English Language Sometimes Gets in the Way of Art or Information Being Put in Other Languages?

Is English changing?

Edited by Betty Birner

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Yes, and then is every other human language!Language is ever changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. This isn't a bad matter; if English hadn't changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn't accept words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cablevision Tv set. Equally long equally the needs of linguistic communication users continue to change, so will the language. The change is so slow that from yr to yr we hardly notice information technology, except to mumble every and then ofttimes about the 'poor English language' being used by the younger generation! All the same, reading Shakespeare's writings from the sixteenth century can be difficult. If yous go back a couple more centuries, Chaucer'southCanterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if yous went back some other 500 years to try to readBeowulf, it would be like reading a different language.

Why does language change?

Linguistic communication changes for several reasons. First, it changes because the needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences crave new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting: originally information technology was called text messaging, because it immune one person to send another text rather than voice letters by phone. Every bit that became more common, people began using the shorter gradetext to refer to both the messageand the procedure, every bit inI but got a text orI'll text Sylviaright at present.

Another reason for change is that no two people have had exactly the aforementioned language experience. We all know a slightly different set of words and constructions, depending on our age, job, didactics level, region of the country, and and so on. Nosotros option up new words and phrases from all the unlike people we talk with, and these combine to brand something new and unlike whatsoever other person's particular fashion of speaking. At the same time, various groups in society apply language as a way of marking their grouping identity; showing who is and isn't a member of the group.

Many of the changes that occur in language brainstorm with teens and immature adults. Equally immature people collaborate with others their own age, their linguistic communication grows to include words, phrases, and constructions that are different from those of the older generation. Some accept a brusk life span (heardnifty lately?), but others stick around to bear on the language equally a whole.

We become new words from many dissimilar places. We infringe them from other languages (sushi, chutzpah), we create them by shortening longer words (gym fromgymnasium) or by combining words (brunch frombreakfast anddejeuner), and we make them out of proper names (Levis,fahrenheit). Sometimes we even create a new word by existence wrong about the assay of an existing word, similar how the wordpea was created. Four hundred years ago, the discussionpease was used to refer to either a single pea or a bunch of them, only over time, people assumedExcerpt from Beowulf

thatpease was a plural grade, for whichpea must be the singular. Therefore, a new word,pea, was built-in. The same thing would happen if people began to remember of the wordcheese as referring to more than than anechee.

Discussion order as well changes, though this process is much slower. Old English word order was much more 'gratuitous' than that of Modern English, and even comparison the Early Mod English language of the King James Bible with today's English shows differences in word gild. For example, the King James Bible translates Matthew 6:28 every bit "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not." In a more recent translation, the concluding phrase is translated as "they do not toil," considering English no longer placesnon after the verb in a sentence.

The sounds of a language change over time, too. About 500 years ago, English language began to undergo a major change in the way its vowels were pronounced. Before that,geese would have rhymed with today'south pronunciation ofconfront, whilemice would accept rhymed with today'speace. However, a 'Cracking Vowel Shift' began to occur, during which theay sound (equally inpay) changed toee (every bit infee) in all the words containing it, while theee sound inverse toi (as inpie). Overall, seven different vowel sounds were affected. If yous've ever wondered why most other European languages spell the audioay with an 'due east' (every bit infiancé), and the soundee with an 'i' (as inaria), it'south because those languages didn't undergo the Nifty Vowel Shift, only English did.

Wasn't English more elegant in Shakespeare's day?

People tend to call back that older forms of languages are more elegant, logical, or 'correct' than modern forms, simply it's just not true.The fact that linguistic communication is always changing doesn't mean it's getting worse; it's just condign different.

In Old English language, a small winged animate being with feathers was known equally a brid. Over fourth dimension, the pronunciation changed tobird. Although it'due south non hard to imagine children in the 1400's beingness scolded for 'slurring'brid intobird, it's clear thatbird won out. Nobody today would suggest thatbird is an wrong word or a sloppy pronunciation.

