关于英语语言的变化
About Language Change
Is the English language changing?
Yes, and so is every other human language. Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its urs. This isn't a bad thing; if English hadn't changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn't have words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cable TV. As long as the needs of language urs continue to change, so will the language. The change is so slow that from year to year we hardly notice it (except to grumble every so often about the 'poor English' being ud by the younger generation!). But reading Shakespeare's writings from the sixteenth century can be difficult. If you go back a couple more centuries, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if you went back another 500 years to try to read Beowulf, it would be like reading a different language.
卡通头像图片Why does language change?
Language changes for veral reasons. First, it changes becau the needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider the fax machine: Originally it was called a facsimile诱惑我的邻家 machine, becau it allowed one person to nd another a copy, or facsimile, of a document. As the machines became more common, people began using the shorter form fax to refer to both the machine and the document; from there, it was just a short step to using the word fax as a verb (as in I'll fax this over to Sylvia).
移动查流量Another reason for change is that no two people have had exactly the same language experience. We all know a slightly different t of words and constructions, depending on our age, job, education level, region of the country, and so on. We pick up new words and phras from all the different people we talk with, and the combine to make something new and unlike any other person's particular way of speaking. At the same time, various groups in society u language as a way of marking their group identity - showing who is and isn't a member of the group. Many of the changes that occur in language begin with teens and young adults: As young people interact with others their own age, their language grows to include words, phras, and constructions that are different from tho of the older generation. Some have a short life span (heard groovy lately?), but others stick around to affect the language as a whole.
We get new words from many different places. We borrow them from other languages (sushi, chutzpah), we create them by shortening longer words (gym from gymnasium) or by combining words (brunch from breakfast and lunch), and we make them out of proper names (Levis, fahrenheit). Sometimes we even create a new word by being wrong about
the analysis of an existing word. That's how the word pea was created: Four hundred years ago, the word pea was ud to refer to either a single pea or a bunch of them. But over time, people assumed that pea was a plural form, for which 安全中心首页pea must be the singular, and a new word - pea - was born. (The same thing would happen if people began to think of the word chee as referring to more than one chee.)
Word order also changes, though this process is much slower. Old English word order was much more 'free' than that of Modern English, and even comparing the Early Modern English of the King James Bible with today's English shows differences in word order. For example, the King James Bible translates Matthew 6:28 as "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not." In a more recent translation, the last phra is translated as "they do not toil". English no longer places not after the verb in a ntence.
Finally, the sounds of a language change over time, too. About 500 years ago English began to undergo a major change in the way its vowels were pronounced. Before that, 右手长痣gee would have rhymed with today's pronunciation of face, while mice would have rhy
med with today's peace. But then a 'Great Vowel Shift' began to occur, during which the 因为热爱ay sound (as in pay) changed to ee (as in fee) in all the words containing it, while the ee sound changed to i (as in pie). In all, ven different vowel sounds were affected. If you've ever wondered why most other European languages spell the sound ay with an e (as in fiancé) and the sound ee with an i (as in aria), it's becau tho languages didn't undergo the Great Vowel Shift. Only English did.
Wasn't English more elegant in Shakespeare's day?
People tend to think that older forms of language are more elegant, logical, or correct than modern Forms, but it's just not true. The Fact that language is always changing doesn't mean it's getting wor; it's just becoming different.
In Old English, a small winged creature with Feathers was known as a brid. Over time, the pronunciation changed to bird. Although it's not hard to imagine children in the 1400's being scolded For 'slurring' brid into bird暮城, it's clear that bird won out. Nobody today would suggest that bird is an incorrect word or a sloppy pronunciation.
The speech patterns of young people tend to grate on the ears of adults becau they're unfamiliar. Also, new words and phras are ud in spoken or informal language sooner than in Formal, written language, so it's true that the phras you hear teenagers using may not yet be appropriate For business letters. But that doesn't mean they're wor - just newer. For years English teachers and newspaper editors argued that the word 小零食店进货渠道hopefully shouldn't be ud to mean 'I hope', as in Hopefully it won't rain today, even though people frequently ud it that way in informal speech. (And, of cour nobody complained about other 'ntence adverbs' such as frankly and actually.) Now the battle against hopefully is all but lost, and it appears at the beginnings of ntences even in formal documents.
