The amount of words in the English language has at least doubled since the 1800's. In '1894' by George Orwell, the government is creating 'New Speak' which is a form of words that will replace older words. The book also tells how the society is trying to reduce the amount of words in the language, this is totally contradictory to our society. Words are being created and used everyday that didn't exist in the past. Some may argue that the words are not really considered proper words but words used to describe how you feel such as "Meh" have recently been added to Websters Dictionary.
If i had to describe how words change i would use the term Evolution, this is because only the strongest in evolution will survive through the next generation. This has already happened, in the 60's people, teenagers mostly, used terms like 'mint' which is an British word for cool. We no longer use that word in North America.
Recently there was a scientific study about our language, it was found out that people recognize words based upon the first and last letters of a word, if you had the correct amount of spaces of a word, but in completely different order the human mind still recognizes the work. For example Aplpe would be Apple. Things are not changing for the worst, I believe that people in the modern day are just more rushed in their day.
I personally don't believe that our language is diminishing, it is just changing. Ben Machintyre says that it isn't our language that is shrinking but our literacy level. I think this is depending upon where you live, being Canadian we have a higher literacy rate than American's. Personally being dyslexic I cannot say whether or not I am learning to spell better or not as a teenager but I would say that 'chat speak' has diminished towards adulthood for me. I believe that trying to spell or expressing something correctly through Instant Messaging is important as an adult, it shows intelligence and no mistake can be made in the conversation.
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