Why does language change ? Flashcards
Ways of ease of articulation
- Assimilation
- Omission
How does language become more streamlined and efficient ?
- ease of articulation
- Neatening
What is assimilation ?
- sounds next to each other are pronounced in a different way from normal to make them easier to say
example of assimilation ?
- would pronounced ‘handbag” as “hanbag”
What is omission ?
- when sounds are left out from words
Why do people use omission ?
- Omission is a way of making language more fluent and flow more clearly
- Omission is not simply ‘lazy’ or ‘sloppy’
What is neatening ?
- Neatening is anomalies and inconsistencies in the language that are smoothened out.
Examples of neatening ?
- Most plurals end with ‘s, like books.Older nouns have lost older endings so that there is consistency e.g. ‘ shoes’ has replaced the older plural, ‘shooen’
- Older forms of past tense verbs are increasingly being replaced by more regularised verb endings ( e.g. ‘snuck’ is used less frequently than ‘sneaked’
How has political correctness had an impact on the language ?
- its purpose has been to remove words and phrases that have negative connotations from the language
Examples of politeness impacting the language ?
- The loss of ‘thou’ and ‘thee’, leaving only ‘you’ is a significant marker of increased politeness in the language
- English Language sometimes avoids using ‘you’ altogether to ensure we don’t cause offence.
Examples of political correctness ?
- old people referred to as senior citizens
- trivialising suffixes like -ess and -ette are no longer used
Reaction to politeness and political correctness language changes ?
- Many believe these changes are positive as they remove negative connotations from the language
- Some believe it’s gone too far with changes obscure meaning e.g. toilet cleaner as ‘ sanitarian consultant’
How did the British Industrial Revolution create language change ?
- new inventions and ways of working meant that new words and phrases were needed e.g. ‘shift work, productivity and clocking on’.
What was a consequence of the British Industrial Revolution ?
- urbanisation
How did urbanisation lead to language change ?
The movement of cities and the increased population caused increased levels of language contact
How did the British Empire bring language change ?
- The British Empire took back foreign words back to England
Ways that foreign language/ countries have influenced the English Language ?
- invasions from other countries
- words brought into English by Latin and Greek writers
- words borrowed from colonised countries
- Immigration to UK and two World Wars.
Examples of words from invasions from other countries
- Scandinavia brought skirt, cog, skip
- French brought us accompany, department, tax
Examples of words brought into English by Latin and Greek writers ?
- Latin gave us benefit, temperature and the prefixes sub and trans
- Greek gave us catastrophe, pneumonia and the morphemes auto and pan.
Examples of words borrowed from the British Empire ?
- Malaysia gave us wok
- India gave us shampoo
Examples of words brought from immigration to the UK and the two world wars ?
- China gave us wok
- The world wars exposed our language to contact with countries around the world
Post war affluence led to to a rise in travel and increased contact with other countries
How has technology influenced the language ?
- influenced our lexicon
- influenced how we use language
Examples of new lexicon which came from the rise of technology ?
- The development of communication systems ( the telephone, the telegraph, email, the internet, social networking )
How has technology influenced how we use language ?
- increased use of acronyms and initialisms
- brings about word conversion. e.g. ‘text’ is no longer a noun, but also a verb
The impact/ influence of television and film ?
- television and film has exposed us to a range of regional, national and international dialects
Ways in which society and societal attitudes have changed ?
- emergence of the teenager
- increased acceptance and discussion around gender neutrality and transgender people
How did the emergence of the teenager lead to language change ?
- they were open to change and linguistic creativity. Innovators of language change
How has gender neutrality and transgender people been reflected in language ?
- COINED TERM ‘Mx’ more prevalent
- increased use of the ‘they’ pronoun
