''Video will be coming soon to a... an interactive whiteboard.. near you!''
Alright lets go.
Before we get all in to this, I need to get my head around the fact that Language has changed. I mean, alright, people can say we've been affected by media, and technology, blah de blah de blah, but come on. The Japanese manufacture this stuff, and they haven't been affected. In fact, guys, their language has only changed relatively little over the past 1,000 years. I blame the foreigners. >.>
A tiny example of language change that I clocked on to was actually yesterday, well.. not your yesterday, but yesterday for me now. Actually it depends on when you read this. Anyway, yeah errm, I was talking to a bunch of highly sophisticated and educated folks, all members of the glorious Sidney Stringer Academy.. where all the highly sophisticated and educated people go, ofcourse, and yeah as I was saying I clocked on to the fact that they didn't actually know that the word louse was actually the singular form of the plural lice. The bunch of idiots only knew it in the figurative sense, you know. The sort of louse that Meriam Webster according to Meriam Webster means a ''contemptible person''... yeah, that one. That sort of explains how fast language is changing, I mean, we're already forgetting what a louse is, I dunno if thats because people are getting used to having multiple lice in their head, and have no more use for its singular form, or the fact that we just have some moist memory.
Well, hey, I did say a tiny example didn't I? Get it? Louse are tiny and I said I'll be giving a tiny example..ehem, nevermind.
Another tiny example how the word pease referred to both the singular and the plural form of pea. So around 400 years ago some brightspark thought that pease was the plural form, and yeah, they worked of the ''s'' phoneme, and bada boom bada bing. The word Pea was born. <--- I did say another tiny example. Thats two tiny examples. The Louse and the Pea.
However, I personally believe most words gradually came through colloquial routes, and were gradually accepted in everyday language, thats my understanding of it. Even J-Co agrees with me. Yea
Linguistic change can be said to have taken place when a new linguistic form used by some sub-group within a speech community, is adopted by other members of that community and accepted as the norm''. -Jennifer Coates. And just 'cause the quotes from Wikipedia, does not mean its bull'.
I also think that language depends on who you are, and how you use it. It depends, according to me, what your social class are, your occupation, where you grew up, as all these would influence your style of language. I mean, for example, it is expected of people of higher class, such as the peeps we call ''posh'' to use the future tense of ''shall'', instead of ''will'' although it looks outdated. However, similarly, when greeting each other, the colloquial term used amongst the youth would be ''safe'', whereas, however, in Leicester, it would be ''cough''. This shows the difference in how language can influence you, and how social language is influenced by trends.
If you whack on Downton Abbey, I'd be sure you'd hear them saying something along the lines of ''To where are you going?''. If we heard that now, we'd be in hysterics. Oops, theres another semantic shift, I mean, a while back, a hysteric was someone suffering from Hysteria. Thats a big jump though, eh? From an illness to something that describes a fit of laughter. Wow. Language does surprise me sometimes.
But yeah, people are saying that the social classes are becoming blurred, I don't agree. Although, I do think that the Media has a large influence on Language itself. We'll always have those barriers in class that is distinguished through language and syntax and phonological features.
Nowadays we struggle to read texts from 18th century, and rightly so. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen people tend to read sentences with the basic subject, verb and object. We've also adapted to simple sentences, and yeah, its basically more common in texts now in comparison to back then in the 18th century, which obviously aids us in reading quicker. This could be a reason why we feel that reading texts from back then hard. Here's an extract from one of the first English Novels, written by Joseph Andrews.
Original:
''(Complex) No sooner had Joseph left the Room in the Manner we have before related than the lady, enraged at her Disappointment, began to reflect with Severity on her Conduct.(Complex) Her Love was now changed to Disdain, which Pride assisted to torment her. (Simple) She despised herself for the Meanness of her Passion, and Joseph for its ill Success. (Simple) However, she had now got the better of it in her own Opinion, and determined immediately to dismiss the Object.(Compound Complex) After much tossing and turning in her Bed, and many Soliloquies, which if we had no better Matter for our Reader we would give him, she at last rung the Bell as above mentioned, and was presently attended by Mrs.Slipslop, who was not much better pleased with Joseph than the Lady herself (Fielding, 28).''
As you can see, the majority of the sentences are complex, hence making it more difficult to read. Furthermore, the prepositional phrases are underlined, as according to Weaver, ''excessive use of prepositional phrases significantly reduces readability.''
Another note I'd make here is the fact that all nouns have been given capital letters, whereas now, we only award those to proper nouns. That itself is a change.
Rewritten:
''(Complex) The lady was enraged at her disappointment and began to reflect on her conduct immediately after Joseph left the room. (Compound) Her love was now changed to disdain, and pride assisted to torment her. (Simple) She despised herself for her meanness.(Simple) She also despised Joseph for not falling into her passion. (Simple) However, she decided to dismiss the object. (Compound) After tossing and turning in bed, she finally rung the bell. (Simple) Mrs. Slipslop answered the door. (Simple) She was not pleased with Joseph either.''
I won't really need to comment on the rewritten version, as it generally is more readable, and obviously this is due to the fact that there are more simple sentences and less prepositional phrases.
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| Letter 'O' from the Grammar of the English Language (a1v) |
Pronounciations are always evolving, and a sixteenth century teacher named Richard Mulcaster raised his points on this issue centuries ago. Although Mulcaster's statements were like written time before the 18th century, I still reckon his points accurately summed up the ''anomalies of English spelling''.
