Language is always changing. At one point ‘an apron’ was ‘a napron’ while words like ‘literally’ are no longer literally literal. What are some language battles that have been lost in living memory and what are some others you predict will soon occur?
Edit: Non-english examples very welcome!
Not exactly what you’re asking, but double spaces after ends of sentences.
I still use them. I find it makes reading and finding sentences easier in a paragraph. There was a study that it had an impact
Ain’t ain’t a word.
It is now.
The one that bothers me most (heard a lot in the software dev world) is when people say process-eez instead of processes, even if it is technically a word now, like ain’t
Apple put the nail in the coffin for adverbs when “Think different” let illiterates think they were speaking correctly.
*speaking correct
.
I’m so sorry; I couldn’t help myself
I was one of the first years to have the new spelling rules.
It used to be, that a letter appearing more than twice in direct sequence would be cut to just twice. But that was lifted and is now just how many it should normally be. Examples: Schifffahrt, Brennnessel, Seeelefant.It used to be, that “dass” could also be spelt “daß”, but the rules for “ss” and “ß” were made clearer and more concise.
They also changed the way words could be split at the end of a line. If there was a double consonant in-between the syllables that were to split, the first syllable would take both consonants but now they are split evenly.
immer is split im-mer and not imm-er
But ck makes an exception: knackig is kna-ckig instead of old knak-kig“Reticent” used to mean ‘reluctance to speak’, or, ‘holding your tongue’, but in the last decade I saw it being used more frequently as a straight up synonym for ‘reluctance’. I wonder if people maybe think it’s a more authoritative sounding word?
It’s not a change of convenience or cultural drift, just a sign of people reading less and subconsciously trying to hide it, I think.
Australian English language is now largely Americanised, a process that started in the post-war era is now mostly complete.
- Terms such as ‘gaol’ have been widely replaced by ‘jail’.
- ‘Programme’ is mostly replaced by ‘program’.
- A ‘car bonnet’ is likely to be called a ‘hood’.
- ‘Play lunch’ is mostly replaced with ‘recess’.
- ‘Pusher’ is mostly called a ‘pram’
- ‘Lacker band’ is now mostly just ‘rubber band’.
- ‘Boomer’ no longer means kangaroo, but instead ‘Old person.’
I’m not really bothered by it or anything, but it’s been interesting to see it shift even over my lifetime.
Yes, but we got the good aussie slang!
Like, “no worries”. Fucking love it.
I don’t understand the pusher/pram one at all.
I’d say pram is still pretty British (“I have to push the pram-a-lot!”) in the US it would be almost definitely stroller.
‘Programme’ is mostly replaced by ‘program’.
We can still pronounce it correctly (with an O like ‘pronounce’ or ‘proclaim’) so there’s that
Far as I’ve ever seen, that’s how everyone pronounces it.
Elden Ring is trying to bring the spelling back to “gaol.”
Americans don’t use pram though, we say stroller
Yeah, pram is a British term. Or pushchair.
Bonnet
Australian
Uwotm8
Literally and Crescendo are my vocabulary pet peeves. Both have stupidly evolved to include definitions that mean the exact opposite of their true meanings.
Literally is annoying, but Crescendo is impossible. That is a specific musical term with an unalterable meaning. It means a gradual increase in volume, but it has come to mean a climax. Something will be described as “it rose to a crescendo,” and that is simply wrong. Something can crescendo to a climax, but not the other way around. If you change it to mean the climax, you can’t crescendo to a crescendo, s what’s the word for gradually increasing the volume?
Besides, it’s a musical term, and musicians will define musical terms, not illiterate civilians.
And if Literally can also mean “similar to,” then what word can be used to literally mean Literally?
That’s it, I’m going to start using “It rose to a fortissississimo”!
And don’t get me started on how the Pianoforte is just called the piano now, leaving out half of its loudness range smh.
While not totally gone, German’s genitive case (which is used to show ownership) is becoming less and less common. They have both the genetive case as well as their equivalent of " 's " - which is just “s,” if you’re wondering. Example:
Der Herr der Ringe.
The Lord of the Rings. It would normally be “die Ringe,” but it becomes “der” in the genetive case.
Another transition in German is that the “formal you” is being used less and less frequently. I understand this is the case for a few other European languages as well.
Interesting! Thanks for a non english perspective. Is German language development Influenced by widespread english competency? Are Germans becoming less fussy about certain rules in favour of some of English’s simpler or more flexible constructs? (Not to suggest that English isn’t a Byzantine mess of a language itself!)
