boo boo bear 1-22

In class this week, we took some time and talked about language and the evolution of language. When Dr. Rog said some phrases in old English I thought for sure he was speaking some other language. When he told us that it was just old English I was shocked. It is amazing to me how language can evolve and change in just a couple hundred years. As a kid I always wondered what it would be like to go back in time but now that I know languages evolve, going back in time would be awful. No one would understand a word I said and I would be able to understand anything anyone else said. Now that I think about it, I can see language evolving right before my eyes every day. There are times I might say a word or a phrase and my mom or grandmother have no idea what I was saying. At the same time they might say a word or phrase that I would never hear one of my friends say. Someone mentioned in class how you never hear anybody say “golly” any more. I head words like “golly”, “gee wiz”, or “over yonder” all the time when I hear my grandparents talk. Since I have heard those words my whole life I know their meanings, but when I am a grandparent, my generation will not use those words. Those words will not exist to my grandkids because they will have never heard them before. As I realized this, it became clear to me how a language can evolve so much that I can not even come close to understanding the English language 1000 years ago. If each generation just changes about 10 words, that would mean after 1000 years there would be thousands of extra words that would cause the language to be completely different.