TED - Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?

영어학원에서 스피치로 진행했습니다. 주제는 TED-ed - A brieft history of plural words

 

 

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Language Evolution

 

 

 

Si Yeon

 

 

 There are more than 5.000 languages in the world. Darwin, who wrote the theory of biological evolution, said that languages were evolving over time, and it was just like speciation. As what he said, all languages change very slowly, without any exception.

 

 For example, there was the Great Vowel Shift in the English history. English undergo the Great Vowel Shift, so their vowel pronounce differently with the most other European languages, such as an 'i' which sounds like 'ee'. Aria can be the great example of this. There are one more example of English's change. Harvard researchers found that there were 177 irregular verbs such as sing/sang, go/went in Old English, and 145 were still irregular in Middle English, and today, only 98 of 177 verbs have not been regularized.

 

 Then, what is the reason of this phenomenon? There are 3 reasons why this happens. First, it changes due to the need of its speakers change. A few decades ago, there were no computer, printer or the all kinds of things like this. However, we need to create the word to say the things that had not existed before. The word 'text' was used in noun, but it became verb as time passed, like 'I'll text Sylvia right now.' Second, we borrow some words from other languages. It usually happens by trade and migration. These words are called loanwords. Avatar, tsunami, sushi. These words are not came from Latin. And the last, we create the words by shortening longer words or by combining the words. We call 'gym' instead of gymnasium, and 'lab' instead of 'laboratory'. The word 'brunch' comes from breakfast and lunch, and the word 'motel' comes from motor and hotel, These are known as portmanteau words. too. In addition, Harvard researchers, who found 177 irregular verbs in Old English, said that if the word was used 100 times less frequently than the other, it would evolve 10 times faster than the verb employed more often.

 

 Is this evolution is bad for our 'Correct Language'? Well, it's not. For years, English teachers and newspaper editors argued about the word 'hopefully''s use. They said this word cannot be used to mean 'I hope', as in hopefully it won't rain today, even though people frequently used it that way in informal speech. However, we can see hopefully easily in the beginnings of sentences, even in formal documents now. The word 'actually' is the same thing.

 

 'Correct English' is just one dialect of English. Well, 'Correct' Korean has changed a lot for 5,000 years. Language will never stop changing even if that is intended or not. We need to accept the differences and evolution of the language, just like the nature.