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1)Choosing the right place and time
2)Take care of your documents
3)Making reservations is easy
4)Don`t worry, travel happy
5)When reservation is not needed
6)Good touring sights strategies
7)One bag is enough
8)Learn about your destination before you go
А. The world is always changing, and it`s necessary to travel with the most up-to-date information. Guidebooks and travel websites can help you in getting started. Tourism websites are a great place to begin planning your trip. Many of the sites are packed with practical information, suggested routes, city guides, interactive maps, colourful photos, and free downloadable brochures describing walking tours and more. You don`t need to wait until you get to your travel destination to use their information.
B. Don`t pack a lot of things. Packing wisely is more important for your own good. You can`t travel heavy and happy. Take this advice seriously. You`ll walk with your luggage more than you think you will. Before your journey, give yourself a test. Pack up completely and practice carrying your luggage. If you can`t, things out. When you don`t have to worry about your luggage getting lost, broken, or stolen.
C. For most tourists, visiting the world`s greatest attractions is the highlight of a trip. Some people walk into major museums, churches, and ancient places of interest, stare for a few minutes, and then walk out. Be a respectful visitor. With a little preparation and know-how, your sightseeing, might be more significant. You can`t possibly cover everything – so don`t try. First of all, don`t miss the masterpieces. If you have any energy left afterwards, you can explore other areas of specific interest to you.
D. If you decide to travel on your own, book tickets and accommodation beforehand. Nowadays, almost every hotel has a website. Just fill in a special form or send an email in simple English with your preferred dates, number and type of rooms, number of nights, date and time of arrival and departure. To stay away from mystification, be sure you use the hotel`s official site and not a booking agency`s site; otherwise, you may pay higher rates than you should.
E. Your trip abroad won`t get off the ground if you don`t prepare your passport, a visa, and the tickets before you living date. Keep an eye on your passport`s expiry date. If necessary, get your passport renewed before you go. A visa is a stamp placed in your passport, allowing you to enter the foreign country. If you need a visa, it`s best to get before you leave. It`s also smart to make photocopies of your passport and tickets. It`s easier to replace a lost or stolen passport and tickets if you have a photocopy.
G. Some people can choose when to take their holidays, but many others have less choice. Fortunately, all the countries welcome visitors 365 days a year. Each season offers different adventures and experience. Summer is great for travelling – except for the crowds and high temperatures. Sunny weather and exciting nightlife turn popular travel destinations into a powerful magnet. But off-season is for you to enjoy popular sights in their glory with no crowd and more peaceful atmosphere.
Many people fear change as there is no certainty about what it will bring, it may be a good or bad change. Furthermore, different individuals will be affected in different ways.
The world today is changing faster than it ever has before due to a large variety of factors that we will discuss in this article about where we will be taking a look at the question of why is the world constantly changing?
Technology.
One of the main factors speeding up change is technology. It’s a constant spinning wheel of progress, as every major technological discovery leads to more change and improvement in the lives of people.
For example, the railroads allowed for easier and quicker transportation of people and goods allowing for distant parts of the word to be better connected boosting the economic welfare of everyone involved.
A major contemporary technology discovery is the internet; it has allowed people all around the world to connect to each other easily. It has also created millions of jobs powered by the internet such as by being an Uber driver, an online Freelancer, Blogger, and a YouTuber.
These jobs were unimaginable just a few decades ago. Additionally, the internet has had other benefits, such as providing everyone with free and high-quality information hosted on websites such as Wikipedia that allow people to be better educated about all kinds of subjects in just a few seconds of searching.
Competition.
Competition fuels us to do better, it pushes us to keep on going in order to still have a chance to succeed at the goals that we have.
The factor of competition is key in every economy as it ultimately leads to innovation.
For example, if a supermarket wants to be successful it will need to innovate in order to make sure that it continuously has a better customer service and business model than its competitors.
Therefore, over time, the competition will increase efficiency in the business, which will allow a better experience for customers as well as stronger growth for the company.
This push to be better and better or falling behind is going to eventually lead to innovation as that will offer the greatest amount of advantage for a short period of time. Thus allowing for the private companies and individuals to make major gains in their respective sectors.
People Always Wanting More.
The average person is not satisfied with what they have; we always want more and better. If everyone takes a look back to how the world was just a few hundred years ago, they will see that our lives are multiple times better than they were before.
Many diseases and illnesses are no longer fatal thanks to medication and vaccination, just a few hundred years ago. Simple cuts were a major cause of death due to the lack of sanitation available to the average person.
We have access to hundreds of millions of separate pieces of content to entertain us from a small device that we can hold in the palm of our hands. Despite this progress, we continue to dream of more, which is a good and a bad thing at the same time, however it definitely does lead to constant change.
Longer Lives.
Another good reason to the question of why is the world constantly changing is that we are now living longer and longer. Apart from this being great for every person, it also gives us more time to focus on what motivates us and makes us happy.
Such as starting your own business or working on improving your skill sets that will allow you to be successful in lucrative careers such as acting or being an athlete.
This is further boosted by the fact that we are able to dedicate much longer periods of our lives to formal education. The average person in the USA will be in formal education until their early twenties, when they will be graduating from university.
Thanks to this, when everyone is on average much better educated this will provide extra capacity for a society to continue to advance for the better while upholding decent standards.
The Environment Around Us.
However, it is not just us who are the drivers of change in the world that we live in. In fact, the actual environment around us is constantly changing at a very slow and persistent rate.
Every year a couple of meters of the coastline will succumb to erosion while more land is created by our planet through volcanoes and shifts of the tectonic plates.
No matter how hard we try it is likely impossible to prevent such changes, they are just a part of life. In fact, scientists predict that our Sun has around 5 billion years of life left before it happens to disintegrate.
But who knows? Maybe in a few hundred years, scientists will invent an artificial sun. Therefore, nothing is certain in life; no matter how advanced technologically we become, there will likely still be factors out of our control that will lead to constant change. But technology can do a lot!
