Evolution of the English Language

I just subscribed to her podcast. I am also interested in how language evolves, and especially the history of idioms.

Don't see the article referenced in original post, but am happy to hear what the author has to say.

Why not invent new words to describe these attitudes, these emotions?

Why take a word which has had one particular meaning for hundreds of years and decide that it should mean something else, then deride those who are either unaware or who disagree?

It's just laziness.
It displays a sense of superiority which is wholly undeserved.

Fennel, I thought you might enjoy this:

www.northumbriana.org.uk/langsoc/

There is a bit of Northumbrian dialect on the right side of the page. I lived in rurla Northumberland for eight years but I can understand the dialect as it's so similar to the dialect of the Scottish Borders where I was reared.

What I miss most in the evolution of the english language is the disapearance of local accents and dialect words and phrases.
I grew up in Northumberland and the local 'twangs' are still there (apart from the gutteral 'r') but I haven't heard many old dialect words and phrases.
Occasionally on the bus "How's it gannin?" And lots of "Aye -Aam gannin aal reet".
Always from us oldies.

"I do think evolution of the language is a rather different thing from sloppiness." (Witzend)
I agree. ]To illustrate sloppy use of English I accuse the characters in that Buying Houses in the Sun TV programme where the estate agent uses a limited and cliched jargon and nearly all the clients try to imitate the cliches and unfortunately they succeed pretty well.

Ditto ‘vicious’, which I gather - at least according to Jane Austen’s usage - used to mean someone with vices such as gambling or excessive drinking.

That makes perfect sense, but it's the first time I've come across that derivation. I really enjoy finding out things like this.

I agree that there is a difference between sloppiness (eg 'would of') and evolution (eg 'woke'). Life is changing so quickly that vocabulary has had to adapt and grow to keep pace, and a combination of media expansion and globalisation means that we are all exposed to a much greater range of English usage than ever before.

I admit to my own foibles, such as bristling when I hear things like 'there will be less people on the trains' in a news broadcast; but on the whole, I wonder whether an insistence on clinging to 'the rules' is an attempt to cling to the elite status that used to be held by those with a more educated way of speaking?

When we didn't move around so much, and didn't hear other ways of talking, most people would talk in the same way as those around them, with dialect being more common (in all senses of the word) than Standard English, so anyone who knew 'the rules' and applied them in speech would be immediately marked out as educated and given high status.

Whilst I would be the first to argue that language shouldn't lose its precision (and I think it is a huge advantage to have a wide vocabulary and the ability to express oneself in a nuanced manner), I prefer egalitarianism to elitism, and despise the way in which people are sometimes 'put in their place' for not knowing how to use the subjunctive or similar, usually by someone who has a knowledge of grammar but who is losing the argument.

gouged always sounds rather nasty, eg when used in reference to eyes!
sick is another term the meaning of which is now the opposite to the original.

People have always used 'slang' whereas correct use of the English language is critical when report writing for business, medical, legal or other purposes. The use of Latin for botanical purposes as Elegran describes could be critical too. Sloppiness or use of everyday slang in these areas could lead to disaster.
Just because younger generations claim certain words and change the meaning of them doesn't mean that that meaning is correct. It's just slang.

Slang definition: a type of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.

We don't have to get down wiv da kids

People have used slang in everyday speech, in novels but has now become more accepted by those using social media. Showing frustration with those who may not be up-to-date with the latest terms shows a high degree of intolerance which is not a pleasant trait.

Rufus it's interesting that you are the one who started this thread, as the English language has developed along different paths over the centuries in Australia and other countries such as America.

I also am interested in the way English has evolved but still get furious when the way it is NOW is misused. Some battles appear to be lost - ‘I was sat on the sofa’ rather than ‘sitting’; don’t even get me started on the two DIFFERENT verbs ‘to lie’ and ‘to lay’ (both of these frequently wrong on national news);and, my Covid-19 favourite, ‘deaths are down’. No, they’re not! The NUMBER of deaths is down.
When I trained as a local newspaper journalist in the ‘70s, we were corrected loudly and publicly by a fierce editor whenever these sorts of blunders were made. I would love to know whether any of our current crop of journalists are ever corrected.
Pronounciation is a whole other matter. I scream every time Beth Rigby (otherwise excellent Sky News journalist) leaves the ‘g’ off any word ending in ‘ing’ but then Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, also does it with the result that I never listen to anything she says. I can’t believe no one has ever told her about this infuriating habit.
Or is it just me?!

I do think evolution of the language is a rather different thing from sloppiness.
One example of evolution I can think of off the cuff, is ‘nice’, which used to mean something different.

Ditto ‘vicious’, which I gather - at least according to Jane Austen’s usage - used to mean someone with vices such as gambling or excessive drinking.

Gouging holes in our bank balances?

@Elegran

A Gnet poster being that rude

What treatment would I get if I asked what 'gouged' means? I've always thought it's meant a very roughly made hole or incision in something. It seems to now mean a price increase... eh ?

