I am a Blogger at IATEFL, Birmingham 2016
Wednesday 13th April
0915-1025 Opening Plenary by David Crystal
Day 2
Who would of thought it? The English language 1966-2066
The video can be watched here:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016/interview/interview-david-crystal
I liked this lecture about trends of English changing over the last say 50 years, this was both a very instructive and entertaining talk - a lot of factual data, systematised trends in English changing examples of words we use widely in our real life!!
For an ESL teacher who does not live in the UK or cannot visit it on a regular basis this was very valuable information.
And it was a real treat for the ear to hear David's English!
So, David talked about changes related to:
semantics,
grammar,
pronunciation,
spelling.
SEMANTICS
I liked very much a short survey of Words that were new for 1960s and that are new for the Present time:
1960s
Present time
So, teaching materials go out ofdate very quickly and publishers of dictionaries and textbooks should be aware of it.
Another interesting thing is that though some words may be liked by some people who use them regularly and consistently, it doesn't mean that these words have regualar usage.
And one more interesting peculiarity about the word stock in English at present is the fact that many new words apperar from different areas (business, arts, computers,environment, leasure), and mostly
they are
many-word and we can understand them
only knowing their "background".
See the pictures above with the words of the present time!!
Besides, since the arrival of Internet new words come not only from English sources (national press, radio, TV etc) but from worldwide and from anyone, from foreign localities, so our foreign vocabulary grows greatly.
And finally different English dialects now are become neighbours, their accomodation to each other becomes widespread, hence a large number of words originating from or influenced by them.
GRAMMAR
Well, it's a well-known fact that Grammar is more stable, and changes over longer periods of time. As David says about 2% of grammar changes in some long time
There was one useful remark made by David - never trust Internet versions of old texts - see real manuscripts for grammatical changes.
Major Grammar changes that can be observed in English now are the following:
1) frequency of MODAL VERBS is declining - shall, may, must
they are replaced by semi modal constructions - have to, want to, going to and their coll. - gonna to, wanna to
We know that Must is more obligatory, have to - is more sympathetic
it must be right = I am certain
it has to be right = I am not so sure
Thus, right now we observe how social and psychological changes influence - everyone is an individuality - the categorical use of Must, when less ego-centric variants become more widely used.
2) CONTINUOUS forms take the lead:
I am loving it
statives are used dynamically, perhaps they all will develop a dynamic use over the 50 years...
Interesting.....
3) WHICH-THAT
the book that I bought
the book which I bought
WHICH - its use is dramatically diminishing, the reason for that is - antagonism to the use of WHICH that is very formal; and increasing colloquialism of Englsih which began in the 60s.
WHICH is more formal and used in formal texts
I haven't known that!
PRONUNCIATION
As diffrent from Grammar any change in pronunciation is to be frequently perceived - because we cannot but pronounce words!:)
I would group the changed David described into 2 categories:
1) "Accents are dying out"
2) New rythms of English - Syllable-time speech (like rap music), the future seems to be syllable-timed.
1) English accent changed.
2 major changes happened over the last 50 years:
- change in attitude to linguistic diversity influenced it (influence of Scottish and other accents) - from negative to positive.
Now on BBC many accents can be heard over the radio reading news etc before it was impossible.
It is explained by the fact that in recent years we face
the appearance of many regional radios, which reduced the popularity of the national radio.
This trend grew in 1990s when
REGIONAL VOICES started presenting various channels
RP (Received Pronunciation) has yet a strong influece but the phonetics changed^
lord [lo:d] sounds like [la;d]
Even Queen's pronunciation deviates sometimes from RP, more so the younger generation of the Roal Family:
when the Queen says [ho
t], the young prince says [ho] (reducing the end consonant).
The examples are of interest!
________________________
Influence of
Estuary English - i.e. of people who live on either sides of river Thames , mostly to the North:
it's 3 o'clock, right?
They pull vowels and consonants in different directions.
And it influences through all England.
_________
Rural accents are dying out as long as the people who speak die out.
________________________
In Major population centers we observe pronunciation changes due to the influence of many people from different places (China, Italy etc), these are pronunciation mixes which reflect the cosmopolian character of cities (e.g. London).
_____
It is not that 1 accent replaces another, sooner they blend into the 3rd accent.
____________________________________
Some reginal acents have got positive treatment now, some - negative.
Before some people would say:
"No, I wouldn't buy this car, because I don't trust this voice!!"
Now - not.
In Call centers earlier we could hear only RP voices, no local voices. Now local accents on the national level are a rule, it is rarely RP.
In pronunciation we see mostly the ongoing changes in English, English is adapted
to express local identity.
SPELLING
Internet influences
simplification of spelling, even incorrect variants are promoted, graphic design influences it too - e.g. low-case leters for personal names, low case "i"
etc
Now people are discovering and exploiting the flexibility of English in punctuation.
The following is rather an amazing thing and fact - In Old English there were few punctuation marks, so Internet is renewing our connection with the past:):)
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