DEFUNCT LANGUAGE LESSONS?

I find as I grow older the language lessons I was taught and learned as a child often no longer apply. The problem is that no one person is in charge. Language and how it is spoken belong to those who use it. Words common in Shakepeare’s day are now archaic. Others morph or are warped by usage.

Ain’t used to be the correct contraction for am not, something we no longer have.  I think that is because others started using ain’t in place of isn’t and aren’t, something teachers and purists could not accept. So ain’t was shunted off into the pool of colloquial words and shunned by the learned.

But sometimes, there are words which still give me a twinge. Fun is one. When I was growing up, this word was a noun, not an adjective. Saying ‘that was a fun thing” would have been incorrect. This has changed. I even find myself using this word as a descriptor. However, a part of my brain still cringes when I hear it used this way.

“Invite” used as a noun makes me grit my teeth. Invite is the verb form of the noun “invitation.” Someone somewhere decided to be cute and shorten invitation to invite. Another someone somewhere thought that was clever and copied it. It is now heard and seen everywhere, though the dictionary still lists this use as “informal.”  Strangely “evite” does not grate as much on my nerves. Perhaps because there was no such word in my childhood?

I haven’t even touched on the changes in sound, but here’s one.  The word “often” had a spoken T when I was a child. Hardly anyone speaks the T anymore. Perhaps the British do? The word sounds like it should be spelled offen. I sometimes wonder if I manage to live to 100, will I even recognize my native language when it is spoken?

#EnglishLanguage #ESL #EvolvingLanguage