Yes, languages change. But it's a mistake to confuse the changes that we can see in the course of a human lifetime with the massive changes that occur over multiple generations, say between Cicero's language and Berlusconi's; and it's a mistake to assume that change is improvement (as from Cicero himself to Berlusconi). So, Modern Standard Italian evolved from Vulgar Latin; is it any better? No, not in any absolute sense: it's just, in general, better fitted to the needs of its speakers and its time, because things that haven't been needed have dropped out (Dost thou grasp my meaning?) or become exceptions to be tolerated (knighthood).
The idea that "evolution" is a process of improvement is, in biology, a leftover from the thought that Homo sap. is the crown of creation, and everything prior to him (male pronoun used intentionally here) has been aspiring to this supreme status upon earth, just a step lower than the angels. Which is hogwash. Species adapt to the needs of their environment, or perish. Languages change too. And in both cases much of the change, at the low-level short-term view, is random or almost so.
Some of these are eggcorns, where a single word, a compound, or an idiom that no longer makes sense is revised to SEEM to make sense. The eponymous eggcorn was the reinterpretation of "acorn" (huh? why "A"? why "corn") to "eggcorn" in dialects where the pronunciation was barely different or identical ("egg" as "aig"). Now it seemed to make at least partial sense: an acorn is shaped like an egg, once its cap is removed. Who cared that it came from Old English ... WHOA! I went to OED, and the story is orders of magnitude hairier than I'd thought!:
Etymology: The formal history of this word has been much perverted by ‘popular etymology.’ Old English æcern neuter, plural æcernu, is cognate with Old Norse akarn neuter (Danish agern , Norwegian aakorn ), Dutch aker ‘acorn,’ Old High German ackeran masculine and neuter (modern German ecker , plural eckern ) ‘oak or beech mast,’ Gothic akran ‘fruit,’ probably a derivative of Gothic akr-s , Old Norse akr , Old English æcer ‘field,’ originally ‘open unenclosed country, the plain.’ Hence akran appears to have been originally ‘fruit of the unenclosed land, natural produce of the forest,’ mast of oak, beech, etc., as in High German, extended in Gothic to ‘fruit’ generally, and gradually confined in Low German, Scandinavian, and English, to the most important forest produce, the mast of the oak. (See Grimm, under Ackeran and Ecker .) In Ælfric's Genesis xliv. 11, it had perhaps still the wider sense, a reminiscence of which also remains in the Middle English akernes of okes . Along with this restriction of application, there arose a tendency to find in the name some connection with oak , Old English ác , northern ake , aik . Hence the 15th and 16th cents. refashionings ake-corn , oke-corn , ake-horn , oke-horn , with many pseudo-etymological and imperfectly phonetic variants. Of these the 17th cent. literary acron seems to simulate the Greek ἄκρον top, point, peak. The normal mod. repr. of Old English æcern would be akern , akren , or ? atchern as already in 4; the actual acorn is due to the 16th cent. fancy that the word corn formed part of the name.
All I'd known about before was that late underlined bit.
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branchandroot
I don't like these either, but...
Date: 2011-10-27 04:12 am (UTC)The idea that "evolution" is a process of improvement is, in biology, a leftover from the thought that Homo sap. is the crown of creation, and everything prior to him (male pronoun used intentionally here) has been aspiring to this supreme status upon earth, just a step lower than the angels. Which is hogwash. Species adapt to the needs of their environment, or perish. Languages change too. And in both cases much of the change, at the low-level short-term view, is random or almost so.
Some of these are eggcorns, where a single word, a compound, or an idiom that no longer makes sense is revised to SEEM to make sense. The eponymous eggcorn was the reinterpretation of "acorn" (huh? why "A"? why "corn") to "eggcorn" in dialects where the pronunciation was barely different or identical ("egg" as "aig"). Now it seemed to make at least partial sense: an acorn is shaped like an egg, once its cap is removed. Who cared that it came from Old English ... WHOA! I went to OED, and the story is orders of magnitude hairier than I'd thought!:All I'd known about before was that late underlined bit.
Whew! Anyhow... no point in crying over spilled phonemes. Πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rhei) "everything flows".
And I to my bed, much later than I had meant to.