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1. English is made up of several languages; 2. "Language changes" pretty much equates to people making mistakes, and those mistakes becoming part of the langua
by goatcode 5y ago
1. English is made up of several languages;
2. "Language changes" pretty much equates to people making mistakes, and those mistakes becoming part of the language. Since English has spread over so much of the world, in addition to it not having a central authority that is looked to for its structure (as does French), many mistakes have come in, and made the language weird. This overlaps a bit with (1).
- anbende 5y agoRegarding (2), now that there are on the order of a billion non-native speakers of English who often talk to each other, we will see more and more changes to the language from THEIR mistakes. English will belong less and less to native speakers as time goes on. Wild!
- goatcode 5y agoOr new languages will spawn from it combined with whatever of the numerous other-language-speakers use it. Steven Fry talked a bit about "Panglish" on QI, was interesting. The question becomes: Will we call English English, or will some other language per above be called English? I for one don't use "nother" nor place periods before consequents, so I might be speaking my own language right now, based on what people online seem to have done with English :)