Maizie By the time the poster accused me of being unaware of racism, sexism, agism etc etc, I had looked up the word myself, and from the uses I had found I deduced that it meant "has just woken up to things that most of us have known since Adam was a lad and which some people will probably still be doing when the last trump sounds, in spite of all our efforts over the years"

Well, the extract that the OP posted just sounds/looks stupid and patronising to me.
What on earth does 'using language in an uptight way' mean?

I suspect that most people 'use language' in the way that they are accustomed to use it; a way that is influenced by many things, e.g. culture, education, reading, context... Who the hell is she to make a value judgement, clearly meant to be derogatory, on how people use language?

I've always thought that the purpose of language is communication. If you can't make yourself understood; if you can't alter your language according to your audience or the context in which you're using it then I feel that you've failed to learn that purpose somewhere along the line.

Of course it helps to be aware of contemporary usage but not knowing what all the current terminology, such as 'woke', is (I'm struggling to describe this ) is hardly a major sin. Weren't our parents mystified by some of the language we used in our youth?

What I do think is sad is that people can't enjoy our literary inheritance because the language is so different from (NB different from ) what they are used to and they see no purpose in learning how it works. I feel that that is a consequence of increased tolerance of rapid language change and a feeling that anyone using older versions is somehow being 'uptight' in their usage...

Reading old books and records can be a minefield, too, when usage changes with time. It is not so bad when the account is a a century old, and you are usually aware of the change - which has been gradual! In Victorian novels, there is often a popular male character who "makes love to all the women he meets" which didn't mean the same then as it does now - he would be a charmer who was generous with his compliments and attentions, but not a serial rapist!

When most people didn't exchange information so often, the changes were slower. With the coming of (almost) universal literacy and instant typed internet communication for all, change has speeded up.

Good or bad? Some of each. It is good that people communicate more. It is bad that a lot of the subtlety is lost. The use of jargon that only certain groups understand, mainly the young, has increased, and it is renewed often so that outsiders are kept in their place (When I asked in a thread what this new word "woke" meant I was told off for not " keeping up" with the terminology and thus being unaware of the current problems in society. Someone assumed that not knowing the buzz-word meant that I was "still asleep" to the reality that it referred to.)

Vampire Queen wrote:

"Text speak and abbreviations such as lol, asap, and gosh are examples of the language continuing to develop."

Yes. But although these abbreviations help communications, in other ways we are becoming less literate than we were when dialects and vernaculars flourished.

Elegran, I too like explicit language for the reasons you gave, and more.

I also like poetic language which is at least as neglected these days as explicit language.

It depends on what you are writing, and who is going to read it. Some things need to be very exact in how they name things and describe them, others are more casual

Take garden plants. Different parts of the country have different names for the same plants, some of the names very old, and describing their appearance or their use or some legend attached to them. Move a few miles away and the same thing could be called something else - or a different plant has the same name as another somewhere else.

If you were using a plant as a medicine, this could lead to disaster! The official, scientific name for it is much safer, and for nurseries that is an accurate way of making sure that you sell people what they expect to get.

a lot of those rules are there to appeal to dead people

Some of us are still clinging to our perches!

Shakespeare

Gagajo wrote:

"--- I love language change. English has always been a language in flux. Early English was almost exclusively German in origin."

And yet English was at its zenith at the time of Shalespeare who could use vernaculars and posh English of politics, the classics, and law.

English is giving way to the graphic image which rules all our lives and insidiously inserts poor quality themes and values because images are an easy idiom much easier than the spoken word.

LOVELY vampirequeen. I DO love our language. And of course, our bard invented so many words / phrases that are currently in use.

vampirequeen
Reading your post, I am struck by how romantic and poetic are the sounds of Middle and Tudor English when compared with today's prosaic prose.

My post may denote my age Rufus

However, I can also speak some Strine, much of which may closer to 18th Century British English than the language spoken in England today.

English has never remained unchanged. Language changes and develops all the time.

Old English
Swa cwæð eardstapa,
earfeþa gemyndig,
wraþra wælsleahta,
winemæga hryre:

Middle English
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Tudor English
When in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes,
I all alone beweepe my out-cast state
And trouble deafe heaven with my bootlesse cries,
And look upon my selfe and curse my fate.

Georgian English
Obituary of Adam Smith 1791
Being in his youth a hard student and of a cachectick habit, his appearance was ungracious and his address awkward. His frequent absence of mind gave him an air of vacancy and even of stupidity; and the first day he dined at Balliol College, a servitor seeing him neglect his dinner, desired him to 'fall to', for he had never seen such a piece of beef in Scotland

Modern English
He’s a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.

Text speak and abbreviations such as lol, asap, and gosh are examples of the language continuing to develop.

I doubt that casual language will supersede formal language, but formal language changes too in the course of centuries.

I can remember my parents receiving a letter from their bank during the 1950s that stated,

"Dear sir or madam,

We beg to intimate that your current account with us is overdrawn."

No-one starts a business letter like that now, and it was old-fashioned then.

My Y12 class are currently studying the music of the rapper Dave. Some interesting language use! I love language change. English has always been a language in flux. Early English was almost exclusively German in origin. (Excuse the geekiness!)