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The interesting thing to me about this is it's a very recent phenomenon. English from 1900 has much more in common with 1600s English than 2020s English. There'
by Amezarak 4y ago
The interesting thing to me about this is it's a very recent phenomenon. English from 1900 has much more in common with 1600s English than 2020s English. There's been a massive shrinking in vocabulary, a reduction in the sense of individual words, and average sentence complexity has gone way, way down.
You read something from the 1600s, 1800s, or early 1900s, and it's not uncommon for a single sentence to cover half a page. Nowadays, that is practically unfathomable.
I read a lot of old books, so this is a little depressing to me. I'm not sure what the solution is, other than to encourage children to read lots of old books.
- mancerayder 4y agoI sympathize enormously. There is something more thoughtful and challenging about a very long sentence, like you get in philosophy books from the 17th century, or a newspaper article from the 1800's. The one thing that is perhaps depressing, but also a law, is that languages tend to simplify over time. So it's frustrating when people write things like, "He be upset about ... " or "The client's ask here is ..." but both are grammatical simplifications. Yes, they have a grammatical historical context, but simplifications nonetheless. English used to have a much more complex grammar, where you needed to inflect (if that is the right term) not just the verb but also the pronoun, direct object, etc. like modern Russian and some aspects of German. There are some interesting linguistics channels on YouTube that I find quite appealing. One is Simon Roper who studies Old English among other languages, NativLang which is more into historical linguistics and presents it in a pop way, and Langfocus which is more comparative linguistics.