Words in Danger of Extinction

23 de març de 2017

cassettes-blog-2-2

Do you know that it is not only clothes that go out of fashion? Words go out of fashion too!

Every year new words come into the language. Most of these new acquisitions are related to technology. For example, years ago the verb “to google” didn’t exist, did it?

However, in the same way that new words come in to common usage, other words go out of fashion. We simply stop using them and they disappear. This happens in any language, I am sure. Correct me if you think that I’m wrong about this, but what I’m really interested in are the words that are disappearing from English.

According to a recent article in the Guardian newspaper, words such as “playschool”, “cassette” and “crossword” are disappearing quickly.  Cassette I can understand. If we think about it, the way we listen to music nowadays has nothing to do with those small plastic boxes that contained tape we used (or our parents used) to listen to their favourite music in the 1970s. But the word “crossword”? Well, I’m not sure why that is vanishing. Is it because we no longer do them? Is it because we have replaced crosswords with sudokos or we are all hooked on playing games like candy crush?

Disappearing words is not something new. Have a listen to this recording from the BBC to find out more.

But back to today’s world. According to a list compiled by Cambridge News some of the other words about to go out of fashion are “boxer”, “perm” and “cobbler”. Why, I ask, are these words going out of fashion?  If cobbler doesn’t exist, how will I get my shoes mended?

 

 

 

(Visited 27 times, 1 visits today)
Autor / Autora
Comentaris
Deixa un comentari