LANGUAGE

CHANGE IS
NOT
CORRUPTION

By: Marry Chon T. Buenaflor

(Discussant)
How do you translate and say the following words in
French?

• It’s not you. It’s me.

• I just don’t love you anymore.

It’s not you. It’s me. - in French
Ce n’est pas toi. C’est moi.

I just don’t love you anymore. - in French

Je ne t’aime plus tout simplement
You lied to me - in Korean

It hurts. - in Korean
You lied to me - in Korean
dangsin-eun na-ege geojismal

It hurts.
a pa yo
Can you give me one
more chance? - in
Japanese
Mōichido chansu o
kuremasen ka
What is corruption of Language?
• All living languages are continually undergoing
change. Some commentators use derogatory labels
such as "corruption" to suggest that language
change constitutes a degradation in the quality of a
language, especially when the change originates
from human error or is a prescriptively discouraged
usage.
What is Language Change?
• Language change is the phenomenon by which permanent
alterations are made in the features and the use of a
language over time. All natural languages change, and
language change affects all areas of language use. Types
of language change include sound changes, lexical
changes, semantic changes, and syntactic changes.
How does language change?
• Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the
meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays. The rate of change varies,
but whether the changes are faster or slower, they build up until the "mother tongue" becomes
arbitrarily distant and different.
• Languages are constantly in flux. Changes in lexical meaning alter with each generation, even
within the same culture or social group, and languages evolve as new words are developed in
line with technology or are borrowed from other languages.
• Languages change, usually very slowly, sometimes very rapidly. There are many reasons a
language might change. One obvious reason is interaction with other languages. If one tribe
of people trades with another, they will pick up specific words and phrases for trade objects,
for example.
Internal reason
Example of internal reason: the change
from the sound of /ng/found in the words
such as reading, going, seeing (Standard
English Variety) into /n/ (non Standard
English Variety).
 The external reasons
Immigration of the language speaker = English has been changing since the speaker
from England to American land, Australia, Canada etc,
b. The invention of technology = computer device the word mouse, the word WWW
(World Wide Web) = surfing it means searching or visiting net sites
C.The economic and social values of a language = when a lot of people around the
world believe that English has more economic value and social prestige, they will
choose to learn it instead of others.
D.Political situation = idiolects of political leaders (the presidents, a political party
leader, etc) sometimes evoke a change of language treatment of a variety of the language
used in society.
Kinds of Language Changes
a.Sounds Change
A lot of language-historians carried researches to find why such similarities took place, as can be
observed in several words of Sanskrit, Latin, and Germanic language, which include English as
one of the language, as listed below.

LATIN SANSKRIT ENGLISH

Pater Pitar Father

Duo Dva two

tres Trayas three
The sound of long /u/ was changing into
dipthong /ou/
Old English Modern English

[mus;] mouse [maus]

[hu;s] house [haus]

The sound of /au/ was changing into [ә]
(Schwa)
Old English Modern English

[lau] law [lәw]

The sound of [o] was changing into [ә] or [u]
[sow] saw [sәw]

[∫ows] shoes [∫ us]

[to: 0] tooth [to: 0]

 Grammatical Change
• To see that a language has undergone a grammatical change some structures
and grammatical items found in the past should be compared with those used
today. In older English, words in declarative sentences might be ordered into
Subject Object Verb but in
Modern the common order should be Subject Verb Object.
Example: Se man bone keening sloh (orang itu- raja –membunuh)= The
man slew the king.
Subjects : se man=the man
Verbs : sloh=slew
Objects : bone keening=the king
 Lexical Change
Among the components of language, the
lexicon most commonly undergoes
change. The lexicon changes when new
words are formed or borrowed.
1. The formation or borrowing
New words are often formed in order to fulfill the needs for naming
new things. Words such as compact disc, microprocessor, Bluetooth,
facebook, were formed in English to name the technology that were
invented.
English in fact has borrowed a lot of words and lexicon from other
languages in its history. For example, words such as Pizza and
Spaghetti from Italy, Panzer and Hamburger from German, robot
from Czech, karma and yoga from Sanskrit etc.
2. The change of the sounds and spelling
Indonesian language has been through several
stages of spelling reformation in Example : /u/
used to be also spelled /oe/ , /k/ with /ch/, /j/
with /dj/, and /y/ with /j/. Surat Kabar Jaya
would be Soerat Chabar Djaja
3. The change of meaning
The change of meanings can classified as
expanding, narrowing or shifting (changing
totally). The English words: holiday = a
religious holy day but now it means any day
when we do not go work or school.
ENGLISH WORDS OLD FORMER MEANINGS NEW MEANINGS

