Language Evolution

All languages constantly evolve. We, everyone who speaks the language, help shape and develop it. Simple evolutions like the addition of new words based off a necessity to supply meaning to new concepts or products are common, especially given our constant development in technology and how fast we are moving.

Take the word “google” for example. It began as the name of a search engine, a product. When it started, we would explain its use by how you can search for things on the Internet using a website called “Google.” “Search” was the verb, while “Google” was the noun. However, we have evolved the term “google” to have a verb definition as well: to search the Internet. So now we can simply say something like, “I googled the restaurant,” instead of “I searched the Internet for the restaurant,” or, “I used Google to search for the restaurant.”

Changes like these occur for several reasons, the most common being to simplify or condense the language. If you notice, the evolved sentence using “google” is much simpler than either of the other examples.

-Tangent-
The evolution of a language is complicated and includes other factors including society and status, economy, world events like war and the change of leadership, all the way to accent involvement, misunderstandings between languages and the learned way our mouth moves. This subject is one of my small passions. I get very enthusiastic about it 🙂 which leads to me trying to relay how interesting the subject is -i.e. this tangent.

-Back to workshop –

Other than Shakespeare’s contribution to the literature world through plays and poetry, he is well known for making up words to suit his purpose. He is credited with evolving more than 1700 words, which are now common in the English language.

Part of being a writer is having the ability to find the perfect words to give our most accurate prescriptive description, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen. Sometimes we need to use our writing power to evolve the language to what we want.

There is a specific quote I wanted to add here, but I can not think of it. The jist is “Not to use a word that fits, but to use the only word that fits.”

Sometimes that requires making it up. I love making up words. I make them up to satisfy a rhyme, or to create a meaning to simplify a sentence.

Today, make up a word and use it.

I made up “treckle.” It is taken from “trek” (to journey long and rigorously)
and “trickle” (liquid flowing slowly or in droplets) and its meaning is liquid flowing slowly and laboriously, as if burdened or held back by something.

My use was to describe a nearly empty stream where the water treckles through the pebbles. The water is not simply trickling, unburdened by the emptiness of the stream or the rocks that it has to travel over. It is treckling.