If You Use Language Like That Again I ll Have 1 Less Contact
Is English changing?
Edited past Betty Birner
Download this certificate equally a pdf.
Yes, and so is every other human linguistic communication!Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. This isn't a bad thing; if English hadn't changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn't have words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cable TV. Every bit long as the needs of language users continue to change, so will the language. The change is and so slow that from year to year we hardly notice it, except to mumble every so often about the 'poor English' beingness used by the younger generation! However, reading Shakespeare's writings from the sixteenth century can be hard. If you go back a couple more centuries, Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if you lot went back some other 500 years to attempt to readBeowulf, it would be like reading a different language.
Why does language alter?
Language changes for several reasons. Get-go, it changes because the needs of its speakers modify. New technologies, new products, and new experiences crave new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting: originally it was chosen text messaging, because information technology allowed one person to send another text rather than vocalization messages by phone. As that became more common, people began using the shorter formtext to refer to both the messageand the process, as inI just got a text orI'll text Sylviaright now.
Another reason for change is that no ii people take had exactly the aforementioned language experience. We all know a slightly different set of words and constructions, depending on our age, job, education level, region of the country, and and so on. We pick up new words and phrases from all the different people we talk with, and these combine to make something new and unlike any other person's item way of speaking. At the same fourth dimension, various groups in society use linguistic communication as a way of marker their group identity; showing who is and isn't a member of the group.
Many of the changes that occur in linguistic communication begin with teens and immature adults. As young people interact with others their ain age, their language grows to include words, phrases, and constructions that are different from those of the older generation. Some have a short life span (heardgroovy lately?), but others stick around to affect the linguistic communication as a whole.
Nosotros go new words from many unlike places. We infringe them from other languages (sushi, chutzpah), we create them by shortening longer words (gym fromgymnasium) or by combining words (brunch frombreakfast andtiffin), and we brand them out of proper names (Levis,fahrenheit). Sometimes we even create a new word past beingness wrong about the analysis of an existing word, like how the wordpea was created. Four hundred years ago, the wordpease was used to refer to either a single pea or a agglomeration of them, just over fourth dimension, people assumedExcerpt from Beowulf
thatpease was a plural course, for whichpea must be the singular. Therefore, a new word,pea, was born. The aforementioned thing would happen if people began to think of the wordcheese as referring to more than ichee.
Word social club also changes, though this procedure is much slower. Former English language give-and-take lodge was much more 'free' than that of Modern English, and even comparing the Early Modernistic English of the King James Bible with today's English language shows differences in word order. For example, the Rex James Bible translates Matthew 6:28 equally "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil non." In a more contempo translation, the terminal phrase is translated as "they do not toil," because English no longer placesnon after the verb in a sentence.
The sounds of a language change over time, likewise. Nearly 500 years ago, English began to undergo a major change in the way its vowels were pronounced. Before that,geese would have rhymed with today's pronunciation offace, whilemice would take rhymed with today'speace. Yet, a 'Bang-up Vowel Shift' began to occur, during which theay sound (as inpay) inverse toee (as infee) in all the words containing it, while theee audio changed toi (as inpie). Overall, seven dissimilar vowel sounds were affected. If you've ever wondered why nigh other European languages spell the sounday with an 'e' (every bit infiancé), and the soundee with an 'i' (equally inaria), it's considering those languages didn't undergo the Slap-up Vowel Shift, only English did.
Wasn't English language more elegant in Shakespeare's twenty-four hours?
People tend to think that older forms of languages are more elegant, logical, or 'correct' than modern forms, but it's just not true.The fact that linguistic communication is always irresolute doesn't mean information technology's getting worse; it'southward just condign dissimilar.
In One-time English language, a small winged creature with feathers was known as a brid. Over time, the pronunciation changed tobird. Although information technology's non hard to imagine children in the 1400'southward existence scolded for 'slurring'brid intobird, it's clear thatbird won out. Nobody today would suggest thatbird is an incorrect discussion or a sloppy pronunciation.
