Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 14:21:32 -0500
From: Mark Mandel
Subject: 50 Years of Language Change

The following appeared in LINGUIST List #9.658
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Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 00:11:03 +0000
From: formichelli
Subject: 50 Years of Language Change


Greetings, Linguists--

The Linguist List was a great help to me as a grad student of Slavic
Linguistics at UC Berkeley.

Now I write magazine articles for a living, and have come up with a
linguistics-based idea I'd like to propose to certain magazines.

Shakespeare's language is barely comprehensible to most of us now--and
he wrote only 400 years ago! That made me think that discernible
changes to our language must happen even in our own lifetime.

I'd like to propose an article on the changes that have occurred in our
lifetimes--say, the last 50 years. I'll be querying the article to
popular culture and science magazines, so I'd like to hear from
linguists about what noticeable changes have occurred in that time
period--whether phonetic, semantic or syntactic. Spelling and slang are
also interesting, but to a lesser degree. If a magazine accepts the
story, I might also like to do interviews.

If you'd like to share your thoughts, please send
them to me directly at linda[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tp.net.

Thanks for your help!

Linda Formichelli

-
Linda Formichelli, Freelance Writer
http://www.tp.net/tp/users/formichelli
Tel/Fax: 508-226-6668