[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

What you are talking about is really linguistics - which is fascinating. Language is never static. I think that media saturation and technological advances means it can do so at a faster rate than before, certainly. And some types of slang and colloquial speech are no longer geographically limited in the way it was before. So, a catchphrase on a television show can sweep the country almost overnight.
On what I consider a positive note, linguists have been surprised at the entrenched nature of regional accents and speech. There was a theory that tv would erase such differences. But it hasn't happened.

I'm not just talking about Ebonics here. I'm talking about how things have changed, and how things could change in the future based on patterns. When I mentioned Shakespear's English which is about 400 years old, I think reading his English and comparing it to English today, along with other historical trends are very useful guides to the way it could change in the future. One common prediction is that Modern English is following the same path as classsical Latin which at one time was a global language that evolved gradually, broke apart and was eventually buried. Even Latin split into distinct regional dialects as time went on and later, it evolved into unintelligible languages.

I don't think we should totally rely on history because it can only take us so far, but the way global communications are today, are far from anything seen in the past. I think vocabulary changes not so much because new words are invented but because words take new meanings and are combined in new ways, which is why I don't see anything wrong with urban slang and why I was not making fun of it. I think with this, more than likely a couple hundred years from now the English language will be harder to understand. I think the vowels have changed the most. The consonants have pretty much been fairly stable. I would have to do some research on that to find out why though.