Language is always changing. At one point ‘an apron’ was ‘a napron’ while words like ‘literally’ are no longer literally literal. What are some language battles that have been lost in living memory and what are some others you predict will soon occur?
Edit: Non-english examples very welcome!
People no longer double-space after sentences. No one cares that further compares metaphorical distance and farther compares physical distance. Most people seem to think that joining two independent clauses with a comma (a comma splice) is just fine. Things are now done on accident instead of by accident. Compute used to be something you did; now, it’s something you rent. People seem to have given up on less being used for uncountable things and fewer for countable things. Now they just use less for everything. People these days are enamored ‘by’ something instead of with it (or of it, for our British friends).
Australian English language is now largely Americanised, a process that started in the post-war era is now mostly complete.
- Terms such as ‘gaol’ have been widely replaced by ‘jail’.
- ‘Programme’ is mostly replaced by ‘program’.
- A ‘car bonnet’ is likely to be called a ‘hood’.
- ‘Play lunch’ is mostly replaced with ‘recess’.
- ‘Pusher’ is mostly called a ‘pram’
- ‘Lacker band’ is now mostly just ‘rubber band’.
- ‘Boomer’ no longer means kangaroo, but instead ‘Old person.’
I’m not really bothered by it or anything, but it’s been interesting to see it shift even over my lifetime.
I’d say pram is still pretty British (“I have to push the pram-a-lot!”) in the US it would be almost definitely stroller.
Y’all still got dual carriageways over there?
Is that an Australian-ism? I don’t remember it ever coming up in conversation with my American or British friends.
Yeah it’s a divided highway. I got directions once that included what I heard as a “jewel carriageway” and had just a very confusing time getting that clarified.
Americans don’t use pram though, we say stroller
Yeah, pram is a British term. Or pushchair.
Elden Ring is trying to bring the spelling back to “gaol.”
‘Programme’ is mostly replaced by ‘program’.
We can still pronounce it correctly (with an O like ‘pronounce’ or ‘proclaim’) so there’s that
Far as I’ve ever seen, that’s how everyone pronounces it.
Yes, but we got the good aussie slang!
Like, “no worries”. Fucking love it.
I don’t understand the pusher/pram one at all.
Bonnet
Australian
Uwotm8
From my perspective, literally being used for emphasis does not actually change its meaning, it’s simply hyperbole.
If you complain that you’ve been “waiting for hours”, even though it’s been 45 minutes, that doesn’t change the meaning of “hours”, you’re just exaggerating.
Hyperbole is a stylistic element; style is a completely different level of language than grammar/spelling/semantics (word meanings). As another example of style, ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct but stylistically not recommended.
“I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate”
The OED actually includes the definition of literally as being what used to be the opposite of its definition nowadays, so I think that it does count as an auto-antonym (a word that means both itself, and the opposite of itself)
I agree, but there was a period in the '00s, or maybe early '10s, where the meaning was changing because you only ever saw it mean “figuratively”, to the point where dictionaries included both meanings. I think it’s settled back to its original meaning now though.
Ending sentences with propositions, and getting them jumbled around. My work does it in their advertisements and i cry every time.
“See what classes you can register for.” Or modifying it to be worse; “see what classes you can register for fast”
propositions
Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?
LOL I’m gonna leave it that way 🤣
Us that technically a missing Oxford comma, or just a missing comma?
The grandma quote is a missing comma in general, but there’s another reply with a missing Oxford Comma.
Although punctuation is waning, I’m willing to spend the time to use it.
The rich couple, me and ScarJo donated ten thousand dollars to a local charity school.
Y’all make a cute couple but she’s doing the heavy lifting.
That’s typical of her relationships.
From my cold dead hands!!
Unique coming to just mean unusual.
Ain’t ain’t a word.
It is now.
Not exactly what you’re asking, but double spaces after ends of sentences.
I still use them. I find it makes reading and finding sentences easier in a paragraph. There was a study that it had an impact
While not totally gone, German’s genitive case (which is used to show ownership) is becoming less and less common. They have both the genetive case as well as their equivalent of " 's " - which is just “s,” if you’re wondering. Example:
Der Herr der Ringe.
The Lord of the Rings. It would normally be “die Ringe,” but it becomes “der” in the genetive case.
Another transition in German is that the “formal you” is being used less and less frequently. I understand this is the case for a few other European languages as well.
Interesting! Thanks for a non english perspective. Is German language development Influenced by widespread english competency? Are Germans becoming less fussy about certain rules in favour of some of English’s simpler or more flexible constructs? (Not to suggest that English isn’t a Byzantine mess of a language itself!)
Unfortunately, I’m not a native German speaker. So, take this with a grain of salt.
I will say that the German language has always been open to loan words from other languages. And, according to my German teacher (who is native), the biggest change recently in that regard is NOT how loan words are accepted BUT how quickly they are accepted these days. New loan words are being added all the time, especially by young people. He said that generally the word will be accepted as it is at first, and then over time it well become more “germanified” and used more like native words. He said this process used to take decades but now it can happen in less than a year. An example of a germanified English loan word is “chatten” which means “to chat,” just like English. Ich chatte, du chattest, wir chatten. (I chat, you chat, we chat.)
I believe the simplification of grammatical structures (like the abandonment of genetive) has been going on slowly over centuries and is mostly unrelated to contact with English speakers. But, there is likely some influence there.
Really interesting stuff! It just goes to show that even without ‘authorities’ such as the French Language Academy, loan words end up becoming modified and molded by their adoptive language. I’m learning Japanese and it has so many loan words going all the way back to the dutch. Some are barely recognisable for example computer is パソコン = pasokon = personal computer.
Apple put the nail in the coffin for adverbs when “Think different” let illiterates think they were speaking correctly.
*speaking correct
.
I’m so sorry; I couldn’t help myself
“Casted”
The past-tense of cast is cast. “The fisherman cast their line into the river.” “The actor was cast in the leading role.”
Casted makes you sound like a child.
I think any word sounds more childish with ed on the end! “I wented fishinged at the beached and casteded”
would of literally their
Literally Literally
People using then instead of than. I never saw that 30 years ago.
Plenty of bad grammar and speling to go around.
30 years ago fewer people with literacy problems were publicly and obsessively defacing literary norms.
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“Reticent” used to mean ‘reluctance to speak’, or, ‘holding your tongue’, but in the last decade I saw it being used more frequently as a straight up synonym for ‘reluctance’. I wonder if people maybe think it’s a more authoritative sounding word?
It’s not a change of convenience or cultural drift, just a sign of people reading less and subconsciously trying to hide it, I think.
The one that bothers me most (heard a lot in the software dev world) is when people say process-eez instead of processes, even if it is technically a word now, like ain’t
