Every language undergoes some kind of word shift, as a reading of eighteenth century documents would reveal. Words acquire new meanings as foreign influences penetrate a culture and as native speakers change their locations. New words derived from technological advances can pour into a culture like floodwaters. Yet, there is one aspect of language that seems to stay the same over centuries: naughty words (I’m trying to be delicate here).
So, twenty-first century speakers of English, for example, cuss and swear much like their predecessor generations. Ancestors that established a culture’s underlying values and idiom probably never considered that their naughty language would pass almost unchanged through generations of descendants.
As every generation moves from points of origin, such as neighborhoods and cities or homelands, it carries rudiments of the ancestors’ values in slightly modified versions and the ancestors’ naughty words in virtually the same form and spelling.
Such words seem to transcend the vicissitudes of both time and place. I find that damn interesting. What the **** do you think?
So, twenty-first century speakers of English, for example, cuss and swear much like their predecessor generations. Ancestors that established a culture’s underlying values and idiom probably never considered that their naughty language would pass almost unchanged through generations of descendants.
As every generation moves from points of origin, such as neighborhoods and cities or homelands, it carries rudiments of the ancestors’ values in slightly modified versions and the ancestors’ naughty words in virtually the same form and spelling.
Such words seem to transcend the vicissitudes of both time and place. I find that damn interesting. What the **** do you think?
RSS Feed