’s lesson for English’ — the supposed global language may already be fragmenting along the same lines that produced the Romance languages, with major implications for the de-ethnicization argument.
• XREF: Builds directly on the local-English and lingua-franca claims from the prior paragraphs; also resonates with the grafting/infrastructure essay’s theme of organic differentiation over time. — connects to: No metadiscourse can unify or totalize language games — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 286