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Language Evolution Rate | ||
Tags: Linguistic relationships | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| alfaiate Newbie Portugal Joined 5439 days ago 2 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 1 of 9 28 September 2010 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was once talking with some friends about languages (we are not in anyway language experts but we enjoy talking about them) and we wondered whether languages are currently evolving faster or slower then they did in the past.
At first, it seems like they are indeed evolving faster when one considers the number of new or imported words and expressions. Take English, for example. Internet words like googling are now part of day-to-day vocabulary. Since technology is evolving faster and faster, new words are constantly being created. This evolution is not new but it is certainly on the rise. Besides this, the number of literate speakers is now bigger than ever which possibly helps forging new words. This situation is also similar in other languages, especially in the ones that rely heavily on loan words for describing techie stuff, for example. On the other hand, these days it is also true that languages tend to become more uniform geographically (books some centuries ago and, more recently, radio and TV are major players in this process). We are also more in contact with old films and books, which will tend to temporally stabilize the languages. What are your thoughts on this? Sorry if this has already been brought up. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 9 28 September 2010 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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All the points you raise are valid.
In the context of English, Spanish, French, etc., namely the larger Western languages that are spoken in several countries/continents, I think there are 2 main tendancies we can observe: 1) dialects tend to disappear and make way for more uniform languages, and 2) languages are more and more influenced by other languages, words formely only used locally quickly spread around the world and there is an explosion of vocabulary from many specialized fields that make their way into daily language. The number of literates has not increased everywhere and the majority of languages continue to be oral only. However, we mustn't forget that there are also many languages that have been left entirely unaffected by any of the modern changes we are talking about. Edited by Arekkusu on 28 September 2010 at 8:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5123 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 9 20 November 2010 at 12:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not sure but I feel that English is evolving quite quickly... It has a massive vocabulary, and literally any noun can be turned into a verb. It may sound weird though, but over time it might become accepted. Like in your example, the verb "googling" which used to be just the noun "google".
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| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 4 of 9 20 November 2010 at 2:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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While technology is changing our vocabulary somewhat, I don't know that it's changing the language per se. Googling follows faxing, follows xeroxing, follows mimeographing. And then we have motoring, boating and shipping. Turning the noun form for a technology into a verb to describe using it has been with us a while.
Where technology is really changing English is not in its description, but in its application. As communication technologies evolve, texting, messaging and skyping may come to seem as quaint as sending a telegram, and the words describing them may disappear. But in the meantime, they have fostered a world where immediacy of communication is often favored over elegance of communication. The real change, then, is the replacement of the business letter with the e-mail exchange, and the normalization of quick, direct communication in place of more careful, considered communication. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 9 20 November 2010 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The languages that have evolved most slowly are typically those that have been spoken is geopgraphically isolated places (Icelandic) or in places where those with the international contacts spoke a totally different language without bothering to teach the locals this language (the Baltic countries). The fast evolution happens where there is a clash of cultures, and it happens where new fads quickly can be brought to the attention of others - which in these technologically minded days is relevant for all major languages. However the same technologies also have a tendency to bring uniformization - which means that dialects are driven into oblivion where ever the media promote some standard language form. So language change due to the media can go in several directions, but rarely in a direction that benefits traditional dialects.
One rule more: conquerors don't have to change, but the conquered certainly do: the language of the Celts in Great Britain hardly influenced the Anglosaxon language after the conquest in the 5. century because those tribes were totally crushed, i.e. murdered or driven out of the relevant areas just leaving some place names and dialectal words like 'crag'. And after the equally brutal Norman conquest (including its immediate aftermath) the French of the Normans was hardly affected, but that of the conquered certainly was - the English language has never evolved as fast as during the period where the old society was smashed to pieces by the new foreign rulers. And even in Middle English it is symptomatic that there was pure chaos in the language - the standardization process only started it had been adopted by the ruling class (for all sorts of reasons, including the loss of the possessions in France). Edited by Iversen on 20 November 2010 at 12:28pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 5132 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 6 of 9 20 November 2010 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Some counter-examples: Bulgars after conquering what now is Bulgaria gave up their language. And now Bulgarian is a Slavic language, not a Turkic. Franks, conquerors of Gallia, gave up their language and nowadays French is a Romance language not a Germanic. There are also other examples. I think it depends on the number of invaders and other factors. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5147 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 7 of 9 17 December 2010 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Tamil is one of The most ancient languages of the world. It´s the fifth most-spoken
Indian speech. Basque is a closed tongue. It remains unclassified. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 9 21 December 2010 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
And of course the Normans themselves are the perfect example, as they were vikings who tried to learn French. The vikings were generally good for learning the local languages -- some of their learner errors in the Scottish islands have become part of the modern Gaelic language, but the differences between the islands and the mainland are surprisingly small. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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