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Language is this beautiful, fluid, evolving thing. New words are being coined all the time, and "old words" go out of vogue and even become extinct. So this week I thought it'd be fun to explore some tangents on the topic of language and words. So let's do that.
You can pretty readily imagine some form of natural selection going on in a language amongst its branches, which is a funny thought. What starts as a local dialect, or niche slang, can proliferate and become so embedded within a language that it becomes "official" in the minds of a sufficient majority of its native speakers. With sufficient cultural influence, wide enough reach, or perhaps intergenerational appeal, unique utility, or inherent delight in its use - those words, phrases or accents survive and reproduce. Interesting thought!
Even your native language is just this latest incarnation of this roiling, living linguistic concept that's evolving and branching into all these permutations. Check out what I mean by skimming this interesting video where the creator attempts a sincere simulation of English accents over a ~700 year period:
The video's author begins with the disclaimer that he's an amateur (not even a student in a related field) with sufficient interest and access to his University's library. Isn't that incredible? What a great attitude and effort.
Notably, the earliest accents in the video are this strange mix of familiar and alien, and your listening comprehension drops to a point where you really have to strain at times to understand at all.
Funny that this is never an issue in period-piece TV and movie dramas, although I suppose that would make for very confusing and frustrating viewing, wouldn't it 😅. Nevertheless, I'd remind you that if you're ever presented with the opportunity to time travel, consider the language barrier, won't you? Even if you're speaking the "same language".
Perhaps you'd agree with the notion that the older iterations of the English language in the video could be considered extinct, having had branches of the language compete and evolve in such a way as to change the language so significantly that the earlier iterations are practically unrecognisable. This kind of "internal natural selection" of a language is interesting, especially when you consider that whole languages themselves also compete in this larger battle of international selection, where languages such as English and Spanish have considerable international proliferation from their colonial roots, while languages like Mandarin and Hindi have staggering numbers but with considerable regional concentration compared to English.
While we're here, if you were wondering (I was), English is still the most spoken language if you count second-language speakers, whereas Mandarin is by far the most spoken language if you only count native speakers (more than double English, which is in 3rd place behind Spanish by a comparatively small amount). Source: Ethnologue.
I think it's interesting that throughout the evolution of a language, two things inevitable happen:
So let's take a look at each of these.
First up, we have those words that appear so significantly in pop-culture that even language purists have to acknowledge that they exist, have meaning, and that people use them. Hence, despite the fact I bet it rankles more than a few people, such words make it into the dictionary: