Aug 5, 2009

Language Changes

I see it quite often - somebody uses a form that somebody else dislikes, and that somebody criticizes it, and yet another person comes in and says that the controversial form is, in fact, quite acceptable, because language changes. The answer is inevitably "Bullshit!"

The truth is, it does. Proof is easy enough to find - from the more obvious ones, such as "thee" and "thou" being gone, to the more subtle ones, such as the phrase "an apron" having become grammatically correct - the original form, of course, being "a napron", to go with "a napkin". I see the auto-correction even underlines the term "napron" with red, which illustrates quite remarkably quite how far this chane has gone, rendering the original completely unused except by nerds like me.

But that's not the only change - witness how the term "bridd" metamorphed into "bird", with the original form being extinct, or how the word "if" had lost its meaning of "since" entirely, which it retained long into the 1800s. Other changes is that once "silly" meant "blessed" and Buxom" "obedient". Try using them with this meaning now!

If thou no doubt hast payed Attention, being the buxom Reader that thou art, thou shouldst with no Problems discern the Truth: Language doth change.

2 comments:

  1. I totally agree. It annoys me when people just plainly deny that languages change. Of course they do.

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