26 Dec Contemporary English – a changing language
Over the last years, the scientists from the UK have conducted a study on how the English language has changed over time. The findings are surprising and they show the language in the UK has changed so much, our ancestors would need an interpreter to understand us.
Another finding shows the language has not changed in order to be more useful, but as the result of generation trends. Accordingly, as the result of social media use for example, the children in the UK use the word “like” five times more than before. Changes in socially acceptable ways of expressing emotions have caused the word “love” to be used five times more than the word “hate”, while on the other hand, as the result of the economic crisis from 2008, a new trend has appeared with words like “save” and “money” being used twice as much as the word “spend”.
As one of the results of these changes, Cambridge researchers have also observed an increasing number of grammar mistakes, i.e. a rise in illiteracy among young people. Some celebrities have also started using words like „gonna“, instead of „going to“. Linguists and historians disapprove of this trend and criticize some English daily papers which have accepted these changes.
However, incorrect language use is not only noticeable with native English speakers, the said researchers have also identified several words which are most often spelled wrong. These include: “because“- spelled as “becouse“, “accommodation“ as “accomodation”, “which“ as “wich“, “advertisement“ as “advertisment“ and “beautiful“ as “beatiful”.
The language has always been changing, perfecting and shaping depending on its users’ needs. It is not a bad thing because if it were, if the language had not changed since the 1950s, we would not have words like “modem“, “fax machine“ or “cable TV“ today.
We adopt new words in our daily communication and the used linguistic constructions differ depending on the age, line of work or education level. Likewise, different social groups use language as part of their group identity. In communication with their peers, young people use words, expressions and sentence structures which older generations cannot quite understand. Some expressions are passing while others are used for a rather long time.
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