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Evolution of language
7 Answers
Language changes; it can't be stopped but are there others like me who rail against change when it seems to be for the worse?
'Fewer' seems to be going out of use. 'Gender' has almost universally replaced 'sex' on forms. Arx is becoming more common. And so on. How do others counteract this debasing of our language?
'Fewer' seems to be going out of use. 'Gender' has almost universally replaced 'sex' on forms. Arx is becoming more common. And so on. How do others counteract this debasing of our language?
Answers
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There are some instances of language change being a debasement. An example is writing 'could of' where 'could've' - the abbreviation of 'could have' - is meant. Such barbarisms should be railed against; however, the vast majority of changes are precisely what you yourself have defined them as...evolution.
You object to arx, a variant of aks, I presume. Historically, aks, based on the old verb-forms acsian/axian, was the literary form of the word we now know as ask throughout the southern half of England, whilst ask was merely the northern dialect version of the word. In other words, aks has a greater claim to be the word we should be using! However, the evolution of the language caused things to turn out otherwise. So, aks is on the way back. Why not?
The one certain thing is that no amount of railing and counteracting on your or anyone else's part has a hope in hell of proving successful. The camel has been described as a horse designed by a committee, but - despite its being vastly less beautiful than a horse - it is also vastly better designed to function in its particular environment.
In exactly the same way, language imperfections which do not stand the test of time will disappear and the ones that do will remain. Simple as that, so one needs to learn to live with it, I'm afraid.
You object to arx, a variant of aks, I presume. Historically, aks, based on the old verb-forms acsian/axian, was the literary form of the word we now know as ask throughout the southern half of England, whilst ask was merely the northern dialect version of the word. In other words, aks has a greater claim to be the word we should be using! However, the evolution of the language caused things to turn out otherwise. So, aks is on the way back. Why not?
The one certain thing is that no amount of railing and counteracting on your or anyone else's part has a hope in hell of proving successful. The camel has been described as a horse designed by a committee, but - despite its being vastly less beautiful than a horse - it is also vastly better designed to function in its particular environment.
In exactly the same way, language imperfections which do not stand the test of time will disappear and the ones that do will remain. Simple as that, so one needs to learn to live with it, I'm afraid.
I wholeheartedly agree with above Monster ;-) I have a few hang-ups; they apply to the Swedish language and can't be quickly exemplified in English but basically they have to do with when people make a syntactic mess of who did something. Other than that, I admire Louis De Geer for saying something along the lines of language not being a mechanism for which we can set the rules but rather an organism which we may study.
♩ ♫ it's a living thing...♪ ♪ ♬
♩ ♫ it's a living thing...♪ ♪ ♬
. Yes, 'would of' is pernicious and is spreading, What hope can there be when John Humphrys uses it?
As for 'arx' and 'aks', (which I'd never seen written down), in answer to your "Why not", I can't accept that having a good pedigree gives it any merit when it is usually found in the speech of people who tend to end each sentence with 'innit' and ' you know what I mean'.
Sometimes, unhappy langauge comes and goes. In the 1950's +. 'You wouldn't chuckle' was very common as was ending sentences with; 'You know'. The next decade saw an upsurge of the subjunctive e.g., 'Wouldn't you have thought'; when 'Dpn't you think' had served well enough.
To add more fuel to the flames, yesterday within the space of a couple of hours on Radio 4, 'less' was wrongly used twice.
Evolution isn't a straight line, a direct move to something different. It embraces counter tendencies. I'm among of those who rail against what is seen as wrong use of language, but I know that it is but a useless gesture.
As for 'arx' and 'aks', (which I'd never seen written down), in answer to your "Why not", I can't accept that having a good pedigree gives it any merit when it is usually found in the speech of people who tend to end each sentence with 'innit' and ' you know what I mean'.
Sometimes, unhappy langauge comes and goes. In the 1950's +. 'You wouldn't chuckle' was very common as was ending sentences with; 'You know'. The next decade saw an upsurge of the subjunctive e.g., 'Wouldn't you have thought'; when 'Dpn't you think' had served well enough.
To add more fuel to the flames, yesterday within the space of a couple of hours on Radio 4, 'less' was wrongly used twice.
Evolution isn't a straight line, a direct move to something different. It embraces counter tendencies. I'm among of those who rail against what is seen as wrong use of language, but I know that it is but a useless gesture.
Well, even our old friend, innit, has been around in print for half a century, Segilla - first recorded as such in 1959 - so it doesn't look as if it's going away any time soon for the people you refer to in your second paragraph above.
As regards less/fewer, what about "My workplace is fewer than two miles from home, so it takes a taxi fewer than ten minutes to get me there and the driver charges fewer than four pounds." Would anyone say that? I suspect not, yet miles, minutes and pounds are all countable nouns.
There simply are situations - such as the above - which demand the colloquial/idiomatic �less' rather than the - supposedly - correct �fewer'. (The latter became �correct' only in the 18th century in any case. Prior to that, many writers used �less' where purists or pedants now demand �fewer'.) Even English examiners have been known to produce the instruction: "Write a pr�cis of this passage in 50 words or less", never mind the supermarkets with their till-signs saying: "Ten items or less"!
As time passes, we'll see and hear much more of �less' and much less of �fewer', you may count on it! The process is well under way. As an old-timer, I still differentiate between them, but I don't complain about people who choose not to... or don't even know that they �should'.
Whether direct or indirect, language evolution is unstoppable, as you acknowledge. Consequently, I can't see the point in getting annoyed at what is beyond prevention. Cheers
As regards less/fewer, what about "My workplace is fewer than two miles from home, so it takes a taxi fewer than ten minutes to get me there and the driver charges fewer than four pounds." Would anyone say that? I suspect not, yet miles, minutes and pounds are all countable nouns.
There simply are situations - such as the above - which demand the colloquial/idiomatic �less' rather than the - supposedly - correct �fewer'. (The latter became �correct' only in the 18th century in any case. Prior to that, many writers used �less' where purists or pedants now demand �fewer'.) Even English examiners have been known to produce the instruction: "Write a pr�cis of this passage in 50 words or less", never mind the supermarkets with their till-signs saying: "Ten items or less"!
As time passes, we'll see and hear much more of �less' and much less of �fewer', you may count on it! The process is well under way. As an old-timer, I still differentiate between them, but I don't complain about people who choose not to... or don't even know that they �should'.
Whether direct or indirect, language evolution is unstoppable, as you acknowledge. Consequently, I can't see the point in getting annoyed at what is beyond prevention. Cheers
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