Gorilla or elephant?

[Clockwork John]

I know those expressions the same way you do.

It seems to me that the English language, or at least the American form of it, is steadily declining, rather than evolving. People use more and more words incorrectly. People's vocabularies are steadily shrinking. And, as you pointed out, people forget the meanings and origins of commonly used phrases, and over time, begin to use them incorrectly.

[auld argonian]

Yeah...it seems like an example of an American Linguistics Expert would be Norm Crosby; "Good evening, adults and adulteresses."

Best

AA

[Galician]

O tempus, O mores! One can only lament how language has been declining since the days of that accursed tower.

[TheKiltedWonder]

I know those expressions the same way you do.

It seems to me that the English language, or at least the American form of it, is steadily declining, rather than evolving. People use more and more words incorrectly. People's vocabularies are steadily shrinking. And, as you pointed out, people forget the meanings and origins of commonly used phrases, and over time, begin to use them incorrectly.

The current form of the language is no more "incorrect" than at any other point in its history. And American English tends to change slower in any ways than British English. Many of the things Brits jokingly point out as "wrong" in American English were perfectly correct 200 years ago in England. As for people forgetting the meanings and origins of phrases and words, it has been my experience that very few people know the actual origins of any phrase or word, but rely on interesting but incorrect folk-etymologies. "Nice" used to mean "silly" and "cretin" originally meant "Christian" (in that "even they are Christian" i.e. human). The list goes on.
That doesn't mean you have to like language change. I personally find it sad when people write the word "till" as "til". "Till" was the original, then "until" was created and both were used and now most people assume that "till" is a shortening of "until" and skip the second "l". But it's a natural process. Language never becomes "broken" and is never in decline; early dictionaries used to rail against "bad usage" and generally cited Shakespeare for it
Language always works just as well even after change, as Chaucer noted in Troilus and Criseyde:

You all know too, that in the nature of language is change
Within a thousand years words then
that had value, now very odd and strange
We find them; and yet they spoke them so
And fared as well in love as men now do.

The bad translation is mine. See his original version to see the "decline" of the English language.

[slohairt]

And here I thought this thread was going to be a silly discussion about who would win: a gorilla vs. an elephant!

(Just for the record, I think the elephant would win.)

As for the steady decline of the English language, here are some chestnuts I always hear:

- double negatives of any kind
- people using "supposably" when they mean supposedly!
- "real" instead of "really"
- "taunt" instead of "taut"

[TheKiltedWonder]

As for the steady decline of the English language, here are some chestnuts I always hear:

- double negatives of any kind

Come now, I just showed we shouldn't think of it as "decline"... Pleeease!
As for double negtives. They've long been part of the English language. They used to be used to strengthen a negative, which is how they are used today. The idea that double negatives make a positive was not introduced until Robert Lowth decided in the late 18th Century that English should follow more mathematical and "logical" rules. Only then did it became ungrammatical. But informal/"uneducated" use of the language has always preserved the traditional negative usage.

[slohairt]

I was thinking more along the lines of:

"Supposably that rope wasn't real taut neither."

Yippy-Yahoo!

[TheKiltedWonder]

I was thinking more along the lines of:

"Supposably that rope wasn't real taut neither."

Yippy-Yahoo!

No that's what I meant. That's the original purpose of double negatives! It's strengthening the fact that the rope isn't taunt
As "country" as it sounds (and I have to admit it sounds a bit uneducated to me too), that's the more correct usage, if history is your guide.

And Makeitstop, I don't agree 100% with what you've said but I do hate it when people say "It's just a matter of semantics!" Just semantics? Just the actual meaning of the word?

[slohairt]

Crap... Thanks for pointing that out! I actually meant to use "taunt."

Oh well, I guess my brain corrected it before I even put to print. (type? screen? cyberspace?)

[berserkbishop]

I see that someone is familiar with C.S. Lewis and his Mere Christianity eh Coemgen?

I have to blame a problem with language misuse and a loss of certain "big" words in the general publics' vocabulary partly on the school system. When I was in 8th grade, I read on a college level, and everyone else in the my class at least read on an 8th grade level or they had special education classes. Today I find that most kids in the 8th grade average a 6th grade reading level, many less than that, and no attention is paid to that. Conversely, the math I was doing my senior year in high school was calculus, where as kids in the same school now are taking college level algebra.

Bishop