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Something that bothers me is the recent (past few hundred years) effort by (English speaking) humans to stop the development of the language. When did it stop b

Something that bothers me is the recent (past few hundred years) effort by (English speaking) humans to stop the development of the language. When did it stop being okay for the language to evolve? Isn't part of the beauty of it that it changes, that people use it differently, that words have new meanings?

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
It may be beautiful, but it isn't very helpful. Imagine if computer language terms changed semantics - all the code that is destroyed. Stopping development isn't a blanket thing. Stopping vandals from painting on the train cars isn't 'stopping the development of rail travel'
ForHackernews 12y ago
English is either already, or rapidly becoming, the lingua franca for the entire world. If we allow to it continue evolving without constraint, we may well wind up with numerous mutually unintelligible dialects. This is already true of many other languages like Chinese and Arabic. It would be a shame if people from India could no longer understand people from Australia, even when they were both using English.
- notahacker 12y ago
  On the other hand, a high proportion of the most vigorously-defended aspects of the English language are at best unnecessary to aid understanding, and at worst arcane irregularities which survive as shibboleths to distinguish speakers by their level of education.
bmelton 12y ago
That assumes that evolution is always good. It isn't. Consider the recent acceptance of the ironic usage of "literally" to mean "figuratively". If it wins, there will no longer be as precise a word that means only "literally", and the English language will have suffered a loss. I am all for the evolution of language where it creates new words, adopts and embraces portmanteaus, or embraces the use of easily intuited non-words into the common parlance, but not every change is an improvement, and where a non-improvement exists, it should be resisted.
- tedunangst 12y ago
  Have we recently changed the definition of recent? You know how far back literally meaning not literally goes, right?
  - bmelton 12y ago
    The Merriam Webser and Cambridge dictionaries began accepting the change as canon circa 2013. I consider that recent, especially given its long history of misuse.
    - pbh101 12y ago
      Perhaps Joe Biden being vice-president was the tipping point. He is an egregious violator, using 'literally' to amplify how much he means 'figuratively.'
- mcphage 12y ago
  If "recent" you mean "for the last 200 years".
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly, but I have to wonder if our resistance does any good. Years of telling kids not to say Sally and me went to the store has produced, now, several generations of people who say he gave it to Sally and I, which, of course, is just as wrong.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Consider the recent acceptance of the ironic usage of "literally" to mean "figuratively". This description always bugs me, because the description is inaccurate. The examples usually given are not ironic usages of "literally" to mean "figuratively", they are figurative usages of literally to mean "almost as if literally" (that is, figurative uses of "literally" to minimize the figurative character of some other figurative expression.) It is also not recent, at all. Its been going on literally forever.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

It may be beautiful, but it isn't very helpful. Imagine if computer language terms changed semantics - all the code that is destroyed. Stopping development isn't a blanket thing. Stopping vandals from painting on the train cars isn't 'stopping the development of rail travel'

ForHackernews 12y ago

English is either already, or rapidly becoming, the lingua franca for the entire world. If we allow to it continue evolving without constraint, we may well wind up with numerous mutually unintelligible dialects. This is already true of many other languages like Chinese and Arabic. It would be a shame if people from India could no longer understand people from Australia, even when they were both using English.

notahacker 12y ago
On the other hand, a high proportion of the most vigorously-defended aspects of the English language are at best unnecessary to aid understanding, and at worst arcane irregularities which survive as shibboleths to distinguish speakers by their level of education.

bmelton 12y ago

That assumes that evolution is always good. It isn't. Consider the recent acceptance of the ironic usage of "literally" to mean "figuratively". If it wins, there will no longer be as precise a word that means only "literally", and the English language will have suffered a loss. I am all for the evolution of language where it creates new words, adopts and embraces portmanteaus, or embraces the use of easily intuited non-words into the common parlance, but not every change is an improvement, and where a non-improvement exists, it should be resisted.

tedunangst 12y ago
Have we recently changed the definition of recent? You know how far back literally meaning not literally goes, right?
- bmelton 12y ago
  The Merriam Webser and Cambridge dictionaries began accepting the change as canon circa 2013. I consider that recent, especially given its long history of misuse.
  - pbh101 12y ago
    Perhaps Joe Biden being vice-president was the tipping point. He is an egregious violator, using 'literally' to amplify how much he means 'figuratively.'
mcphage 12y ago
If "recent" you mean "for the last 200 years".
ScottBurson 12y ago
I agree wholeheartedly, but I have to wonder if our resistance does any good. Years of telling kids not to say Sally and me went to the store has produced, now, several generations of people who say he gave it to Sally and I, which, of course, is just as wrong.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Consider the recent acceptance of the ironic usage of "literally" to mean "figuratively". This description always bugs me, because the description is inaccurate. The examples usually given are not ironic usages of "literally" to mean "figuratively", they are figurative usages of literally to mean "almost as if literally" (that is, figurative uses of "literally" to minimize the figurative character of some other figurative expression.) It is also not recent, at all. Its been going on literally forever.