The British have slaughtered a large fraction of their r's; some of them have dropped "h" from their speech. The Scotch have dealt similarly with "I" and "v," so that in Broad Scottish gave is "gay." The story is told of an Aberdeenian in a dry-goods store who held up a piece of cloth and asked the clerk, "Oo?"
"Ay, oo."
"Ah oo?"
"Ay, ah oo."
"Ah ae oo?"
"Ay, ah ae oo."
Not to keep the reader in suspense any longer, "Ay, ah ae oo" means "Yes, all one wool." (In repeating this story, remember that "Ay" is pronounced like eye.)
Our chief victim seems to have been "t," whence we often hear posts, tests, loft, wanted as "poce," "tess," "loff," "wanned." Sometimes we drop "in," nasalizing the preceding vowel to make up for it, as don't, sometimes pronounced "dote" or "doh" with a nasal "o."
Let's suppose that our hero has been hailed before a magistrate. To change the assumptions a little, suppose that the vowels are still recognizable, but that dropping and assimilation have been going full blast.
Magistrate: Wahya, pridna?
Hero: Huh?
Mag: Said, wahya?
Hero: You mean, what's my name?
Mag: Coss ass way I mee. Ass wah I said, in ih?
Hero: I'm sorry. It's Jones, j-o-n-e-s, Morgan Jones.
Mag: Orrigh. Now, weya from?
Hero: You mean, where am I from?
Mag: Doh like ya attude, pridna. Try to be feh, huh woh tollay dispecfa attude. Iss a majrace coh, ya know.
Hero: You mean, this is a magistrate's court? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but—
Mag: Weh, maybe in yooh faw. Eeah ya fahna, aw nah righ melly. Sodge, lock im up. Gah geh mel zannas dow ih, to zam is satty.
Hero: But look here, I don't need a mental examiner to examine my sanity—I'm all right mentally—It seems our time-traveling hero may be reduced to the device adopted by a man I once knew who made a trip to Germany. Entering a hotel with a companion, he asked, in what he thought was German, for two rooms and bath. The clerk looked blank, then replied in something that was evidently intended to be English, but which conveyed no sense whatever to the American. After some futile vocalization of this sort, the clerk had an inspiration: he got out a pad and wrote in the plainest of English, "What do you gentlemen want?" The American took the pad and wrote "Two rooms and bath," after which there was no more difficulty.
However, it's unsafe to say that English as a whole will take any particular course, merely because one of its many dialects shows signs of doing so. A phoneme may reverse its direction of change repeatedly: in King Alfred's time the first vowel in after was about that of modern cat; by 1400 it had moved down and back to the vowel of modern calm; by 1600 it had moved back to the cat position, where it still is with the great majority of Americans (don't let the dictionaries fool you with their "intermediate 'a' "). Finally in modern Southern British it has moved back down into the calm position again. This sort of thing can go on indefinitely.
Sounds that have been dropped can be restored by the influence of spelling. An example is the "t" in often, which was dropped long ago with the "t's" in soften, listen, castle, but which has been revived by a few speakers, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Such an addition of a sound to a word is called a spelling pronunciation and is considered incorrect when first introduced. But sometimes one takes hold and becomes universal, after which it is "correct." Examples are the "h" in hospital and the "l" in fault, which originally (when the words were taken over from French) weren't sounded at all.
We might here dispose of the illusion that there is an absolute standard of "correctness" to which we can refer. There are no tablets of stone stating once and for all what is and isn't correct, and dictionaries are compiled by fallible human beings and often disagree. The only real standard, aside from individual prejudices, is the actual usage of educated people. The fact is not that we use pronunciations because they're correct, but that they're correct because we-or a large number of us-use them. If a hundred million people pronounce after with the vowel of cat, that's correct by definition, even though not the only correct form, dictionaries to the contrary notwithstanding.
The rate of change of pronunciation is probably dependent, to some extent, on the state of a civilization, and changes should take place more rapidly in periods when illiteracy is high, and schools and spelling have less braking effect. A collapse of civilization in the English-speaking world would make another vowel shift more likely, and result in more dropping and assimilation of sounds. If our hero knows this, he might be able to make a shrewd guess at the vicissitudes through which the world has passed even before he learns its actual history since his time.
English has numerous dialects, some being beyond the range of mutual intelligibility. A Scotchman I once knew would testify to this: he spent an unhappy afternoon trying to find Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn. After asking innumerable Brooklynites how to get to "Mair-rrtle Ahvenü," one of them finally caught on and said, "Oh, you mean Moitle Ehvenya!"
But which dialect most resembles the English of the future? North America has four major dialects: those of New England, New York City, the South, and General American, which includes everything else. The British Isles have a much bigger variety; that of London and vicinity has, by virtue of London's being the capital and the commercial metropolis of Great Britain, acquired the prestige of a standard. Hence Londoners are wont to say that they speak true English, and anything else is a "bahb'rous dahlect." Often they argue that their form of speech is the "most beautiful," but that merely means that they're accustomed to it and so like it best. One feature of Southern British (the speech of educated Londoners and ruling-class Englishmen generally), the loss of "r" sounds except when a vowel follows, is also heard in New England, New York City and the South: others, such as the use of "ah" in half, last, dance, and about 150 similar words, occur in New England but are rare elsewhere in North America.
These dialects tend to evolve in different directions, like species. Unlike species, they also merge into intermediate forms. Right now, the forces tending to merge and homogenize them (radio, etc.) are much stronger than those tending to separate and diversify them. Given our mechanical culture, this is likely to continue until they have all been pretty well leveled. What will the result be?
The prestige of Southern British is high; European schools teach it. Many actors and radio announcers in this country imitate it—though the result is often more funny than impressive. But as a result of economic forces, the commercial and intellectual center of gravity of the English-speaking world seems to be shifting to this side of the Atlantic, which phenomenon should cause a decline in the prestige of Southern British. As this happens, some form of American speech will become a "world standard."
The dialects with the best chance of doing this are probably New York speech and General American. The former has the advantage of being the speech of the country's greatest metropolis and its cultural center. The latter has the advantage of numbers: about as many people speak it (90 or 100 million) as speak all the other kinds of English combined. It conforms more closely to the spelling, so that it is easier for foreigners to learn. My money would go on General American—but then, like most people, I'm probably prejudiced in favor of my native tongue. Very likely the final result will combine features of both dialects.*