6 Surprizing Ways How the English Language Has Changed

Just as any other language, the English language has seen changes throughout its history. They for different reasons: political changes, cultural influences, interactions with other languages, developments in literature or simply because the people start or stop using certain words and phrases.

Here are 6 ways the English languages has changed that may catch you by surprise.

1. “You now write the way they once spoke”, is a sentence coined by one of my university lecturers concerning the English language. This is due to the so-call “Great Vowel Shift” in English, which occurred in the 14th and 16th centuries.

2. Hundreds of English dialects have appeared. First, the political and cultural dominance of the British Empire led to the spread of English among native populations all over the world. Second, the great development in technology that occurred during the Industrial Revolution saw many scientific texts written in English and thus spreading new terms.

3. The onset of internet slang. You may have not even noticed this one, but the internet and gaming brought about hundreds of new slang words: lol, gg, to int, to flame, post, hashtag, friendzone. Honestly, so many words fall into this category that it is hard to enumerate them. It will not be a surprise when they enter official English dictionaries.

4. Loss of the case system. In case you do not know, a case system in a language is when a noun (usually) changes its value in order to reflect grammatical function. English once had a case system, but that has long since changed. There are leftovers of it, though, e.g. “I like you” but “You like ME”.

5. Availability. English is absolutely everywhere, and we are pretty much taking this for granted. This has not always been the case, though.

6. English has been influenced by other languages in a substantial way. Starting from French in the Middle Ages, Latin, Greek and the vernaculars of the territories colonized by the British Empire, the influx of words into English is greater than you might think.