LIN 1340 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Language Change, North Germanic Languages
Document Summary
Languages do not change by themselves, it is the speakers that change human language. All living languages change there is nothing we can do about it. The english spoken over 1000 years ago would be all but incomprehensible to the average person today. One of the reasons why english has changed so much over the centuries is because of its external history. The vocabulary of old english is a lot less familiar to us than modern english precisely. Defining language change because this has changed so much due to contact with other languages (french & Scandinavian languages). pronunciation of the language has gone through a number of noticeable changes over the past several hundred years. A more recent glimpse into the history of the english language reveals that speakers(cid:495) At its most trivial, language change refers to something new which wasn(cid:495)t in the language.