Wanting to Be Rich.
Money and the power that comes with it is something that many people seek out for a variety of reasons which include having a high standard of life, feeling gratified, and also as a way to quell their insecurities.
The chance of becoming wealthy and getting hold of all that comes with it is a very powerful incentive for people to seek it by contributing to society in positive as well as nefarious ways.
This competition for money and status will lead people to continuously go up against each other resulting in major changes in countries as well as around the world.
Wealth is something that a lot of people believe will bring them happiness and fix all of their problems. However, the few that do achieve the goal of being wealthy will quickly discover that this is not entirely the case.
It Is Inevitable.
When answering the question of why is the world constantly changing is the fact that change is inevitable. The world is very complicated, and there are many factors that make it work. When one of those factors changes, ultimately people will need to reach, and not always will their actions have positive consequences.
Additionally, there will always be idealists who believe that they know how to make the world a better place. Coupled with the natural competition between people and companies as well as the uncertainty that comes with everyday life will guarantee that there will always be small changes as well as seismic shifts.
Rather than fighting change, it is important to accept that change is natural and to do your best to be prepared for it.
Also read the article: Why Are There No Perfect People in the World?
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Review 1
A Write one word in each gap
1-does
2-off
3-going
4-see
5-are
6-have
7-change
8-do
9 – from
10-up
11-is
12-has
13-means
14-to
15-for
B Complete the sentences by changing the form of the word in capitals when this is necessary
16-i’ve always wanted to be a travel photographer and take pictures of exotic places.
Ես միշտ ցանկացել եմ դառնալ ճանապարհորդական լուսանկարիչ և էկզոտիկ վայրեր լուսանկարել:
17-None of us were sure which direction to go in, so we got out the map.
Մեզանից ոչ ոք չգիտեր թե որ ուղղությամբ գնալ, այդ իսկ պատճառով մենք օգվեցինք քարտեզից:
18-Since I was here five years ago. Delhi has changed so much that it’s practically unrecognizable.
Այն ժամանակվանից ի վեր, ինչ ես այստեղ եղել եմ հինգ տարի առաջ Դելին այնքան է փոխվել, որ դարձել է անճանաչելի:
19-Once we got to the station, I quickly looked through the timetable to see when the next train was.
Երբ մենք գնացինք կառամատույց, ես արագ նայեցի ժամատախտակին տեսնելու համար, թե երբ է ժամանելու հաջորդ գնացքը:
20 – I’ve got a cousin at university who is studying tourism and hopes to open a hotel.
Համալսարանում ես զարմիկ ունեմ, ով ուսանում է տուրիզմ և հույս ունի բացել հյուրանոց:
21- As we got closer to the Amazonian village, the inhabitants came out to meet us.
Մինչ մենք մոտենում էինք Ամազոնիա գյուղին, տեղացիները դուրս էին գալիս դիմավորելու մեզ:
22- The arrival of Flight 472 from Amsterdam has been delayed by one hour.
Ամստերդամից եկող 472 թռիչքը հետաձգվել է մեկ ժամով:
C Complete each second sentence using the word given, so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence. Write between two and five words in eah gap.
23-We had just got on the plane when the pilot told us to get off again
Հենց որ նստեցինք ինքնաթիռ, օդաչուն ասաց , որ նորից իջնենք:
24-We have been in Budapest for two days.
Մենք արդեն երկու օր է ինչ Բուդապեշտում ենք:
25-This is the second time I have visited Paris.
Սա երկրորդ անգամն է ինչ ես այցելում եմ Փարիզ:
26- I find it hard to keep up with my husband on walking holidays.
Ինձ համր դժվար է ամուսնուս հետ հավասար քայլել քայլարշավներին:
27-Joan has always been very keen on traveling and has been everywhere.
Ջոնը շատ է սիրում ճամփորդել և ամեն տեղ եղել է:
28-We drove away at full speed, ready to begin our adventure.
Մենք մեքենան ամբողջ արագությամբ վարեցինք դեպի այն կողմ, ժամանակն է սկսելու զվարճանքը:
29-As the storm started, we went in the direction of the old house.
Երբ փոթորիկն սկսեց, մենք շարժվեցինք հին տնակի ուղղությամբ:
30-I regret not looking at the hotel room before I booked it
Ես ափսոսում եմ, որ չնայեցի հյուրանոցի սենյակը մինչ այն ամրագրելը:
31-B
32-A
33-B
34-D
35-D
36-C
37-C
38-A
39-C
40-D
41-B
42-C
Types of Language Change
Language is always changing. We’ve seen that language changes across
space and across social group. Language also varies across time.
Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed
or invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops
or decays. The rate of change varies, but whether the changes are faster
or slower, they build up until the «mother tongue» becomes arbitrarily
distant and different. After a thousand years, the original and new languages
will not be mutually intelligible. After ten thousand years, the relationship
will be essentially indistinguishable from chance relationships between
historically unrelated languages.
In isolated subpopulations speaking the same language, most changes will
not be shared. As a result, such subgroups will drift apart linguistically,
and eventually will not be able to understand one another.
In the modern world, language change is often socially problematic. Long
before divergent dialects lose mutual intelligibility completely, they
begin to show difficulties and inefficiencies in communication, especially
under noisy or stressful conditions. Also, as people observe language
change, they usually react negatively, feeling that the language has «gone
down hill». You never seem to hear older people commenting that the language
of their children or grandchildren’s generation has improved compared
to the language of their own youth.
Here is a puzzle: language change is functionally disadvantageous, in
that it hinders communication, and it is also negatively evaluated by
socially dominant groups. Nevertheless is is a universal fact of human
history.
How and why does language change?
There are many different routes to language change. Changes can take
originate in language learning, or through language contact,
social differentiation, and natural processes in usage.
