Eli5: Does every culture go through phases where words get ruined (literally, actually, etc…) by over/misuse? Also why?
In: Other
Linguists don’t really like prescriptivism and the idea of ruined, but all languages go through a process where words change their meaning and pronunciation over time, that’s why every language around today is very different than it’s ancestors. People in what’s now France didn’t just wake up one day and say, “we no longer speak Latin, we speak French now” what happened is that over time, because of a variety of different factors, meanings and pronunciations and conjugations changed until one day the language that was spoken was no longer recognisable as Latin.
Latest Answers