Unfortunately, I’m not a native German speaker. So, take this with a grain of salt.
I will say that the German language has always been open to loan words from other languages. And, according to my German teacher (who is native), the biggest change recently in that regard is NOT how loan words are accepted BUT how quickly they are accepted these days. New loan words are being added all the time, especially by young people. He said that generally the word will be accepted as it is at first, and then over time it well become more “germanified” and used more like native words. He said this process used to take decades but now it can happen in less than a year. An example of a germanified English loan word is “chatten” which means “to chat,” just like English. Ich chatte, du chattest, wir chatten. (I chat, you chat, we chat.)
I believe the simplification of grammatical structures (like the abandonment of genetive) has been going on slowly over centuries and is mostly unrelated to contact with English speakers. But, there is likely some influence there.
Really interesting stuff! It just goes to show that even without ‘authorities’ such as the French Language Academy, loan words end up becoming modified and molded by their adoptive language. I’m learning Japanese and it has so many loan words going all the way back to the dutch. Some are barely recognisable for example computer is パソコン = pasokon = personal computer.
In US usage, it used to be that a situation could be “fraught with” complications, or hidden meaning, or difficulty, but it had to be “fraught with” something.
These days, the British style of saying that the situation is simply “fraught” seems to be way more popular than before.
Efficiency at work i guess. Maybe some cunning linguist can explain.
From my perspective, literally being used for emphasis does not actually change its meaning, it’s simply hyperbole.
If you complain that you’ve been “waiting for hours”, even though it’s been 45 minutes, that doesn’t change the meaning of “hours”, you’re just exaggerating.
Hyperbole is a stylistic element; style is a completely different level of language than grammar/spelling/semantics (word meanings). As another example of style, ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct but stylistically not recommended.
The OED actually includes the definition of literally as being what used to be the opposite of its definition nowadays, so I think that it does count as an auto-antonym (a word that means both itself, and the opposite of itself)
“I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate”
I agree, but there was a period in the '00s, or maybe early '10s, where the meaning was changing because you only ever saw it mean “figuratively”, to the point where dictionaries included both meanings. I think it’s settled back to its original meaning now though.
We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks; however, now it seems to be the user’s choice of inside or outside. And I have to admit that most of the time when I’m using quotes, it seems more logical to me to place the punctuation outside of them.
We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks;
Isn’t this a US English thing? In India we were taught to close them like brackets - i.e., the one that opened last closes first. So
‘Don’t wait. I will come later.’
But
He said ‘I will come later’.
You know, I actually prefer that it be variable, but only when it serves a purpose.
Like, if Im quoting someone “I might want to indicate that they completed a sentence.”, but also continue beyond it.
Yeah, I still feel like I’m supposed to, but frequently I think it makes more sense to pull it outside if it isn’t part of the quote. Putting it in the quotation makes it seem like it’s associated with the quotation, when it may not be.
For me, i make peace with this by thinking, the rules are one way for writing dialog, and perhaps another way when needing to convey the exactness of a quote.
YES! That’s basically my same reasoning.
Pronouns getting weird, especially when and is added, like “for him and I” or “her and I’s house”.
Also excetera for etcetera and mischievious for mischievous
I get irrationally angry any time I hear “I’s”. I can tolerate most other grammar issues, but something about that particular butchery of English drives me up the wall.
Would you rather prefer i’s or mine’s?
It’s just indolence.
It’s like people who put an S on the end of ‘e-mail’ to pluralize it.
“Decimating” no longer means killing ten percent as the Romans did; now it is used to mean the killing of a majority, so it’s close to the opposite of its original meaning.
I thought decimating meant reducing to a tenth, as in removing 90%?
No. It meant killing every tenth soldier in a line
The meaning is derived from the brutality of the act, not the proportion of people killed.
You’re being downvoted, but I suspect you’re actually correct. A note about the act of decimation: it wasn’t just killing every tenth soldier. It was that the other nine soldiers were forced to kill the tenth. It was an absolutely brutal act where soldiers were forced to kill their friends and comrades.
It makes sense that saying an act is as brutal as decimation would then come to replace the word itself over time. That happens pretty frequently in language evolution.
People really love to feel smug about others using words “wrong” for some reason. Let them. I don’t care.
The “deci” prefix is just a coincidence then?
More like a vague gesture, which, in idiom chock-full of metonymy, is legitimate.
