Language change

looksee

Language - the meaning and usage of words - changes; this has always been the case. Has this process started to speed up now with the almost overwhelming amount of written communication available to all of us. Are we losing meanings and potential for subtleties in communication as accuracy in usage diminishes? Are dictionaries too quick to accept common usage?

Just one example is 'decimated'. It is used to describe a situation where almost everything is destroyed or lost. 'A farmer's herd of cattle was decimated when thieves stole sixty of the sixtyfour animals from a field'.

Decimated means to lose one tenth; whether this is anything to do with Roman legions is debatable, but there is no logical reason why it should be used to mean 'a majority'. Or is there? Am I being pedantic, is this natural language change? It seems a pity that words with quite precise meanings should be lost to us.

AnLonDubh

looksee wrote: »

Language - the meaning and usage of words - changes; this has always been the case. Has this process started to speed up now with the almost overwhelming amount of written communication available to all of us.

It seems a pity that words with quite precise meanings should be lost to us.

Language isn't changing at a slower or faster pace than in previous centuries, it's about the same, and languages are constantly losing words or having words change meaning, it's nothing new.

Eeden

I don't think that we are losing the potential for subtlety. How could we be, when new definitions and words are continually arising?

I'd suggest a few linguistics and language blogs which might help you to look at these things from a different perspective. Linguists study the actual usage and evolution of language, and don't try to fix any language at any particular point in time. You've probably come across some of these if you have an interest in language/linguistics in general.

Some of my favourites are:

Sentence First

Language Log

Harmless Drudgery

And anything that Geoffrey Pullum writes/blogs/comments about (although he does piss off some folks).

Many of them often talk about the Recency illusion, which is the effect that when you notice something, you think it has become more prevalent recently, even though it may have in fact been happening for a long, long time before you noticed it.

feargale

looksee wrote: »

Language - the meaning and usage of words - changes; this has always been the case. Has this process started to speed up now with the almost overwhelming amount of written communication available to all of us. Are we losing meanings and potential for subtleties in communication as accuracy in usage diminishes? Are dictionaries too quick to accept common usage?

Just one example is 'decimated'. It is used to describe a situation where almost everything is destroyed or lost. 'A farmer's herd of cattle was decimated when thieves stole sixty of the sixtyfour animals from a field'.

Decimated means to lose one tenth; whether this is anything to do with Roman legions is debatable, but there is no logical reason why it should be used to mean 'a majority'. Or is there? Am I being pedantic, is this natural language change? It seems a pity that words with quite precise meanings should be lost to us.

What word would you use instead to mean almost everything destroyed or lost? What is the need of a word to denote that which is diminished by ten per cent? How often does that happen? A rabbit was called cony by Shakespeare, or coinìn in Irish, literally a little dog. The pupil of your eye was where the Romans, looking into it and seeing a reflection of themselves, thought it to be a little boy or pupillus. Not very logical, is it? But that's language. It's there to serve ordinary people, not to satisfy pedants.

looksee

feargale wrote: »

What word would you use instead to mean almost everything destroyed or lost? What is the need of a word to denote that which is diminished by ten per cent? How often does that happen? A rabbit was called cony by Shakespeare, or coinìn in Irish, literally a little dog. The pupil of your eye was where the Romans, looking into it and seeing a reflection of themselves, thought it to be a little boy or pupillus. Not very logical, is it? But that's language. It's there to serve ordinary people, not to satisfy pedants.

If we can't be pedantic in Linguistics and Etymology, where can we?

I am not arguing about logic specifically, though I don't find the pupil example at all illogical, I am talking about words that have a use and meaning but which common usage is removing from the lexicon. Shakespeare gave us many words, but he created new ones rather than garbling the meaning of existing words; it doesn't matter that he used the word cony for rabbit, we just have two words meaning the same thing, it has not diminished our vocabulary.

Your argument about serving ordinary people could be applied to any of the misused language that is around the internet in particular, though it is edging into formal use too. Why do we need to differentiate between accept and except; 'ordinary' people use them interchangeably, so is that how they should be used? Quiet and quite, does and dose, taught and thought, allowed and aloud, your and you're.

I was using decimate simply as an example, but a description of removing a very large percentage of, say, a population, could be exterminate, annihilate, obliterate or destroy, each of which has a subtly different inference. Decimate should be used to describe either specifically removing ten percent, or removing a small but significant proportion. It has a different use. It should be possible to say 'Influenza decimated the population of the town' and it will be understood that a significant number of people died, not that the population was almost wiped out.

nuac

looksee wrote: »

If we can't be pedantic in Linguistics and Etymology, where can we?

I am not arguing about logic specifically, though I don't find the pupil example at all illogical, I am talking about words that have a use and meaning but which common usage is removing from the lexicon. Shakespeare gave us many words, but he created new ones rather than garbling the meaning of existing words; it doesn't matter that he used the word cony for rabbit, we just have two words meaning the same thing, it has not diminished our vocabulary.

Your argument about serving ordinary people could be applied to any of the misused language that is around the internet in particular, though it is edging into formal use too. Why do we need to differentiate between accept and except; 'ordinary' people use them interchangeably, so is that how they should be used? Quiet and quite, does and dose, taught and thought, allowed and aloud, your and you're.

I was using decimate simply as an example, but a description of removing a very large percentage of, say, a population, could be exterminate, annihilate, obliterate or destroy, each of which has a subtly different inference. Decimate should be used to describe either specifically removing ten percent, or removing a small but significant proportion. It has a different use. It should be possible to say 'Influenza decimated the population of the town' and it will be understood that a significant number of people died, not that the population was almost wiped out.

I fully agree with you regarding "decimate". imho using it for anything other than reduction by ten percent is sloppy English. The clue is in the word itself.Anybody who learned any Latin or Greek would know the meaning. Sadly the numbers of such people have been more than decimated over recent generations

CelticRambler

looksee wrote: »

I was using decimate simply as an example, but a description of removing a very large percentage of, say, a population, could be exterminate, annihilate, obliterate or destroy, each of which has a subtly different inference.

You don't hear many people these days refer to having had a terrific experience, but in my youth that was considered a good thing. Nowadays, the youths of my acquaintance refer to their great day out as wicked or sick. It makes no sense, but my 1970/80s vocab made none either.

Being immersed in a non-native language, however, highlights the importance of nuance, especially when a word in the "foreign" language retains its original meaning. All good fun when trying to make oneself understood by the natives! :cool:

AnLonDubh

looksee wrote: »

I am not arguing about logic specifically, though I don't find the pupil example at all illogical, I am talking about words that have a use and meaning but which common usage is removing from the lexicon.

English used to be a language with five cases and sixteen more verbal forms than it now possesses, minor things like a few words changing their precise meaning pale in comparison to the dramatic change of going from an inflecting language to an analytic isolating language. Literally thousands of extremely precise words have been lost from English over the centuries, with the highest rate of attrition being in the early 19th century when local dialects of English were standardised throughout England.

feargale

looksee wrote: »

If we can't be pedantic in Linguistics and Etymology, where can we?

You think so? Try the politics or sports threads.
Or, better still, the A&A ones. There's a guy in one of them at present complaining that bishops get to see the Taoiseach but farmers and trade unionists only get to see the minister.
And I can't even get to see my TD.

feargale

nuac wrote: »

I fully agree with you regarding "decimate". imho using it for anything other than reduction by ten percent is sloppy English. The clue is in the word itself.Anybody who learned any Latin or Greek would know the meaning. Sadly the numbers of such people have been more than decimated over recent generations

They've been nonagintated, almost centumated in fact. I'm one of the last who learned both.