Language learning: Language is transformed as it is transmitted
from one generation to the next. Each individual must re-create a grammar
and lexicon based on input received from parents, older siblings and other
members of the speech community. The experience of each individual is
different, and the process of linguistic replication is imperfect, so
that the result is variable across individuals. However, a bias in the
learning process — for instance, towards regularization — will cause
systematic drift, generation by generation. In addition, random differences
may spread and become ‘fixed’, especially in small populations.
Language contact: Migration, conquest and trade bring speakers
of one language into contact with speakers of another language. Some individuals
will become fully bilingual as children, while others learn a second language
more or less well as adults. In such contact situations, languages often
borrow words, sounds, constructions and so on.
Social differentiation. Social groups adopt distinctive norms
of dress, adornment, gesture and so forth; language is part of the package.
Linguistic distinctiveness can be achieved through vocabulary (slang or
jargon), pronunciation (usually via exaggeration of some variants already
available in the environment), morphological processes, syntactic constructions,
and so on.
Natural processes in usage. Rapid or casual speech naturally produces
processes such as assimilation, dissimilation, syncope
and apocope. Through repetition, particular cases may become conventionalized,
and therefore produced even in slower or more careful speech. Word meaning
change in a similar way, through conventionalization of processes like
metaphor and metonymy.
Some linguists distinguish between internal and external
sources of language change, with «internal» sources of change
being those that occur within a single languistic community, and contact
phenomena being the main examples of an external source of change.
The analogy with evolution via natural selection
Darwin himself, in developing the concept of evolution of species via
natural selection, made an analogy to the evolution of languages. For
the analogy to hold, we need a pool of individuals with variable traits,
a process of replication creating new individuals whose traits depend
on those of their «parents», and a set of environmental processes
that result in differential success in replication for different traits.
We can cast each of the just-listed types of language change in such
a framework. For example, in child language acquisition, different grammatical
or different lexical patterns may be more or less easily learnable, resulting
in better replication for grammatical or lexical variants that are «fitter»
in this sense.
There are some key differences between grammars/lexicons and genotypes.
For one thing, linguistic traits can be acquired throughout one’s life
from many different sources, although intitial acquisition and (to a lesser
extent) adolescence seem to be crucial stages. Acquired (linguistic) traits
can also be passed on to others. One consequence is that linguistic history
need not have the form of a tree, with languages splitting but
never rejoining, whereas genetic evolution is largely constrained to have
a tree-like form (despite the possibility of transfer of genetic material
across species boundaries by viral infection and so on). However, as a
practical matter, the assumption that linguistic history is a sort of
tree structure has been found to be a good working approximation.
In particular, the basic sound structure and morphology of languages
usually seems to «descend» via a tree-structured graph of inheritance,
with regular, lawful relationships between the patterns of «parent»
and «child» languages.
Types of Change
Sound change
All aspects of language change, and a great deal is know about general
mechanisms and historical details of changes at all levels of linguistic
analysis. However, a special and conspicuous success has been achieved
in modeling changes in phonological systems, traditionally called sound
change. In the cases where we have access to several historical stages
— for instance, the development of the modern Romance Languages from
Latin — these sound changes are remarkably regular. Techniques developed
in such cases permit us to reconstruct the sound system — and some of
the vocabulary — of unattested parent languages from information about
daughter languages.
In some cases, an old sound becomes a new sound across the board. Such
a change occurred in Hawai’ian, in that all the «t» sounds in an
older form of the language became «k«s: at the time Europeans encountered
Hawai’ian, there were no «t«s in it at all, though the closely
related languages Tahitian, Samoan, Tongan and Maori all have «t«s.
Another unconditioned sound change that occurred between Middle
and Early Modern English (around Shakespeare’s time) is known as the Great
Vowel Shift. At that time, there was a length distinction in the English
vowels, and the Great Vowel Shift altered the position of all the
long vowels, in a giant rotation.
The nucleus of the two high vowels (front «long i» /i:/, and the back
«long u» /u:/) started to drop, and the high position was retained only
in the offglide. Eventually, the original /i:/ became /ai/ — so a «long
i» vowel in Modern English is now pronounced /ai/ as in a word like ‘bite’:
/bait/. Similarly, the «long u» found its nucleus dropping all the way
to /au/: the earlier ‘house’ /hu:s/ became /haus/. All the other long
vowels rotated, the mid vowels /e:/ and /o:/ rising to fill the spots
vacated by the former /i:/ and /u:/ respectively, and so on. That is why
the modern pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’ are written with /e/ (reflecting the
old pronunciation) but pronounced as /i/. In the following chart, the
words are located where their vowel used to be pronounced
— where they are pronounced today is indicated by the arrows.
In other cases, a sound change may be «conditioned» so as to
apply in certain kinds of environments and not in others. For example,
it’s very common for tongue-tip («coronal») consonants to become
palatal when they are followed by high front vowels. The residue of this
process can be seen in English pairs like divide/division, fuse/fusion,
submit/submission, oppress/oppression.
Processes of sound change.
Another dimension along which we can look at sound change is by classifying
changes according to the particular process involved.
Assimilation, or the influence of one sound on an adjacent sound,
is perhaps the most pervasive process. Assimilation processes changed
Latin /k/ when followed by /i/ or /y/, first to /ky/, then to «ch», then
to /s/, so that Latin faciat /fakiat/ ‘would make’ became
fasse /fas/ in Modern French (the subjunctive of the
verb faire ‘to make’).Palatalization is a kind of assimilation.
In contrast to assimilation, dissimilation, metathesis, and
haplology tend to occur more sporadically, i.e., to affect
individual words. Dissimilation involves a change in one of two
‘same’ sounds that are adjacent or almost adjacent in a particular word
such that they are no longer the same. Thus the first «l» in English
colonel is changed to an «r», and the word is pronounced
like «kernel». Metathesis involves the change in order of two
adjacent sounds. Crystal cites Modern English third from
OE thrid , and Modern English bird is
a parallel example. But Modern English bright underwent
the opposite change, its ancestor being beorht, and not
all «vowel + r» words changed the relative order of these segments as
happened with bird and third . Already
by the time of Old English, there were two forms of the word for «ask»:
ascian and acsian. We don’t know which
form was metathesized from the other, but we do know that ascian
won out in the standard language. Haplology is similar to dissimilation,
because it involves getting rid of similar neighboring sounds, but this
time, one sound is simply dropped out rather than being changed to a different
sound. An example is the pronunciation of Modern English probably
as prob’ly.
