We all know language changes over time and so it won't be a surprise to hear that it's been predicted that in one thousand years, all of the current words in English will cease to exist. You may ask yourself now, with such an interconnected and globalised world like today's, how likely is this to be true? As we know, many predictions have been made throughout history and even to this day that have been wrong. Just think back to three years ago when we all thought the world was going to end in 2012 yet we're still here!
Well, the prediction has been made due to the current, rapid evolution in language that we are undergoing. With such an interconnected world, we pick up and create a vast amount of new words every year. But is this pushing out old words enough to give enough strength to their argument and is it likely that ALL current English words will be linguistically extinct in one thousand years? One thing's for sure, we won't live to find out, but we can think about its probability of happening and perhaps the best way to do this would be to travel back one thousand years to a time dragons and heroes and celebrations in mead halls!
Old English is completely incomprehensible to most of us now, but it is actually the English of yesteryear and the vernacular of one thousand years ago... yet it's still English and it still has words that can be translated easily into modern English. If you listen carefully enough, you can even hear some similarity to modern English words and pronunciation. The truth is, although the words have changed pronunciation since then, each word must still be connected to a similar concept as to what it was back then. Of course, massive changes in culture, lifestyle and relationships will have changed these concepts somewhat and so we can say that the next thousand years will change these concepts again, just like what they have done over the last thousand years.
At most, this prediction is unclear. What exactly does it mean when it says word? Which part of the word exactly? The pronunciation? The meaning? The concept in our brains? All of them? Pronunciation will definitely change, as will the meanings of some words for sure, but English, I believe, will still survive in some form and should still be translatable back to the English we speak now, but what do you think?
01 August 2015
01 July 2015
Is "That's Gay" an Acceptable Phrase?
ABBC Newsbeat survey of young people under 29 has recently revealed that 47% of them believe that the phrase "that's gay" is acceptable to be broadcast on television. My question is what problems does this cause in English?
Firstly, LGBT activists may feel as if this phrase is discriminatory against gay people because it compares them to something bad, awful, or unfortunate in this phrase. However, this is not the case because 44% of the same participants in the Newbeat survey said they never use this phrase themselves, while a further 31% said they rarely use it. Therefore, young people's usage of this phrase is in fact very low.
In addition, the same participants believed that clearly discriminatory and offensive words against the LGBT community were definitely unacceptable to be broadcast on TV. 85% also agreed that the word homosexual was acceptable.
The conclusion? This is not an LGBT rights issue. It is a language issue. And it is a language issue on three levels.
First of all, youth across the world feel a need to be innovative and creative and this doesn't stop with language. If we look back to when we were children, we can also remember times when we used new words like 'chav' and 'emo' to distinguish different groups of people, and even now young people have started to use words like 'twerk' or 'sick' (meaning good). Therefore we should not be surprised that this phrase has been created.
Secondly, language inevitably changes over time and we cannot predict what will happen to it in the future... what words will be lost and what words will change in meaning completely. I have more on this coming in my next video!
And on the third language issue level, we can say that some words are exceptionally unstable in meaning. Think how the words 'wicked' and 'queer' have changed meaning recently along with the word 'gay'. We only need to go back to the 1960s, just 50 years ago, to see a completely different meaning for the word 'gay', where it meant happy and joyous. Soon after, the homosexual community took possession of this word to describe their own and now they are worried that the word is changing meaning again and that this change in meaning reflects some intolerance towards gay people. This is not true. In fact, the semantic reversal of the word 'gay' is only used by a small amount of young people, as we can see from the Newsbeat survey, and it is not a reflection of society's tolerance toward gay people, which has in fact become more and more relaxed over time.
So this change in word meaning is nothing to worry about. Language, just like the rest of us, undergoes evolution.
Source: BBC Newsbeat
Firstly, LGBT activists may feel as if this phrase is discriminatory against gay people because it compares them to something bad, awful, or unfortunate in this phrase. However, this is not the case because 44% of the same participants in the Newbeat survey said they never use this phrase themselves, while a further 31% said they rarely use it. Therefore, young people's usage of this phrase is in fact very low.
In addition, the same participants believed that clearly discriminatory and offensive words against the LGBT community were definitely unacceptable to be broadcast on TV. 85% also agreed that the word homosexual was acceptable.
The conclusion? This is not an LGBT rights issue. It is a language issue. And it is a language issue on three levels.
