Inevitable Changes

While reading the various articles for class discussion, I found each one to be uniquely interesting. Learning about the history of the English language has always been an interest  of mine. I find it fascinating that the words that we use every day have so much history behind them.
In Paul Roberts' article A Brief History of English we learn that simple words like wine, cheese, and church come from Latin during the time of the Roman Empire. I also found it interesting that during all of the revolting between countries and cultures becoming united that language had a big influence on it all. Something that I did not realize was that the history of the English language was divided into three periods named Old English, Middle English and today's Modern English. Knowing how much the English language has changed over massive amounts of time shows how much of an influence language, at any rate, is. Lastly about Roberts' article that I found interesting was my own influence with the French language and how many aspects are transferred to the English language. I know that many words that we use today derive from the French language but I did not know that originally many of the words came into English that had to do with government, church, or literary words.
The next article we were to read for class was Bill Bryson's article titled Good English and Bad. This article explained the structure of a sentence and how it is formed. The article emphasizes the importance of nouns, adjectives and verbs. What I found interesting about this article was that "in 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, John Adams wrote to the president of Congress appealing to him to set up an academy for the purpose of 'refining, correcting, improving and ascertaining the English language'" (519). Later, other proposals like this were formed but it took years for an agreement to be reached. A great quote that I found from the article is that "When this process of change can be seen in our lifetimes, it is almost, always greeted with cries of despair and alarm. Yet such change is both continuous and inevitable" (520). I found this fascinating because it shows that change is consistent and the challenge of stepping up to actually change something may come with a struggle but will and can happen over time. For instance, the way we structure a sentence today has greatly changed since earlier periods. An example that the article uses is "Why would 'you' take a plural verb when the sense is clearly singular? The answer-- is that Robert Lowth didn't like it. 'I'm hurrying are I not?' is hopelessly ungrammatical but 'I'm hurrying, aren't I?' --merely a contraction of the same words-- is perfect English" (522).
The third and final article that I chose to read between the two choices is Scott Lehigh's  It's Like, EXTREME, but not GROSS. The article basically states how our language has evolved over time into approximate meanings, ignored tenses and limited vocabulary. Again, another great quote I came across was  "All languages evolve, of course, and as a living, organic form of expression, youthspeak is no different" (554). This was reflected upon the use of "like" in sentences said by youths of today in order to describe things. I have always wondered myself why we say "like" so much and I hate when I say it in conversation. To me it sounds unprofessional and that I am stumbling over words in lack of a better definition of something. I agree with Lehigh when he states that "Certainly those on the front lines, the educators who teach writing and literacy, think there has been a real diminution in language skills" (555). As a future educator my goal for my students is to properly teach them the language of English and hopefully break their habits of "like" or perhaps even prevent these habits from happening. However, it is not surprising to find out that the biggest influence on these habits over time has been television as the main suspect. I think many would agree that people would rather watch a play than read the script. Therefore, television has influenced us to take the easy way out but shortening our vocabulary and influencing less emphasis on reading.
I found each of these articles to be unique and interesting. Finally, some material that I have always wanted to dig deeper into learning about. This is a great first step into learning more about the history of language and the words that we say and use on a daily bases without a second thought. Even now, the words that I type on this blog fascinate me after reading these articles. How did I know how to structure these sentences? What verbs did I use? How did my word choice help get my point across? Interesting......