About Language Changes
Changes in the English language arouse strong emotions in certain sections of the community. The travel writer and language commentator Bill Bryson commented once on a conversation he had with an English gentleman who complained about the pronunciation of the word 'harass'. The English pronunciation has the emphasis on the first syllable (HAR-ass); the American pronunciation is on the second (har-ASS). The gentleman complained about a program that started off using the English pronunciation, and finished up using the American style. I suspect Bill Bryson reads the English Guardian newspaper, in any case his criticism was typical of those made by that paper. He said he didn't see why anyone should tell him how to pronounce a word. English evolves and if the pronunciation changes then so be it.
This actually missed one of the criticisms, which was that the pronunciation wasn't consistent. Even disregarding that, this comment, which is commonly made, misses some important points.
The first is that a change isn't necessarily for the better. I've mentioned before about how being 'non-judgemental' is often just an excuse for having no standards (' How Children Bring up Their Parents (Continued)'). The same applies to changes in language. Traffic laws also change over time but it would be unwise to drive on the wrong side of the road.
The second point is a bit more esoteric. The brain is in some respects like a muscle in that if it's not used it atrophies. More to the point, if a particular function of the brain is not exercised it will atrophy, and if certain thinking practices are not developed as a child they are difficult to develop later on. This has ramifications in how people think which I will address later, but here I want to emphasise the importance of
thinking about what you say. If you use cliches or simply repeat what you hear mindlessly then you will not exercise the language part of the brain, or, more precisely, the area of the brain that forms concepts into language. This means that you become unable to formulate thoughts into language properly.
Now, you may be thinking that there is an element of scare-mongering in this, after all, people have been criticising changes in language for some few hundred years and people are still, apparently, able to form concepts etc. I have mentioned previously ('Language and Thought' and 'Heroism') how misuse of language is affecting our ability to form ideas and this problem is endemic. It may well have been getting worse over the last few hundred years, I'm simply commenting on how people act in this century.
Defending sloppiness in thinking as being a healthy change in language is like defending child abuse as being a healthy change in sexual mores.
