Acronyms, Idioms And Slang: The Evolution Of The English Language. :: essays research papers

Acronyms, Idioms and Slang the Evolution of the English Language.     Although the English language is only 1500 years old, it has evolved atan incredible swan so much so, that, at first glance, the average person inAmerica today would find most Shakespearean literature confusing without the encourageof an Old-English dictionary or Cliffs Notes. Yet Shakespear lived just 300years ago Some are seeing this is a sign of the decline of the Englishlanguage, that plenty are becoming less and less literate. As R. Walker writesin his essay "Why English Needs Protecting," "the moral and economic decline of prominent Britain in the post-war era has been mirrored by a decline in the Englishlanguage and literature." I, however, disagree. It seems to me that the point oflanguage is to communicate to express some liking or exchange some form ofinformation with someone else. In this sense, the English language seems, notnecessarily to be improving or decayi ng, just optimizing becoming moreefficient.     It has been both said and observed that the technical evolution of asociety tends to grow exponentially rather than linearly. The same can as well besaid of the English language. English is evolving on two levels culturally andtechnologically. And both of these are unavoidable. Perhaps the more noticeableof the two today is the technological evolution of English. When the currentscope of a given language is insufficient to describe a new concept, invention,or property, then there functions a compulsion to alter, combine, or create wordsto provide a needed definition. For example, the field of Astro-Physics hasprovided the English language with such new terms as pulsar, quasar, quark,black hole, photon, neutrino, positron etc. Similarly, our society has recentlybe inundated with a myriad of new terms from the field of Computer Sciencemotherboard, hard drive, Internet, megabyte, CD, IDE, SCSI, TCP/IP, WWW, HTTP,DM A, graphical user interface and literally hundreds of others acronyms this particular field isnotorious for. While some of these terms, such as black hole and hard drive,are just a conclave of pre-existing words, numerous of them are new wordsaltogether. To me it seems clear that anything that serves to increase theacademic vocabulary of a society should be welcomed, although not all wouldagree. For example, many have acc utilise this trend of creating an acronym foreverything to be impersonal and confusing. And, while I agree that there isreally no need to abbreviate Kentucky Fried Chicken, it does become tiring tohave to constantly say Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or Transfer ControlProtocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) when they are both used so frequently when