Just when we think we have language clipped, freeze-dried and shrink-wrapped, it starts to bubble and heave again, like a Horta. We keep saying this or that thing—Leave it to Beaver, Walter Cronkite, the computer, text messaging—is hemming in English, preventing it from turning into something else, but it does not work that way. Not with the spoken word.
There's logic in there somewhere. Mr. Spock tried to grok the protean Horta, and I attempt to understand why the language around me is changing.
There's logic in there somewhere. Mr. Spock tried to grok the protean Horta, and I attempt to understand why the language around me is changing.Right out from under mass produced recordings and broadcast media, English keeps on changing. Nowhere more than in the Great Lakes states, it turns out. It began sometime around 1950 or so, and is still going on.