Other sound change processes are merger, split, loss, syncope, apocope,
prothesis, and epenthesis. Merger and split can be
seen as the mirror image of each other. A merger that is currently
expanding over much of the United States is the merger between «short
o» and «long open o». The following table contains examples
of words that you probably pronounce differently if you are from the Philadelphia
— New York — New England area, or if you are from the South. If you are
from Canada, the American Midwest, or from California, you probably find
that the vowels in these pairs sound the same, rather than different.
If this is the case, you have a merger here.
| Short «o» | Long «Open o» |
| cot hot hock stock |
caught haughty hawk stalk |
Splits are rarer than mergers, and usually arise when a formerly
conditioned alternation loses the environment that provided the original
conditioning, and the previously conditioned alternation becomes two independent
sounds that contrast with each other. This is basically what happened
when /f/ and /v/ split in English (/v/ having previously
been an alternate of /f/ when /f/ occurred in an intervocalic
position).
Loss involves the loss of a sound from a language, as when
Hawai’ian lost the /t/ in favor of /k/ (see below).
Syncope and apocope are the loss of medial and final
sounds respectively. Middle English ‘tame’ in the past tense was /temede/.
It lost both its medial and final vowels to become Modern English
/teymd/. These are usually conditioned changes that
do not involve loss of the same sound elsewhere.
Prothesis and epenthesis are the introduction of additional
sounds, initially and medially respectively. The addition of the /e/
that made Latin words like scola ‘school’ into Portuguese
escola is the only example of prothesis in foure historical linguistics
textbooks I consulted. As for epenthesis, an example other than the one
Crystal cites was the /d/ inserted into ME thunrian to give
us the Modern English thunder.
How do we know how languages are related?
Linguists rely on systematic sound changes to establish the relationships
between languages. The basic idea is that when a change occurs within
a speech community, it gets diffused across the entire community of speakers
of the language. If, however, the communities have split and are no longer
in contact, a change that happens in one community does not get
diffused to the other community. Thus a change that happened between early
and late Latin would show up in all the ‘daughter’ languages of Latin, but
once the late Latin speakers of the Iberian peninsula were no longer in
regular contact with other late Latin speakers, a change that happened there
would not spread to the other communities. Languages that share innovations
are considered to have shared a common history apart from other languages,
and are put on the same branch of the language family tree.
Words in two or more daughter languages that derive from the same word
in the ancestral language are known as cognates. Sound changes
work to change the actual phonetic form of the word in the different languages,
but we can still recognize them as originating from a common source because
of the regularities within each language. For example, a change happened
in Italian such that in initial consonant clusters, the l that
originally followed p and f changed to i. Thus
Italian words like fiore ‘flower’; fiume ‘river’; pioggia
‘rain’; and piuma ‘feather’ are cognates with the French
fleur; fleuve; pluie; and plume, respectively, and with
Spanish flora, fluvial (adj. ‘riverine’); lluvia (by a
later change); and pluma respectively.
In the Romance languages below, the word for ‘mother’ is a cognate in
all the six contemporary languages considered, however the word for ‘father’
is a cognate only in four of the five: in Rumanian, the original word
inherited from Latin pater has been replaced by a completely
different word, tata.
Spanish and Italian are the only two that retain a phonological reflex
of the original Latin medial consonant t, (in both languages,
it has been voiced to d, probably a change that occurred in the
common ancestor to all the dialects and languages of the Iberian peninsula.
All the other Romance languages have dropped it. The original r
has also suffered different fates: however, within each language, the
same thing happened in both words. Where we find r deleted in
final position in the word for ‘mother’, we also find it deleted in the
same position in the word for ‘father’.
| English Gloss | French | Italian | Spanish | Portuguese | Rumanian | Catalan | |
| mother | mer | madre | madre | mae | mama | mare | |
| father | per | padre | padre | pae | tata | pare |
The same principles are applied in languages that do not have a written
history. Several cognate sets in five languages of the Polynesian family
are listed in the next table.
| English Gloss |
Tongan | Maori | Samoan | Tahitian | Hawai’ian | |
| 1. bird | manu | manu | manu | manu | manu | |
| 2. fish | ika | ika | i?a | i?a | i?a | |
| 3. to eat | kai | kai | ?ai | ?ai | ?ai | |
| 4. forbidden | tapu | tapu | tapu | tapu | kapu | |
| 5. eye | mata | mata | mata | mata | maka | |
| 6. blood | toto | toto | toto | toto | koko |
We see that no changes happened in the nasal consonants, nor in the
vowels, but we can observe in lines 2 and 3 that wherever Tongan and Maori
have /k/, Samoan, Tahitian and Hawai’ian appear to have /?/
(glottal stop). Apparently there has been an unconditioned change from
/k/ to /?/ in the Eastern branch, or a change from
/k/ to /k/ in the Western branch of this family. We choose
the first as more likely, partly because /t/ is a more common phoneme
in the world’s languages, partly because backing of consonants is more
common than fronting, and partly because of what we know about the culture
history: Polynesia was peopled from west to east, and if the change had
occurred in the Western branch, that would have been at a time when all
five languages were still one speech community. Next, we see in lines
4 — 6 that there is a systematic correspondence between /t/ in
the first four languages and /k/ in the easternmost, Hawai’ian.
This looks like another systematic, unconditioned sound change, this time
in only one language. (We can see from this example that when English
borrowed the Polynesian word for «forbidden», we borrowed it from one
of the languages west of Hawaii — we say «taboo», not «kaboo»).
