Language Constantly Changing

In the mind of the average person language is associated with writing and calls up a picture of the printed page. From Latin or French as we meet it in literature we get an impression of something uniform and relatively fixed. We are likely to forget that writing is only a conventional device for recording sounds and that language is primarily speech. Even more important, we tend to forget that the Latin of Cicero or the French of Voltaire is the product of centuries of development and that language as long as it lives and is in actual use is in a constant state of change.

Speech is the product of certain muscular movements. The sounds of language are produced by the passage of a current of air through cavities of the throat and face controlled by the muscles of these regions. Any voluntary muscular movement when constantly repeated is subject to gradual alteration. This is as true of the movements of the organs of speech as of any other parts of the body, and the fact that this alteration takes place largely without our being conscious of it does not change the fact or lessen its effects. Now any alteration in the position or action of the organs of speech results in a difference in the sound produced. Thus each individual is constantly and quite unconsciously introducing slight changes in his or her speech. There is no such thing as uniformity in language. Not only does the speech of one community differ from that of another, but the speech of different individuals of a single community, even different members of the same family, also is marked by individual peculiarities. Members of a group, however, are influenced by one another, and there is a general similarity in the speech of a given community at any particular time. The language of any district or even country is only the sum total of the individual speech habits of those composing it and is subject to such changes as occur in the speech of its members, so far as the changes become general or at least common to a large part of it.

Although the alteration that is constantly going on in language is for the most part gradual and of such nature as often to escape the notice of those in whose speech it is taking place, after a period of time the differences that grow up become appreciable. If we go back to the eighteenth century we find Alexander Pope writing

Good-nature and good-sense must even join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine….

where it is apparent that he pronounced join as jine. Again he writes 

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes Tea.

It is demonstrable that he pronounced tea as tay. Elsewhere he rhymes full—rule; give— believe; glass—place; ear—repair; lost—boast; thought—fault; obliged—besieged; reserve—starve. Since Pope’s time the pronunciation of at least one in each of these pairs has changed so that they are no longer considered good rhymes. If we go back to Chaucer, or still further, to King Alfred (871–899), we find still greater differences. King Alfred said bān (bone), hū (how), hēah (high); in fact all the long vowels of his pronunciation have undergone such change as to make the words in which they occur scarcely recognizable to the typical English-speaking person today.