06-11-2012, 12:37 PM | #16 |
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I often see people complaining about two words being made into one word. Then I read old books with words like "whithersoever", which is three words made into one word.
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06-11-2012, 12:44 PM | #17 |
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Words do tend to get joined with time. Eg, if you read late 18th/early 19th c novels you'll generally see "to night". By the mid 19th c it's become "to-night", and by the early 20th c the modern "tonight".
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06-11-2012, 01:04 PM | #18 |
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And of course, the change isn't overnight, no one turns a switch and suddenly everyone switches from "to-night" to "tonight". It takes time, in the early phase, people are starting to use "tonight", while others shake their fists that the error. And then towards the end, you have the last hangers-on using "to-night" and fists are shaken at them for their "error".
Of course, not every deviation is an evolution in language, some things really are mistakes. Language tends to change when the new version is clearer or simpler than the old version. "I'm going to the movies to night" could be read as going to the movies to perform some action called "night", if someone thought that night was intended as a verb. Adding the hypen adds clarity, but it was only an intermediate phase. |
06-11-2012, 02:43 PM | #19 |
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It's quite possible that "lead" and "read" always rhymed at one time, before the Great Vowel Shift.
http://www.h2g2.com/approved_entry/A980624 Pronunciation is still evolving centuries after spelling was fixed. |
06-11-2012, 03:28 PM | #20 | ||
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06-11-2012, 07:10 PM | #21 | ||||
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To my knowledge there isn't any definitive tome on the size of the English vocabulary compared to other languages. However, to quote the OED Quote:
Last edited by plib; 06-12-2012 at 08:23 AM. |
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06-12-2012, 03:07 AM | #22 | |
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In everyday life, most people use fewer than 2,000 different words. |
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06-12-2012, 06:20 AM | #23 |
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Just be glad that we do not have a written language like Japanese. You have to know1,006 Kanji by the end of the sixth grade. When writing Kanji you have to know stroke order and direction. Makes learning your ABCs a piece of cake.
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06-12-2012, 07:23 AM | #24 | |
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06-12-2012, 08:06 AM | #25 |
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When I was young, single and happy
The plural of roof was rooves, now it's roofs (either is correct according to Wikipedia) and the plural of hoof, hooves, now it's hoofs English is changing all the time In the future we may be writing, not just m8t but l8t and f8t etc. With millions of Asians learning English we're sure to have lots of Asian words becoming part of English ! |
06-12-2012, 08:09 AM | #26 |
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06-12-2012, 08:21 AM | #27 | |
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"Now I know my 1,006 Kanji's......." |
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06-12-2012, 09:03 AM | #28 | |
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This sort of thing does sometimes happen in language evolution. For a long time I was puzzled by the words "poire" (="pear") and "poireau" (="leek") in French. I couldn't see any obvious connections between pears and leeks. Then I found out that "poire" was descended from the Latin word "pira"and "poireau" from the Latin word "porrum". They had therefore converged to something similar in modern French. |
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06-12-2012, 09:05 AM | #29 | |
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06-12-2012, 09:31 AM | #30 | |
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Foreign words tend to enter the language when they will a gap in our language. "Mansion" is useful, it easily distingusihes between an ordinary house and a very large expensive house. Maybe it would be better if we didn't feel the need to make such a distinction, maybe not. But the word would fade if users of the language didn't think it was a useful distinction. Words relating to food - types of food or methods of cooking - come over to English the easiest. |
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