This is what a family tree of the five Polynesian languages would look
like, based on the small data set above (the picture is somewhat more
complex when we look at other cognate sets — Maori in particular is probably
not correctly placed in this diagram, which has been designed as an illustration
of the method):
Historical Reconstruction vs. Lexicostatistics
In the examples just discussed, the central enterprise has been to establish
a systematic pattern of change, most often sound change: every
original Malayo-polynesian /t/ becomes /k/ in Hawaiian, and we can cite
many correspondences of cognate pairs to prove it. This level of
understanding is useful for several reasons.
First, a systematic pattern of phonological correspondence across many
words is unlikely to have arisen by chance, whereas completely unrelated
languages often develop surprising similarities in particular words, entirely
by chance.
Second, given systematic patterns of this type, we can start to apply
the comparative method to reconstruct the parent language. This
in turn allows us to examine relationships among reconstructed languages
at a greater time depth, even if the process of change entirely obscures
the relationships among the vocabulary items in the child languages.
However, establishing patterns of this type is difficult. It requires
a large vocabulary in all the languages being compared, in order to find
enough cognates; and it also requires a deep knowledge of the grammar
of each of the languages, in order to see cognate relationships that might
be obscured by morphology and contextual phonological change — and not
to be fooled into seeing false cognates where morphology or phonology
have created chance similarities.
Another approach, pioneered by the American Structuralist linguist Morris
Swadesh, is called lexicostatistics. For a set of languages
of interest, we get a small vocabulary list of common, basic words (typically
100-200 items). For each pair of languages, we determine the percentage
of words on this list that appear to be cognate. Determination of cognation
is dependent on the subjective judgment of the linguist, and we expect
some errors, especially if the scholar does not know the languages very
well, but we hope that the error rate will be small enough not to affect
the results.
We can then arrange these cognate percentages in a table, from which
we draw some conclusions about the degree of relationship among the languages
involved.
Here is a recent example, drawn from Central
Yambasa Survey Report, by Boone et al., discussing languages of the
Centre Province of Cameroon:
| Gunu [two lists] | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 82 | Elip | |||||||
| 85 | 90 | Mmala [two lists] | ||||||
| 78 | 90 | 89 | Yangben[two lists] | |||||
| 77 | 81 | 81 | 88 | Baca [two lists] | ||||
| 66 | 72 | 72 | 77 | 78 | Mbule [two lists] | |||
| 58 | 63 | 64 | 66 | 70 | 69 | Bati | ||
| 42 | 41 | 42 | 42 | 42 | 46 | 45 | Hijuk [two lists] | |
| 39 | 38 | 41 | 38 | 37 | 40 | 41 | 88 | Basaa |
Table 5 New lexical similarity percentages for
Central Yambasa
and selected neighbouring tongues
From this table, we can conclude that Elip, Mmala and Yangben are «closely
related speech varieties»; that they are somewhat more distant from
Gunu, Baca and Mbule; that they are even more distant from Bati; and that
they are further yet from Hijuk and Basaa. Based on this sort of consideration,
we can construct a sort of family tree, just as we might based on patterns
of sound change.
There has been a great deal of controversy about whether family trees
based on lexicostatistics are reliable. Those who doubt it point to the
possibility that cognate percentages might be strongly affected by vocabulary
borrowing, either in a negative or positive direction. For instance, Japanese
borrowed many words from Chinese without becoming a Sino-Tibetan language;
it has recently borrowed many words from English without becoming an Indo-European
language. Those who favor lexicostatistics argue that this sort of borrowing
is less common in the basic-vocabulary wordlists that they use.
There are two distinct controversies about the use of lexicostatistical
methods. One issue is whether the family trees produced for languages
with fairly high cognate percentages (say 60% and higher) are a reliable
indication of the detailed structure of «genetic» relationships
among languages. Everyone accepts that two languages with 85% cognates
are certainly related; the only question is whether they are (necessarily)
«more closely related» in a historical sense than either is
to a language whose cognate percentages with both are (say) 80%.
For example, we might have a situation in which proto-language A splits
into B and C. C in turn splits into D and E. E then undergoes a period
of close contact with a completely unrelated language, Z, as a result
of of which it borrows a lot of new vocabulary. Now E has a lower cognate
percentage with D than D has with B; but the historical fact is that E
is more closely related to D than D is to B.
The second controversy is what to make of relationships involving very
low cognate percentages, say below 10%. Depending on the nature of the
languages and the methods used to determine cognation, these percentages
are getting into the range that could (it is argued) arise by chance,
or by superficial or indirect recent contact.
Glottochronology
Swadesh and others took this type of analysis further, based on the idea
that the average rate of loss of cognates could be regarded as constant
over historical time, just like the rate of radioactive decay. Swadesh
looked at some languages where historical stages are well documented,
and concluded that basic vocabulary decays by 14 percent every millenium.
According to the entry on Swadesh in the Encyclopedia of Linguistics:
Thus, if the basic vocabularies of two related
languages are found to match by 70 percent, they can be assumed to have
developed from a single language that existed approximately 12 centuries
before.The assumption that basic vocabulary decay is generally uniform
has been largely rejected. If one allows that languages, just like societies,
may develop at different rates at different times, the assumption of
steady vocabulary decay in particular, and the glottochronological method
in general, is seriously undermined.
Everyone recognizes that linguistic decay is not completely uniform.
Some people still believe that it is sometimes uniform enough for glottochronological
methods to be a useful approximate guide to linguistic (and thus ethnic)
history.
What are the results of language change?
When accompanied by splits of populations, language change results first
in dialect divergence (the kinds of differences we see between British and
American English; between the French of France and of Quebec; between New
World and Old World Spanish and Portuguese). Over longer time periods, we
see the emergence of separate languages as in the contemporary Romance languages,
separated by about 2000 years, and the Germanic languages, whose divergence
began perhaps 500 years earlier. Both of these families are part of Indo-European
, for which the Ethnologue web page lists 425 languages! Though political
considerations often intervene in whether a particular speech variety is
considered to be a language or a dialect, the basic idea behind linguistic
classifications is that dialects are mutually intelligible, whereas languages
are not.
