Historical Changes in English Language

Language changes all over time, language change is found on all levels of language, both in the past and in the present, it changes on spellings, meanings of words, pronunciation, syntax and other features of language.

Language changes on spellings like knight, thorough and changeable which have an e in the middle when argument does not. also the real meaning of nice is precise. In the fifteenth century the k in knit and knife was not silent, and knight had a fricative sound in the middle represented by the letters gh.

Syntax also changes, such as word order. In old English the question was ‘from where did you come?’ they used to put the proposition in the beginning, but modern English puts the proposition in the end of the question ‘where did you come from?’

Another example is double negative, at the past they used to say ‘Not you give me never a kid’, now they say ‘you never give me a kid’.

We can also notice a lexical change like ‘Do not dare talk to him!’, He did run away? ‘ it was in the old English, but in the modern English ‘ Do not dare to talk to him! ‘, ‘Did he run away?’.

Speakers are not always conscious of this. Language change is not intentional but arises from the natural variation present in language at all times. language changes from generation to another.

‘Language moves down time in a current of its own making.

Nothing is perfectly static. Every word, every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration moulded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language’ sapir (1921)

We notice that this days children are putting language at risk with their careless and sloppy pronunciation, and also some vulgar words and shortening become acceptable into stander language like, mob was once condemned as a vulgar word , bus was regarded as a vulgar shortening of omnibus , otel was the only acceptable way of pronouncing hotel.

There is a new form develops and begins to be used alongside an existing form. If the new form spreads, the change is in progress. This is very easy the slang words used by young people to mean ‘really good’. They use ‘super, spiffing, bonzer, groovy, neat, fantastic, magic, excellent, wicked, hot, rad, awesome, cool, sick, boss and sweet in New Zealand.

The language maybe changes because of particular sub-group. Young men have particular language, use different words. They have some kind of status within the speech community, and if other groups admire them-then they will start to use the new word and it will begin to spread and become the new norm or stander, such as wicked which used by young men and became standard for expressing the concept ‘really good ‘.

Similarly, a sound change occurs when one sound is replaced by another or disappeared in people’s speech over a period of time. In New Zealand, for example, words like new and nuclear were once pronounced nyew /nju:/ and nyuklear /nju:klia/. Young people are increasingly using an American pronunciation without the /j/. but the questions that sociolinguists ask here are ‘why do particular changes spread?’ and ‘how do linguistic changes spread through a community? ‘. from this point we are going to speak about the spread of vernacular forms.

The Spread of Vernacular Forms:

On martha’s vineyard the original people who lived on the island for generation and those men who fished for their live hood, upset with the huge number of immigrant. A 1960s linguistic survey by labov suggested that these attitudes were indicated by the way locals pronounced the (ay) and (aw) sounds in words like light and house, so light was pronounced (lait) its sounds a bit like layeet, and house was pronounced (haus) a bit like heyoose, this pronunciation had spread on the island. The centralization of the vowel in light was particularly significant for signalling Islander identity. Not always adapting new forms outside speech community, the only cause of linguistic change. On martha’s vineyard people was un consciously valued this speech feature. The spread of centralized vowels illustrates how a vernacular feature can acquire social significance and spread significance and spread through a community. It acquired covert prestige as a marker of a person’s status as a vineyarder.

How do Change Spread?

There are three ways that changes spread. Frist, from group to group. Many linguistics have described that changes as a wave. The change spreads in different directions, not at the same rate. The age, status, gender and region are all social factors that affect the rate of change. Everyone of us belongs to a particular age group, region and social group, so when different groups contact, the change spreads between these groups.

Second, from style to style. Every individual person has his particular style. the change spreads from one individual to another and from one style to another (from more formal speech to more casual speech) within a social group and from social group to another, till eventually almost everyone uses the new form in all their speech style.

The change maybe starts from the top of the speech community and spread downwards or may starts from the lowest group of community and it may take a long time to spread or maybe never gain acceptance by the highest status social groups. Younger people tend to adopt new forms more quickly than older people do and the use them more extensively. For instance, In the London area and East Anglia, the use of glottal stop for final (t) has spread very fast in recent years.

Third, from word to word. The change spreads from one word to another. Sounds change through different words one by one. This is called lexical diffusion. When a sound change begins in one word and then later in another.

For instance, people do not use /au/ sound in house, pouch, how and out suddenly instead of /u:/ sound. In New Zealand, the vowel change is the merging of the vowels in word pairs like beer and bear, which used to be distinct. A recent study suggested that most young people had deleted the distinction in the pair (really/ rarely) while fear and fair were still distinct in many young people’s speech.