The task of mastering a language requires a knowledge of grammar.  The modern philosopher and linguist, Noam Chomsky, argued that much of this knowledge is inborn.  Maybe it is not so much inborn as absorbed.  These days it is not often taught.

The English language.  What is happening to it?  It has probably always been changing.  But I suspect that in recent times it has been changing faster than ever.  Americans have deleted the letter ‘u’ from their alphabet.  One rarely hears adverbs being used any more.  It’s as if someone is trying to delete them too.  Many young people have no idea what an adverb is.  Indeed, there is a generation of school teachers who were never taught grammar.  

Life would have been so much easier if everyone accepted that the Oxford English Dictionary, first published by 1928, was the end of the changes.  Since then dictionaries have appeared all over the world with many updates.  The OED lists more than 600,000 words and three and a half million quotations.  One suspects that most people use no more than a few thousand words, a very tiny fraction of those available. And in the latest update (September 2022) 650 more words were added.  (By the way, the word of the year 2021 was ‘vax’.  My spellchecker does not know this and wanted to change it to ‘tax’.  Of course, the more free vaxes we receive, the more taxes will have to be paid.) For 2022 the OED word of the year was ‘goblin mode’ referring to being unapologetically lazy or greedy and self indulgent.  (The term ‘word’ seems to be used loosely.)

Over the years we have imported words from other languages into the English language.  For example, from the French we commonly see chic, petite, faux, avant-garde, matinee, bourgeois, chauffeur, eau do toilette and at least one hundred more.  We commonly use RSVP – repondez s’il vous plait.  Over the centuries many words have come from Greek and Latin.  Sometimes the pronunciation has changed, e.g. with psychology we no longer sound the ‘p’.  (Of course we all know the meaning of ‘e.g.’ – for example.  But for what do the letters stand?  They stand for the latin ‘exempli gratia’ – for the sake of an example.  When speaking of the time we often hear reference to AM and PM.  These stand for the latin ante meridiem and post meridiem.  Midday refers to the moment when the sun passes the meridian.

One word that comes from Japanese is ‘tsunami’.  We used to refer to them as tidal waves but our better understanding led us, in the last 80 years or so, to use the Japanese word and, as Japanese people do, we pronounce each part of the word.  So we pronounce the ’t‘and the ’s’.   

Bushido, bravado and chutzpah all have very similar meanings but have three different sources: Japanese, Spanish and Yiddish.

We use lots of acronyms and abbreviations.  Many today know exactly to what is being referred by ‘radar’ and ‘laser’.  Few know how the words came about. The former comes from ‘radio detection and ranging’ while the latter refers to ‘light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation’.  Scuba comes from ‘self-contained underwater breathing apparatusSo an acronym is a word made generally from the first letters of words. In English the word has been around only since the 1940s.  Abbreviations have been around for quite some years.  Common for many years have been FBI and OHMS.  Someone used to write letters to me that ended with SWALK.  This and many other interesting abbreviations and a number of acronyms which were names of countries originated during the first and second World Wars when millions of people were writing  many  letters to loved ones.  Abbreviations became ever more popular with the advent of texting.  More recently there are BTW, LOL, OMG, AFK, ROFL and many others.  Although the abbreviation BURMA dates back to the Second World War, the band Dirty Pretty Things of early this century had a song call B.U.R.M.A. which included the line, ‘Be Upstairs Ready My Angel’.

Semantics refers to the meaning of words.  The meaning of words has changed at least for some people.  This is a semantic change.  Some people seem to unaware that there has been a change in the meaning of words or ideas, rather they are aware only of the current meaning.  Take the sentence, ‘The couple anticipated marriage.’ Today it is generally taken to mean that the couple are looking forward to being married.  However, in times past it meant that the couple acted as if they were married already.  Most older people are aware that the meaning of the word ‘gay’ has changed since the sixties.

For too many people, knowledge of grammar is sadly lacking.  Take an adverb, for example, a word that qualifies another especially an adjective or verb or even another adverb.  Where an adverb is appropriate many choose to use an adjective.  ‘I performed good today.’  However, there is one adverb that has become very common – ‘absolutely’.  Oftentimes, instead of referring to some ultimate, the word is used for emphasis, replacing the word ‘very’.  Again it seems to serve the purpose of taking up a bit of time, as if that is something that people wish to do

Take the word ‘cowboy’.  Of course, the origin of the word was the Wild west of the America.  Today in British English it can refer to a tradesman doing shoddy work while in the United States it can refer to a car driver who does not follow the rules of the road.