The speech patterns of young people tend to grate on the ears of adults considering they're unfamiliar. Besides, new words and phrases are used in spoken or breezy language sooner than in formal, written linguistic communication, so it's true that the phrases yous may hear a teenager utilize may not however be advisable for business letters. But that doesn't hateful they're worse - merely newer. For years, English language teachers and newspaper editors argued that the discussionhopefully shouldn't be used to mean 'I hope', as inhopefully information technology won't pelting today, even though people frequently used it that way in informal spoken language. (Of course nobody complained about other 'sentence adverbs' such equallyfrankly andactually.) The battle confrontinghopefully is at present all but lost, and information technology appears at the beginnings of sentences, even in formal documents.
If you lot heed carefully, yous tin can hearlanguage change in progress. For example,anymore is a word that used to only occur in negative sentences, such asI don't swallow pizza anymore. Now, in many areas of the country, it's beingness used in positive sentences, likeI've been eating a lot of pizza anymore. In this utilize,anymore ways something similar 'lately'. If that sounds odd to you at present, keep listening; you may be hearing it in your neighborhood before long.
Why can't people merely utilize correct English language?
By 'correct English', people unremarkably hateful Standard English. Nearly languages have a standard course; it's the form of the language used in government, instruction, and other formal contexts. Merely Standard English is really just 1dialect of English.
What's important to realize is that there's no such matter equally a 'sloppy' or 'lazy' dialect.Every dialect of every linguistic communication has rules - not 'schoolroom' rules, like 'don't split your infinitives', but rather the sorts of rules that tell us thatthe true cat slept is a sentence of English, butslept cat the isn't. These rules tell the states what linguistic communicationis like rather than what itshould be like.
Different dialects have dissimilar rules. For example:
(50) I didn't eat any dinner.
(2) I didn't eat no dinner.
Sentence (fifty) follows the rules of Standard English; judgement (two) follows a set of rules nowadays in several other dialects. Neither is sloppier than the other, they just differ in the rule for making a negative sentence. In (l),dinner is marked as negative withany; in (2), it'due south marked as negative withno. The rules are different, only neither is more logical or elegant than the other. In fact, Old English regularly used 'double negatives', parallel to what we see in (2). Many modern languages, including Italian and Castilian, either allow or require more than one negative word in a sentence. Sentences similar (2) simply sound 'bad' if y'all didn't happen to grow upwardly speaking a dialect that uses them.
You may have been taught to avoid 'split infinitives', equally in (3):
(3) I was asked to thoroughly water the garden.
This is said to be 'ungrammatical' becausethoroughly splits the infinitiveto water. Why are carve up infinitives so bad? Here's why: seventeenth-century grammarians believed Latin was the ideal language, so they thought English language should be every bit much similar Latin as possible. In Latin, an infinitive liketo water is a single word; information technology's impossible to split information technology upward. So today, 300 years afterward, we're even so being taught that sentences like (3) are wrong, all because someone in the 1600's thought English language should be more than similar Latin.
Here's i last instance. Over the past few decades, three new ways of reporting spoken communication have appeared:
(4) Then Karen goes, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"
(five) So Karen is similar, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"
(vi) So Karen is all, "Wow - I wish I'd been in that location!"
In (4),goes ways pretty much the same thing assaid; information technology's used for reporting Karen's actual words. In (5),is similar means the speaker is telling us more or less what Karen said. If Karen had used different words for the same basic idea, (v) would be appropriate, but (4) would not. Finally,is all in (6) is a fairly new construction. In most of the areas where it'south used, it means something similar tois like, only with extra emotion. If Karen had just been reporting the time, it would exist okay to sayShe's similar, "It's five o'clock," but odd to sayShe'southward all, "It's five o'clock"unless there was something heady nigh it being five o'clock.
Is information technology a lazy way of talking? Non at all; the younger generation has made a useful iii-way distinction where we previously only had the wordsaid.Language will never finish irresolute; it will go on to respond to the needs of the people who use information technology. Then the next time y'all hear a new phrase that grates on your ears, remember that like everything else in nature, the English language language is a work in progress.
For farther information
Aitcheson, lean. 1991.Linguistic communication Alter: Progress or Decay? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bryson, Bill. 1991.Mother Tongue: The English Language. New York: Penguin Books.
Source: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/english-changing
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