Bonnet A man’s hat Car engine cover

Cheater Rent collector Deceiver

Furniture Equipment Table, chair, etc

Naughty Worth nothing Disobedient

Pretty Ingenious Good looking

Sly Wise Deceitful

Vulgar Ordinary Indecent

 Dead words
 Some words not only change the meanings but also are not used as much as
they used to be.
Example in English colloquial words: top-hole, brill, groovy = the new words
have replaced them namely; great, superb, or wonderful.
 Some words have been dead because the things that they are referred to are
no longer around.
 Example: after a Dutch left the Indonesian land, some Dutch words
commonly used in the past such as moril, universil, diplomatis = replaced by
English moral, universal, diplomatic.
 Language shift
Language shift is a form of full amount language change. The concept refers to a
situation where a speech community begins to entirely use a new language. The following
data account several communities in English speaking countries such as England,
Australia, and USA that have been reported to shift or at least tend to shift from their
native languages (China, Spanish, and German) to English.
-The Cornish speakers at Cornwall in England shifted from Cornish to English
-Lots of Gujarati speakers in England shifted from Gujarati to English
-Lots of German immigrant speakers in Aussie shifted Germany to English
-Some Greece immigrants shift from Greek to English in Australia
-Most Spanish immigrants in the USA have shifted from Spanish to English
-Most Chinese American the USA seems to shift from Chinese to English
 Language Maintenance
Language Maintenance refers simply to the preservation by a
speech-community of its native language from generation to
generation. There are several factors that explain why language
maintenance takes place.
- Larger number of speaker
- Concentration of living
- Identity and pride of culture
- Better economic condition
 Language Death
A dying language is a spoken language spoken
by fewer people and it is a language that has no
speaker anymore because they have totally
shifted to another language. There are two types
of language death;
Language change is variation over
time in a language's features. It is
studied in several subfields of
linguistics: historical linguistics,
sociolinguistics, and evolutionary
linguistics.
 Partial language death
It is related to language shift phenomenon found in the immigrant
groups in their new land.
Example: some Indonesian families arriving Australia and having a
settlement there may still want to use Indonesian. After they have
children as second generation, the children may begin to speak only
English. However, after they have third generation emerges, none of
the families may be found to speak Indonesian anymore. The death of
Indonesian, however is partial, Indonesian language still spoken.
 Total language death
It happens when that language has no more speakers left.
The situation is more likely to come about to the language
spoken by minority than to the languages with lots of
speakers.
Example: most languages of American Indian indeed died
in their own land after their cultures were invaded and the
speakers were killed by European immigrants.
Language change is not "corruption"
or "decay", but a natural and
inevitable process. Attempts to stop
it lead to diglossia, a situation in
which formal and ordinary language
get further and further apart, and
eventually split into two different
languages. You can preserve the elite
language for a long time (there are
still speakers of Sanskrit in modern
India), but you can't stop the process.
The fact is, it probably doesn't matter much what we
want. The English language is likely to go on in the
future roughly as it has over the past few hundred
years, with a wide range of regional and social
varieties, and a more-or-less international formal
standard, imposed by consensus and changing
gradually over time.