Acronyms, Idioms And Slang: The Evolution Of The English Language.
Although the English language is only 1500 years old, it has evolved at
an incredible rate: so much so, that, at first glance, the average person in
America today would find most Shakespearean literature confusing without the aid
of an Old-English dictionary or Cliff's Notes. Yet Shakespear lived just 300
years ago! Some are seeing this is a sign of the decline of the English
language, that people are becoming less and less literate. As R. Walker writes
in his essay "Why English Needs Protecting," "the moral and economic decline of
Great Britain in the post-war era has been mirrored by a decline in the English
language and literature." I, however, disagree. It seems to me that the point ...
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are unavoidable. Perhaps the more noticeable
of the two today is the technological evolution of English. When the current
scope of a given language is insufficient to describe a new concept, invention,
or property, then there becomes a necessity to alter, combine, or create words
to provide a needed definition. For example, the field of Astro-Physics has
provided the English language with such new terms as pulsar, quasar, quark,
black hole, photon, neutrino, positron etc. Similarly, our society has recently
be inundated with a myriad of new terms from the field of Computer Science:
motherboard, hard drive, Internet, megabyte, CD, IDE, SCSI, TCP/IP, WWW, HTTP,
DMA, GUI and literally hundreds of others acronyms this particular field is
notorious for. While some of these terms, such as black hole and hard drive,
are just a combination of pre-existing words, many of them are new words
altogether. To me it seems clear that anything that serves to increase the
academic vocabulary of a ...
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"Acronyms, Idioms And Slang: The Evolution Of The English Language.." Essayworld.com. August 17, 2006. Accessed November 3, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Acronyms-Idioms-Slang-Evolution-English-Language/50916.
"Acronyms, Idioms And Slang: The Evolution Of The English Language.." Essayworld.com. August 17, 2006. Accessed November 3, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Acronyms-Idioms-Slang-Evolution-English-Language/50916.
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