Kids these days are not destroying English

[mollyringle]

Every time I see a thread of “don’t you hate it when people mispronounce/misspell/misuse word X,” I feel the need to weigh in with this, as That Person Who Majored in Linguistics:

 

“Kids these days” are not, in fact, destroying the English language, and in fact fears of kids these days destroying the language go back all the way to early written records in the ancient world. No language has ever fallen apart and gone extinct from being regularly used, I promise you. Quite the contrary; popular usage only makes a language stronger and more innovative.

 

Could most people stand to learn a little more about etymology, and read over their written documents more carefully before calling them done and sending them? Sure, absolutely. Again, however, this has always been the case. It’s just that in the past, lots more people couldn’t read or write AT ALL, so we have fewer records of the people who would’ve had “worse” language usage. And with the internet, we now have far, far more examples of language usage every day–every second–than we ever did before. The amateur writer, the professional, and the in between. This is, for linguistics, a WONDERFUL thing, because it’s far easier to track usage than ever before.

 

And though the grammar Nazis hate hearing it, common usage is what decides a word’s meaning. Not some sacred language council at a university, not the lexicographers who compose the dictionary’s editions, not The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Lexicographers track usage, and tally it up, and faithfully record it, AS IT’S USED, not as it “should” be used, and that is that.

 

Language is strong. Language changes. It always has. It’s fine. Don’t panic.

Comments

[lilysea]

To quote the first episode of Will:

"You can't just make up words!"

"Well, someone must! Otherwise, we'd still be grunting or speaking Latin."

[mollyringle]

Haha, exactly! And even Latin evolved from something older. :)

Who'd want to live in a world where no one was innovative about language, anyway?

[peripety]

One of things I most enjoy about having the RSS feed of Samuel Pepys' Diary on my reading page is seeing how language has evolved in structure and usage from those days long ago. I find it fascinating to think of language as changing and adapting with the needs of its speakers/writers.

[mollyringle]

Indeed--it always does drift, and there's no way to stop it (despite the efforts of the language academy for French and similar organizations), so we might as well just appreciate its flexibility. :)

[pith]

I think it's the rate of change (and, in many cases, the fleeting nature of the changes) that concerns some people. I mean, I remember the complaints when "bootylicious" was Word of the Year or added to some dictionary. And now... when was the last time I heard anyone use "bootylicious", except in specific reference to the song? Slang is rising and dying incredibly quickly now; look at Tumblr memes which seem overdone and trite in a matter of DAYS now.

I don't completely agree re: common usage. Doesn't Iceland have something about new word formation so they don't just, say, spell "computer" with a K and decide that's the word? They make sure the new word sounds like it belongs in their language.

Language is ultimately about communication. If you can communicate your point, it works. That doesn't mean I want to read a novel full of slang grammar, words, and spelling, though. Different levels for different uses.

[mollyringle]

Exactly--language is about communication, which is precisely why it will never change too fast for comprehension. :) The need to communicate effectively will always be the safety brake against the innovative side. It's a lovely self-correcting system, even if largely a chaos-theory system.

Ah, slang; I love slang! Blink and you'll miss it, aside from the few terms that survive for the long haul, and we rarely know what those will turn out to be until it happens.

It'd be a hard thing to prove, but I'm willing to bet that slang has always, throughout human history, lived and died as fast as it does today. It's just human nature; it's like fashion. There's been Victorian slang, Elizabethan slang, medieval slang, slang in all other languages, etc. The main difference is in being able to share it instantly worldwide now, and in having a much bigger record of it.

Anyway, if a word falls out of favor (often as quickly as it came into favor, as you say) and truly no one uses it anymore, then the dictionaries will quietly drop it after a while, or at least mark it as rarely used.

I don't know Icelandic's policy; that might be so. But they have a far smaller number of speakers, and likely a much more consistently-spelled language than English. Even if we decided to police English, how would we enforce it? We basically already have the amount of policing we can manage, in the form of style guides--which of course disagree with one another on various fine points, and undergo changes based on (what else) popular usage.

I get weirdly activist about this topic because it seems like a lot of people--even some of the most liberal people I know--are strangely conservative and defensive and even prejudiced when it comes to language usage. People who wouldn't dream of judging someone for their sexual orientation or their ethnicity still think it's fine to judge people for their dialect, accent, or spelling abilities. I'm not totally immune, either! I still have some of that judgment deep inside me and I keep trying to root it out. Perhaps that's why I keep preaching this. As I said elsewhere recently (and should mention here), I am in fact a reformed grammar Nazi. I signed up for linguistics thinking it would give me the uber-grammar-corrector badge, then learned on the first page of the first textbook that linguists are descriptivists, not prescriptivists. And I went "...oh" and quietly turned myself 180 degrees, and here we are.