Of course, the question of intelligibility is always relative. The following
phrases taken from the spontaneous speech of Chicagoans recorded in the
early 1990s were difficult for many non-Chicagoans to understand correctly.
In «gating» experiments designed to test cross-dialectal comprehension
in American English, subjects first heard a word, then a slightly longer
segment, then a whole phrase or sentence that may have disambiguated the
original mishearing. These experiments were part of the research project
on Cross-Dialectal Comprehension done at the Linguistics Lab here at Penn
(for more information on the Northern Cities Shift, see «The Organization
of Dialect Diversity» on the home page of the Phonological
Atlas of North America .)
| Original segment | Many people misheard as | First expansion | Second expansion |
| drop | ??? (nonsense word containing vowel in «that») | massive drop | the plane was steady for a while and then it took a massive drop |
| socks | sacks | y’hadda wear socks | y’hadda wear socks, no sandals |
| block | black | one block | old senior citizens living on one block |
| met | mutt | they met | my parents went to Cuba and that’s where they met |
| steady | study | steady for a while | the plane was steady for a while and then it took a massive drop |
| head | had | shook ‘er head | this woman in while, who just smiled at her and shook ‘er head |
These misunderstandings are based on the fact that the Chicago speakers
(along with 40 — 50 million other people in the «Inland North» dialect
including Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, Syracuse, and other cities of that
region) have a rotation of their short vowels such that the low unrounded
vowel of the «short o» words like drop, socks, block,
and hot is being fronted to the position where other
American dialects have words like that, hat, black, rap,
and sacks, , and where «short e» words like met,
steady and head can sound like mutt,
study and thud or mat, static
and had.
The Ethnologue data base
includes more than 6900 languages spoken in 228 countries. They state
that their «criterion for listing speech varieties separately is low intelligibility,
as far as that can be ascertained.»
How far back can we go?
Most linguists agree that our methods for reconstruction will take as only
as far back as about 5000 — 7000 years; after that, the number of cognate
sets available for reconstruction becomes just too low to give results that
can be reliably distinguished from chance relationships. Although it would
be very satisfying to be able to link up some of the existing families at
a higher level, the evidence seems too weak to allow us to do so. A minority
of scholars, however, argue that this is possible, and one particularly
well-known group of such scholars goes by the name of Nostraticists, derived
from their views that there exists a super-family of language they have
called the «Nostratic», which would include not only Indo-European languages but also
Uralic languages such as Finnish and Hungarian, and Afro-Asiatic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Hausaand Somali. A New York Times article from 1995 presents a well-balanced
view of the
Nostraticist position.
Dr. Donald Ringe of the Penn Linguistics Department, himself an expert
on the ancient Indo-European language Tocharian, is one of the chief critics
of the Nostraticist position.
The current Ethnologue listing of «language families» includes 153 members, from Abkhaz-Adyghe to Zaparoan. This does not mean that human language was developed independently 153 times — it only means that generally-accepted methods can’t establish any further relationships among these groupings, at least not for sure.
Other (optional) links on debated historical reconstructions
Founding fathers of the Amerind debate
Gall in the family
Splitters and lumpers — then and now
Eska and Ringe on Forster and Toth
Dating Indo-European
More on Gray and Aktinson
Ticks and tocks of glottoclocks
Gray and Atkinson — use of binary characters
Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis
Is English changing?
Edited by Betty Birner
Download this document as a pdf.
Yes, and so is every other human language! Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. This isn’t a bad thing; if English hadn’t changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn’t have words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cable TV. As long as the needs of language users continue to change, so will the language. The change is so slow that from year to year we hardly notice it, except to grumble every so often about the ‘poor English’ being used by the younger generation! However, reading Shakespeare’s writings from the sixteenth century can be difficult. If you go back a couple more centuries, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if you went back another 500 years to try to read Beowulf, it would be like reading a different language.
Why does language change?
Language changes for several reasons. First, it changes because the needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting: originally it was called text messaging, because it allowed one person to send another text rather than voice messages by phone. As that became more common, people began using the shorter form text to refer to both the message and the process, as in I just got a text or I’ll text Sylvia right now.
Another reason for change is that no two people have had exactly the same language experience. We all know a slightly different set of words and constructions, depending on our age, job, education level, region of the country, and so on. We pick up new words and phrases from all the different people we talk with, and these combine to make something new and unlike any other person’s particular way of speaking. At the same time, various groups in society use language as a way of marking their group identity; showing who is and isn’t a member of the group.
Many of the changes that occur in language begin with teens and young adults. As young people interact with others their own age, their language grows to include words, phrases, and constructions that are different from those of the older generation. Some have a short life span (heard groovy lately?), but others stick around to affect the language as a whole.
We get new words from many different places. We borrow them from other languages (sushi, chutzpah), we create them by shortening longer words (gym from gymnasium) or by combining words (brunch from breakfast and lunch), and we make them out of proper names (Levis, fahrenheit). Sometimes we even create a new word by being wrong about the analysis of an existing word, like how the word pea was created. Four hundred years ago, the word pease was used to refer to either a single pea or a bunch of them, but over time, people assumed Excerpt from Beowulf
that pease was a plural form, for which pea must be the singular. Therefore, a new word, pea, was born. The same thing would happen if people began to think of the word cheese as referring to more than one chee.
Word order also changes, though this process is much slower. Old English word order was much more ‘free’ than that of Modern English, and even comparing the Early Modern English of the King James Bible with today’s English shows differences in word order. For example, the King James Bible translates Matthew 6:28 as «Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not.» In a more recent translation, the last phrase is translated as «they do not toil,” because English no longer places not after the verb in a sentence.
