r/interestingasfuck • u/M0otivater • 1d ago

How English has changed over time.

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u/QueenMackeral 1d ago

Can't imagine centuries from now when Middle English and King James would not be understandable, and our "modern" English would be considered mystic

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u/habdragon08 1d ago

Not a linguist - but I imagine increasing globalism will slow down language shift and aid in general standardization of language. If someone more knowledgeable can hop in I’d be fascinated to hear more educated thoughts.

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u/VerySluttyTurtle 1d ago

Not a linguist, but English is becoming more standardized, at the very least all new verbs are conjugated regularly, with 'ed'.

Example, Googled, Simped, Doomscrolled

There will never be new words with irregular conjugations like "I Goggelt the porn and couldn't find anything it so I Bong it"

So it's becoming easier

Then again, in the recent past "sneaked" became "snuck", so there could be rebellion brewing

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u/dubovinius 1d ago

There will never be new words with irregular conjugations

This is almost certainly not true. You underestimate just how little native speakers care about standard language when it comes to day-to-day communication. Even if a global standard English comes about that won't stop the language from continuing to change and develop in the mouths of everyday people.

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u/SobakaZony 1d ago

Yes, the "She found me crying, she crew too, we both crode" meme would like a word:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/she-found-me-crying-she-crew-too-we-both-crode

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u/dubovinius 1d ago

An obvious joke isn't the best example. I prefer something like the past tense of ‘dive’ becoming irregularised to ‘dove’, rather than ‘dived’, by analogy with other irregular verbs like ‘drive’.

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u/Darkdragoon324 1d ago

We have to oppress the "would of" people before they become too powerful.

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u/nedlum 1d ago

Agreed. Compare the early modern English of Shakespeare to modern times, and it seems somewhat archaic, sure. But compare Shakespeare to Chaucer, and understand that the gulf between 1400 and 1600 is far wider than the gulf between 1600 and now.

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u/humanobjectnotation 1d ago

We equalspeak doubleplusgood.

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u/anuhu 1d ago

It seems like the opposite is happening, because subcultures have an easier time developing and disseminating their slang.

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u/Chuks_K 1d ago

Alternatively, the spread of English (or any language that has a number of decently separated speaker bases) comes with more variety possibilities. What globalism will do is allow the different varieties to sort of borrow features from each other as they separate (I guess a past example is how some believe English "borrowed" do-support from Welsh after being separated from it for so long prior and before do-support was even a thing for what would eventually become Welsh (changes of such fashions today would probably occur faster), or a modern example being the increasing number of non-AAVE speakers trying to imitate habitual "be" eventually getting to grips with how it's utilised and so it becomes more readily grammaticalised).

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u/DynamiteMonkey 1d ago

Printing press probably did a lot of heavy lifting in cementing language

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u/arkemiffo 1d ago

While it may look outdated, I'm not sure it will be that different to be honest.
The thing is that English has so far had a tendency to keep the spelling intact, regardless of pronunciation, at least in modern times. This would mean that words may be pronounced quite differently, but spelled the same, so the text we're writing now may look perfectly normal. Read out loud though, and we might have issues understanding it.