How I love the history and development of languages! It is a never-ending labyrinth of discovery and surprises, all reflecting the wonderful creative nature of human beings.
Recently I found the BBC article on the oldest words in English, which used the study performed by researchers at Reading University as its basis. While I enjoyed learning that the most basic numbers and first-person pronouns are also some of the oldest words we as native English speakers have been using, I was most struck by the fact that more words are soon to disappear from our lexicon.
According to computers, some of the words that are destined to disappear in the linguistic near future as such stalwarts as “push”, “guts”, and “dirty”. Though this change will obviously take numerous generations to develop fully and I will be but a vague memory to people speaking English in the days when those words are not used, I refuse to stand by and let this happen! I now officially start the campaign to SAVE THESE WORDS! So push your dirty guts to your nearest writing utensil and use them as often as possible! Don’t let the dream die!
Tags: English language, English Words, evolution, history, words
[...] a profound sense of loss to realize that a “people” is lost to this world. So, just as I did last week to save certain English words, let’s do what we can to save the languages on this list. [...]