The sounds of a language change over time, too. About 500 years ago, English began to undergo a major change in the way its vowels were pronounced. Before that, geese would have rhymed with today’s pronunciation of face, while mice would have rhymed with today’s peace. However, a ‘Great Vowel Shift’ began to occur, during which the ay sound (as in pay) changed to ee (as in fee) in all the words containing it, while the ee sound changed to i (as in pie). Overall, seven different vowel sounds were affected. If you’ve ever wondered why most other European languages spell the sound ay with an ‘e’ (as in fiancé), and the sound ee with an ‘i’ (as in aria), it’s because those languages didn’t undergo the Great Vowel Shift, only English did.
Wasn’t English more elegant in Shakespeare’s day?
People tend to think that older forms of languages are more elegant, logical, or ‘correct’ than modern forms, but it’s just not true. The fact that language is always changing doesn’t mean it’s getting worse; it’s just becoming different.
In Old English, a small winged creature with feathers was known as a brid. Over time, the pronunciation changed to bird. Although it’s not hard to imagine children in the 1400’s being scolded for ‘slurring’ brid into bird, it’s clear that bird won out. Nobody today would suggest that bird is an incorrect word or a sloppy pronunciation.
The speech patterns of young people tend to grate on the ears of adults because they’re unfamiliar. Also, new words and phrases are used in spoken or informal language sooner than in formal, written language, so it’s true that the phrases you may hear a teenager use may not yet be appropriate for business letters. But that doesn’t mean they’re worse — just newer. For years, English teachers and newspaper editors argued that the word hopefully shouldn’t be used to mean ‘I hope’, as in hopefully it won’t rain today, even though people frequently used it that way in informal speech. (Of course nobody complained about other ‘sentence adverbs’ such as frankly and actually.) The battle against hopefully is now all but lost, and it appears at the beginnings of sentences, even in formal documents.
If you listen carefully, you can hear language change in progress. For example, anymore is a word that used to only occur in negative sentences, such as I don’t eat pizza anymore. Now, in many areas of the country, it’s being used in positive sentences, like I’ve been eating a lot of pizza anymore. In this use, anymore means something like ‘lately’. If that sounds odd to you now, keep listening; you may be hearing it in your neighborhood before long.
Why can’t people just use correct English?
By ‘correct English’, people usually mean Standard English. Most languages have a standard form; it’s the form of the language used in government, education, and other formal contexts. But Standard English is actually just one dialect of English.
What’s important to realize is that there’s no such thing as a ‘sloppy’ or ‘lazy’ dialect. Every dialect of every language has rules — not ‘schoolroom’ rules, like ‘don’t split your infinitives’, but rather the sorts of rules that tell us that the cat slept is a sentence of English, but slept cat the isn’t. These rules tell us what language is like rather than what it should be like.
Different dialects have different rules. For example:
(l) I didn’t eat any dinner.
(2) I didn’t eat no dinner.
Sentence (l) follows the rules of Standard English; sentence (2) follows a set of rules present in several other dialects. Neither is sloppier than the other, they just differ in the rule for making a negative sentence. In (l), dinner is marked as negative with any; in (2), it’s marked as negative with no. The rules are different, but neither is more logical or elegant than the other. In fact, Old English regularly used ‘double negatives’, parallel to what we see in (2). Many modern languages, including Italian and Spanish, either allow or require more than one negative word in a sentence. Sentences like (2) only sound ‘bad’ if you didn’t happen to grow up speaking a dialect that uses them.
You may have been taught to avoid ‘split infinitives’, as in (3):
(3) I was asked to thoroughly water the garden.
This is said to be ‘ungrammatical’ because thoroughly splits the infinitive to water. Why are split infinitives so bad? Here’s why: seventeenth-century grammarians believed Latin was the ideal language, so they thought English should be as much like Latin as possible. In Latin, an infinitive like to water is a single word; it’s impossible to split it up. So today, 300 years later, we’re still being taught that sentences like (3) are wrong, all because someone in the 1600’s thought English should be more like Latin.
Here’s one last example. Over the past few decades, three new ways of reporting speech have appeared:
(4) So Karen goes, «Wow — I wish I’d been there!»
(5) So Karen is like, «Wow — I wish I’d been there!»
(6) So Karen is all, «Wow — I wish I’d been there!»
In (4), goes means pretty much the same thing as said; it’s used for reporting Karen’s actual words. In (5), is like means the speaker is telling us more or less what Karen said. If Karen had used different words for the same basic idea, (5) would be appropriate, but (4) would not. Finally, is all in (6) is a fairly new construction. In most of the areas where it’s used, it means something similar to is like, but with extra emotion. If Karen had simply been reporting the time, it would be okay to say She’s like, «It’s five o’clock,” but odd to say She’s all, «It’s five o’clock” unless there was something exciting about it being five o’clock.
Is it a lazy way of talking? Not at all; the younger generation has made a useful three-way distinction where we previously only had the word said. Language will never stop changing; it will continue to respond to the needs of the people who use it. So the next time you hear a new phrase that grates on your ears, remember that like everything else in nature, the English language is a work in progress.
For further information
Aitcheson, lean. 1991. Language Change: Progress or Decay? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bryson, Bill. 1991. Mother Tongue: The English Language. New York: Penguin Books.
