Meeki said:In the US congress gets to pick which words are what
Um, no. You may be thinking of the Académie française, which works to maintain the purity of the French Language. The USA does not have any analogous body.
Meeki said:In the US congress gets to pick which words are what
You guessed opossodes, didn't you?Asmor said:Mods, please delete. Last edited by Asmor : Today at 12:12 PM. Reason: Made myself look stupid... Attempting to cover it up. Nothing to see here.
If that's true, a notion that I ain't grantin' ya fer free, then that's only because English has been remarkably successful over a short period of time in coming to ascendence as an important language over a vast range of places with a vast range of substrate languages underneath. Also, America---as the proverbial "melting pot" culture---has been inundated with divers linguistic influences that is quite possibly unprecedented, or at least unusual.Man in the Funny Hat said:As I have always been given to understand, English is a particularly mutable language that incorporates words from everywhere at the drop of a hat.
Well... IMO, English IS very mutable, because of several reasons:Hobo said:There's nothing intrinsic to English per se that makes it particularly mutable or able to incorporate words from everywhere.
o tempora, o linguistical mores.Festivus said:I vote this as the best explanation.
It's a symptom of our times. More and more I see people using cell phone shorthand, cutting words up, and horrible, horrible misspellings and grammar. It makes me sad for the future, because I won't understand half of it.
Where's the posrep button?Nifft said:Grammar ninjae care.
Cheers, -- N
Last week there was an article here in the newspapers about how modern languages still evolve. They all do, all the time. The study focused on the probability that seldom used words change faster than others... there even was a top 100 list which words are probably going to change soon (as well as a shorter list which words changed in the last few decades).Lord Tirian said:Well... IMO, English IS very mutable, because of several reasons:
1) ...
Cheers, LT.
Sounds interesting... link?Darklone said:Last week there was an article here in the newspapers about how modern languages still evolve. They all do, all the time. The study focused on the probability that seldom used words change faster than others... there even was a top 100 list which words are probably going to change soon (as well as a shorter list which words changed in the last few decades).