Sometimes words are lengthened.  In years gone by we used to use the verb ‘to orient’.  These days people tend to say ‘orientate’.  Perhaps this change comes from the fact that so many people at least commence university and attend ‘orientation week’ activities and they think that the verb comes from the noun rather than the other way around.

Sometimes words get shortened.  We tend to drop off whole syllables.  For example, we hear ‘particuly’ and ‘reguly’ instead of ‘particularly’ and ‘regularly’.  Yes, even on the ABC or indeed, the BBC.  Sometimes we have difficulty with the letter ’t’ and one frequently hears ‘ardist’ and ‘impordant’ especially on the ABC.  How many people can pronounce the second month of the year or the middle day of the week?  Many seem to pronounce create the same as crate.

Some words that people say are nothing more than padding.  I think that we all know now that we cannot give 110% effort.  But what of the meaning of ‘incredible’ or ‘unbelievable’ – things that cannot be believed.  One might hear, ‘That meal was unbelievably good.’  A person may use the word ‘incredible’ a dozen times in just five minutes.  Perhaps better not to use it at all.

Take the sentence,  ‘He has degrees in engineering and science as well’.  The words, ‘as well’ are redundant, adding nothing to the meaning of a sentence. 

Many people seem almost unable to simply say ‘yes’.  Instead we do often hear ‘absolutely’, ‘definitely’,  and ‘100%’.  Usually the emphasis is not warranted.  Sometimes the addition of words is not just redundant but even inappropriate.  One hears the liberal use of the adverb ‘literally’.  We usually mean what we say literally so it is not necessarily to say so.  Where that is not the case it is usually obvious.  Consider, ‘It was literally a rollercoaster of a ride at the office today.’  There is no rollercoaster at the office.  The meaning cannot be literal.  If one said, ‘It was a rollercoaster of a ride at the office today’ , the meaning is clear.  It is not necessary to say the the meaning is metaphorical.

There are almost ten thousand quotations of Dickens in the Oxford English Dictionary and hundreds of words were first used by him.  Again he often brought back into common use words that had previously fallen into disuse.  He used existing words to create new words.  He converted adjectives into nouns, for example ‘messy’ into ‘messiness’ and ‘creepy’ into ‘the creeps’.  People used to read a lot.  These days all too often reading time has been overtaken by time watching a screen of one sort or another.  We listen to people who are experts in one field and follow their less than expert knowledge of the english language.  Perhaps we should read a bit more.

We do similar things today such as converting nouns into verbs.  ‘He medaled at the Olympic Games.’  Medal was recorded as a noun in the 16th century and was first known as a verb in 1966.  Google was founded in 1998, but the verb was verified just five years later.  (The origin of the name Google is probably the number googol which is 10¹⁰⁰.)

Prepositions express a relationship between two parts of a sentence.  A preposition is generally one word but might be two or more.  Generally, two prepositions do not appear together.  So the use of ‘off of’ is questionable.  Just an extra bit of padding.  Generally it used be thought that prepositions should never the the end of a sentence.  These days we do it often.  Winston Churchill, a great orator of modern times was once criticized for doing this, which resulted in his famous retort, “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put”.  

Syntax refers to the orderly arrangement of words for meaning.   There are many rules that relate to this which are generally taken for granted.  For example a subject may be followed by a verb and then an object.  “I patted the dog.”  ‘The dog licked me.”  So the subject does something to the object, the subject comes first, the object last.  So when I recently received a circular form a local extent agent saying in part, ‘Me and my team…”.  You could imagine that I was a little disturbed that the writer used the objective case for the subject, then added insult to injury by the discourteous act of putting himself before the team.

Going back a little more than a century I suspect that changes in the English language happened far more slowly.  Until the very late nineteenth century radio was unavailable.  Therefore, people were influenced only by those to whom they spoke or wrote.  The BBC is 100 years old and the ABC is about 90.  I think that the biggest change was the advent of television generally in the fifties.  That opened up the possibility of influence of other countries especially the United States.  And that influence has been great.  The situation is not aided by the fact that there are perhaps two generations of English teachers who were never taught grammer.  All of this says nothing about the great diversity in accents throughout the English speaking world making sometimes for great difficulty in understanding.  The future?  Who knows.  In the late seventeenth century Newton wrote his great work, ‘Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ in Latin.  Perhaps it will be back to the future.  More likely in a hundred years time the language of today will be difficult to understand.

Garry A. Deegan