The Evolution of Language

I recently read a book that was published in the 1920s. I noticed certain common words were spelled differently at that time. Canyon was spelled cañon. (The Spanish word for canyon is cañón.) Boulder was spelled bowlder. This was not a typo; bowlder is actually an old spelling of boulder.

We know the English language has evolved over centuries: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Modern English. But it doesn’t take centuries for a language to evolve. The word transistor didn’t exist until around 1950. There are many words that have been invented far more recently: bling, bromance, d’oh, frankenfood, grrrl, hater, mankini, mini-me, muggle, OMG, sexting, unfriend, woot, to name a few.

English is always inventing new words, but what is happening with our old words? When I was young, I had a teacher who drilled into us kids the fact that the first ‘c’ in Arctic and Antarctic was a silent ‘c’. The words were to be pronounced as though they were spelled “ar-tik” and “ant-artik”. In fact, arctic used to be spelled artik. Later the ‘c’ was added (restored, actually, but that’s a longer story), but at first that new ‘c’ wasn’t pronounced. Then people started pronouncing it – because it was in the word – and now everyone seems to pronounce that first ‘c’. Everyone except me. I used the silent ‘c’ pronunciation for too long – the silent ‘c’ is automatic. And it’s still an accepted alternate pronunciation – for now.

Or consider the word fiat, meaning arbitrary order or decree, as in government fiat. I was taught that the word rhymes with riot. Fiat, spelled with a capital ‘F’, is pronounced fee-aht and it’s the name of an Italian car maker. But now fiat is always pronounced like Fiat.

Homage. The word is pronounced hom-ij according to the dictionary. But it seems everyone wants to pronounce it as though it were a French word: oh-mahzh. Or maybe that’s just an LA thing.

Cache. It’s pronounced like cash. If you pronounce it cash-ay, you are speaking a different word that is spelled cachet. Cache and cachet have completely different meanings.

Forte. It has several meanings. Two common meanings are: something at which a person excels, and a loud passage in music. I was taught the first was pronounced like fort and the second was pronounced like for-tay. But now, both meanings are usually pronounced for-tay.

I can understand changing cañon to canyon. After all, how many North American typewriters, back in the day, had a Spanish letter Ñ? None. So people used a combination of letters that sounded like the Spanish letter. That made sense.

Many changes in the language are made out of ignorance. People don’t know the correct pronunciation, and so they guess it from the word’s spelling or they hear someone else, who also doesn’t know the correct pronunciation, speak the word. After a while the mispronunciation becomes so widely used that it becomes the correct pronunciation. Then the people who really do know the pronunciation sound ignorant when they use the pronunciation they were taught in school. There’s irony in that – deliberately mispronouncing words you know so you won’t appear uneducated to the under-educated. It’s evolution in action. But evolution, like many things, can go backward as well as forward.