A. Choose the correct answer.
1 You need a passport to cross the …………… between Mexico and the United States.
A edge B line
C border D rim
2 The hotel where we are …………… is quite luxurious.
A living B remaining
C existing D staying
3 When you …………… your destination, your tour guide will meet you at the airport.
A arrive B get
C reach D achieve
4 It can be quite busy here during the tourist …………… .
A season B period
C phase D stage
5 David …………… me to the train station every morning.
A goes B takes
C has D makes
6 I always enjoy our school …………… to France.
A excursion B journey
C trip D travel
7 Hurry up, or we’ll …………… the bus!
A avoid B miss
C drop D lose
8 The brochure says that the hotel has a great …………… of the sea.
A appearance B look
C sight D view
9 I must remember to …………… a souvenir back from Spain for my grandmother.
A go B take
C bring D keep
10 The …………… from London to Berlin is about 919 kilometres.
A measure B length
C gap D distance
11 Make sure you …………… a hotel before you come to our island, especially in the summer.
A book B keep
C put D take
12 I live in Barcelona, but my …………… town is Madrid.
A birth B home
C native D origin
Answers
1 C 2 D 3 C 4 A 5 B 6 C
7 B 8 D 9 C 10 D 11 A 12 B
B. Circle the correct word.
1 I hope to go on a trip round the world / earth one day.
2 You learn a lot about the local territory / area by speaking to local people.
3 It’s good to have someone to lead / guide you when you are on holiday.
4 I get the train to work every day and the fare / fee is quite expensive.
5 Captain Cook discovered Australia on a voyage / travel to the Pacific.
6 Most tourist attractions in London charge an admission fee / ticket.
7 The sunset over Niagara Falls really is a magnificent look / sight.
Answers
1 world 2 area 3 guide 4 fare 5 voyage
6 fee 7 sight
C. Complete using the correct form of the words in the box.
catch • check • get • go • make • pick • pull • see
1 Let’s go to the airport to ………………… Grandpa off when he flies back home.
2 If it starts to rain, ………………… for a nearby cave to wait for it to pass.
3 We would like to remind all guests that they must ………………… out before midday.
4 Please ………………… in and stop so that I can buy something to drink.
5 Every Saturday night my dad ………………… us up outside the cinema.
6 I think the neighbours have ………………… away for the weekend.
7 John’s up ahead so Greg is pedalling fast to ………………… up with him.
8 We’re going on holiday tomorrow, but we’ll call you when we ………………… back.
Answers
1 see 2 make 3 check 4 pull 5 picks
6 gone 7 catch 8 get
D. Write a phrasal verb in the correct form to replace the words in italics. Add any other words you need.
1 We can start our journey ………………… towards the mountains at dawn.
2 Dad fetched the luggage while Mum registered ………………… at the hotel.
3 I asked the taxi driver to let me get out ………………… outside the train station.
4 Oh, no! I’ve forgotten my passport! We’ll have to go back ………………… and get it!
5 The most exciting moment is when the plane leaves the ground ………………… .
6 Stop the car! I think we’ve hit ………………… a dog.
7 I don’t think a horse can ever stay at the same speed as ………………… a car.
Answers
1 set out/off 2 checked in 3 drop me off
4 turn round 5 takes off 6 run over
7 keep up with
E. Write one word in each gap.
1 The speed ………………… in towns is 50 km/h and you shouldn’t go faster than that.
2 Why don’t we ………………… the scenic route along the coast?
3 If you buy your plane ticket ………………… advance, it’s often cheaper than if you wait.
4 I can’t remember the name of the hotel we stayed at off the ………………… of my head.
5 I’m sorry I’m late! I ………………… my way and had to ask for directions.
6 My mum’s away in Germany on a business ………………… at the moment.
7 The bank? Well, turn left here, then go ………………… ahead for a kilometre and it’s on the left.
8 If you look on your left-hand ………………… as we turn this corner, you’ll see Big Ben.
9 I’ll look round the shops in the morning and then ………………… sightseeing in the afternoon.
10 My grandma hasn’t driven since she ………………… an accident last year.
11 I love visiting foreign places, ………………… the sights and learning about other cultures.
12 During the 70s, many British people started to go ………………… holiday to Spain.
13 While you’re in London, you should take a tour ………………… the Houses of Parliament.
Answers
1 limit 2 take 3 in 4 top 5 lost 6 trip 7 straight
8 side 9 go 10 had 11 seeing 12 on 13 (a)round/of
F. Choose the correct answer.
1 I’ve always dreamt ………… China.
A to visit B of visiting
C I visit D visit
2 The travel agency is arranging for us ………… at a really nice hotel.
A stay B of staying
C to stay D staying
3 My dad says he always regrets ………… more.
A to not travel
B not travelling
C he not travel
D of not travelling
4 John seems keen ………… how to drive as soon as he can.
A of learning B he learn
C for learn D to learn
5 Now, class, I’d like you all to write ………… a description of your last holiday.
A me B to me
C it me D about me
6 When you arrive …………, have your passport ready.
A to the airport
B in the airport
C on the airport
D at the airport
7 The Joneses have invited us ………… to Australia with them this summer.
A going B for going
C about going D to go
8 The in-flight entertainment may differ ………… that advertised.
A to B from
C in D at
Answers
1 B 2 C 3 B 4 D 5 A 6 D 7 D 8 B
G. Use the word given in capitals to form a word that fits in the gap.
It’s not always easy being a (1) ………………… (TOUR). You spend half your time making (2) ………………… (ARRANGE) for your holiday and the other half worrying about sticking to the (3) ………………… (TIME). I think it’s relaxing sometimes to spend a holiday at home. There are no (4) ………………… (CULTURE) problems, you don’t need someone to be the (5) ………………… (PHOTOGRAPH) and you know that the local (6) ………………… (INHABIT) are always friendly!
Answers
1 tourist 2 arrangements 3 timetable
4 cultural 5 photographer 6 inhabitants
H. Complete the sentences by changing the form of the word in capitals when this is necessary.
1 Beijing has changed so much in the last few years that it’s almost …………………. (RECOGNISE).
2 The number of cars …………………. (WORLD) is about a billion and is increasing all the time.
3 The new maglev trains run on a completely …………………. (DIFFER) system from ordinary trains.
4 Living in a foreign country really does …………………. (BROAD) your horizons.
5 I can’t find a …………………. (DIRECT) flight from London to Delhi so I’ve booked one that changes in Frankfurt.
6 All passengers must complete a visa form upon …………………. (ARRIVE) at Singapore airport.
7 You can still see old milestones by the side of the road in England, showing the …………………. (DISTANT) to the nearest town.
8 The Museum of Transport has a full-sized jet plane next to the …………………. (ENTER).
Answers
1 unrecognisable 2 worldwide 3 different
4 broaden 5 direct 6 arrival 7 distance
8 entrance
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