Reasons for Language Change

Reasons for language change

- Laziness: humans are impatient creatures. They prefer briefer expressions to longer ones. Thus, compact disc became CD, gymnasium became gym, influenza became flu etc. words and phrases which we use constantly are likely to be shortened in one way or another. The former "God be with you " has been irreversibly reduced to good-bye, and the equivalent French au revoir is often abbreviated to voir.

- Emphasis and Clarity: the desire to avoid ambiguity can bring about all sorts of intriguing changes. Among the pronouns in Old English were he "he" , heo "she" and hi "they". With the passage of time, the typical English weakening of final syllables made these three pronouns uncomfortably similar in pronunciation. So speakers of English less than thousand years ago started to resolve this.

- Politeness: most of us, most of the time, are eager to avoid giving offence, and avoiding offence can require some manipulation of the language.

- Misunderstanding: some changes derive from simple misunderstanding.

- Prestige and pretentiousness: after the conquest of England by the French-speaking Normans, Norman French enjoyed enormous prestige in England, where it was the language of the king, the court and the aristocracy.

- Structural reasons:

- Analogy

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