First of all, youth across the world feel a need to be innovative and creative and this doesn't stop with language. If we look back to when we were children, we can also remember times when we used new words like 'chav' and 'emo' to distinguish different groups of people, and even now young people have started to use words like 'twerk' or 'sick' (meaning good). Therefore we should not be surprised that this phrase has been created.
Secondly, language inevitably changes over time and we cannot predict what will happen to it in the future... what words will be lost and what words will change in meaning completely. I have more on this coming in my next video!
And on the third language issue level, we can say that some words are exceptionally unstable in meaning. Think how the words 'wicked' and 'queer' have changed meaning recently along with the word 'gay'. We only need to go back to the 1960s, just 50 years ago, to see a completely different meaning for the word 'gay', where it meant happy and joyous. Soon after, the homosexual community took possession of this word to describe their own and now they are worried that the word is changing meaning again and that this change in meaning reflects some intolerance towards gay people. This is not true. In fact, the semantic reversal of the word 'gay' is only used by a small amount of young people, as we can see from the Newsbeat survey, and it is not a reflection of society's tolerance toward gay people, which has in fact become more and more relaxed over time.
So this change in word meaning is nothing to worry about. Language, just like the rest of us, undergoes evolution.
Source: BBC Newsbeat
01 June 2015
Can Phonetics Be Fun?
I want to open today's episode by asking you whether you think Phonetics can be fun. If you ask me, I will most definitely say yes because I'm a huge fan of phonetics and I am fascinated with all the different sounds we can make with our mouths.
Another group of people who like Phonetics are the International Phonetics Association (IPA)... Yes, it really does exist... and they have listed all the possible sounds that a normal mouth can make, and which are in "contrastive distribution in at least one language". Well, let's not worry about that, but what they have done for us is put them into a lovely chart - although it may look very complicated, it is actually rather exciting for people like me.
The list of sounds is exhaustive and contains such spectacular sounds as /ʘ/ /ǃ/ /ɓ/, and it even contains some sounds that I cannot demonstrate here because, well let's just say, they are beyond my articulation spectrum. One of these sounds my German friends will definitely know about because it is that /r/ sound at the back of the mouth, which is incredibly difficult to do, especially for me.
Let's just pause here for a moment and think isn't it wonderful that all of these sounds actually exist in languages across the world? ... No?
Then imagine trying to teaching these sounds to a group of students - the class will soon enough become hysterically tongue-tied and will never forget the moment you tried to teach them some of these weird and wonderful sounds. Isn't that interesting? ... No?
Then what about this video? [plays video, see below]
Now if I change the image but not the sound, what do you hear? [plays different video with same audio, see below]
I guess that for the first video you heard 'bar' and for the second you heard 'far', is that right? But honestly, the sound of the video did not change at all. It kind of makes us think that vision is more important than hearing, even in spoken English. Now you can rewind and replay this video for eternity and even though you now know what happens in the videos, you can still listen and the effect will not change. Now you cannot deny that that is not interesting!
Another group of people who like Phonetics are the International Phonetics Association (IPA)... Yes, it really does exist... and they have listed all the possible sounds that a normal mouth can make, and which are in "contrastive distribution in at least one language". Well, let's not worry about that, but what they have done for us is put them into a lovely chart - although it may look very complicated, it is actually rather exciting for people like me.
The list of sounds is exhaustive and contains such spectacular sounds as /ʘ/ /ǃ/ /ɓ/, and it even contains some sounds that I cannot demonstrate here because, well let's just say, they are beyond my articulation spectrum. One of these sounds my German friends will definitely know about because it is that /r/ sound at the back of the mouth, which is incredibly difficult to do, especially for me.
Let's just pause here for a moment and think isn't it wonderful that all of these sounds actually exist in languages across the world? ... No?
Then imagine trying to teaching these sounds to a group of students - the class will soon enough become hysterically tongue-tied and will never forget the moment you tried to teach them some of these weird and wonderful sounds. Isn't that interesting? ... No?
Then what about this video? [plays video, see below]
Now if I change the image but not the sound, what do you hear? [plays different video with same audio, see below]
I guess that for the first video you heard 'bar' and for the second you heard 'far', is that right? But honestly, the sound of the video did not change at all. It kind of makes us think that vision is more important than hearing, even in spoken English. Now you can rewind and replay this video for eternity and even though you now know what happens in the videos, you can still listen and the effect will not change. Now you cannot deny that that is not interesting!
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