LIN203H1 Lecture 2: lec2.pdf
Document Summary
E. g. , the way english is spoken today is different from how it was spoken 50 years ago, 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. Most changes in language are slow enough that you don"t notice them going on; but over long periods of time they can add up to drastic differences. English from 1200 years ago ( old english ) is basically unintelligible to the modern speaker cf. this quote from beowulf: Grendel gongan, godes yrre b r; mynte se mansca a manna cynnes sumne besyrwan in sele am hean. If you know what it means and that it"s english, you can spot a few words but for all practical purposes it"s a completely different language. Many people think (or at least act as if they think) that language change is. But language change is always ongoing, and at any point in time a language suits. Just as old english developed into modern english over centuries of change,