The speech communication patterns of immature people tend to grate on the ears of adults because they're unfamiliar. Also, 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 y'all may hear a teenager use may not all the same be appropriate for business letters. Only that doesn't mean they're worse - but newer. For years, English teachers and newspaper editors argued that the wordhopefully shouldn't be used to hateful 'I hope', as inhopefully it won't rain today, even though people often used it that fashion in informal speech. (Of course nobody complained about other 'sentence adverbs' such asfrankly andactually.) The boxing againsthopefully is now all simply lost, and it appears at the beginnings of sentences, fifty-fifty in formal documents.

If y'all heed advisedly, you can hearlanguage change in progress. For example,anymore is a give-and-take that used to merely occur in negative sentences, such asI don't eat pizza anymore. Now, in many areas of the country, information technology's being used in positive sentences, likeI've been eating a lot of pizza anymore. In this utilize,anymore means something like 'lately'. If that sounds odd to you now, proceed listening; you may be hearing it in your neighborhood earlier long.

Why can't people only utilise right English language?

By 'correct English language', people usually mean Standard English. Most languages take a standard form; information technology's the form of the language used in government, didactics, and other formal contexts. But Standard English is actually just onedialect of English.

What's important to realize is that at that place'south no such affair as a 'sloppy' or 'lazy' dialect.Every dialect of every language has rules - not 'schoolroom' rules, like 'don't split your infinitives', only rather the sorts of rules that tell us thatthe true cat slept is a judgement of English, butslept cat the isn't. These rules tell u.s.a. what languageis like rather than what information technologyshould be like.

Different dialects take different rules. For example:

(fifty) I didn't eat any dinner.

(2) I didn't eat no dinner.

Sentence (l) follows the rules of Standard English; sentence (2) follows a gear up of rules nowadays in several other dialects. Neither is sloppier than the other, they but differ in the rule for making a negative sentence. In (l),dinner is marked as negative withany; in (2), information technology's marked as negative withno. The rules are dissimilar, but 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 modernistic languages, including Italian and Spanish, either allow or require more than 1 negative word in a sentence. Sentences similar (2) only sound 'bad' if yous didn't happen to abound up speaking a dialect that uses them.

You may have been taught to avoid 'separate infinitives', as in (three):

(iii) I was asked to thoroughly h2o the garden.

This is said to be 'ungrammatical' consideringthoroughly splits the infinitiveto water. Why are split infinitives so bad? Here's why: seventeenth-century grammarians believed Latin was the ideal language, so they thought English should be as much like Latin equally possible. In Latin, an infinitive similarto h2o is a single word; information technology'southward impossible to split information technology up. So today, 300 years later, we're still being taught that sentences like (3) are wrong, all because someone in the 1600's thought English should be more than like Latin.

Here'south 1 terminal case. Over the past few decades, three new ways of reporting spoken language take appeared:

(4) Then Karen goes, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

(5) So Karen is like, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

(half dozen) Then Karen is all, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

In (4),goes means pretty much the same affair assaid; information technology's used for reporting Karen'south actual words. In (v),is similar ways the speaker is telling us more or less what Karen said. If Karen had used different words for the aforementioned basic thought, (5) would be appropriate, but (4) would not. Finally,is all in (vi) is a fairly new structure. In virtually of the areas where it's used, information technology ways something similar tois similar, but with extra emotion. If Karen had but been reporting the time, it would exist okay to sayShe's like, "It'south five o'clock," merely odd to sayShe'southward all, "It's five o'clock"unless there was something exciting about it beingness five o'clock.

Is it a lazy fashion of talking? Non at all; the younger generation has fabricated a useful 3-style distinction where nosotros previously merely had the give-and-takesaid.Linguistic communication will never stop changing; it will proceed to respond to the needs of the people who use it. So the next fourth dimension you hear a new phrase that grates on your ears, remember that similar everything else in nature, the English language language is a work in progress.

For further information

Aitcheson, lean. 1991.Language Change: Progress or Decay? Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing.

Bryson, Bill. 1991.Female parent Natural language: The English. New York: Penguin Books.

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Source: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/english-changing

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