Using the words fascinating and fantastic together is rather gauche.
This is exactly what I heard, decades ago, but haven’t seen confirmation, again, until now.
Yes, all languages evolve over time,
in pronunciation, meaning, and introduction of new words...
It may be more accurate to think of the Virginia Tidewater accent as closest to the way the Brits spoke at that time, and that the geographical changes in the language weren't only in North America. Either way, port cities played a part in the evolution.
Upon returning to the States for annual vacations starting in the 2000s, I was occasionally appalled by what I perceived as improper usage.
Top of my list:
1. "I need to have you" or "You need to" as euphemisms for "I am hereby ordering you to..." Heard especially in the service sector.
I could swear that that construction had never been used before in that sense.
2. Speaking of "swearing": "I promise you that..." when actually "I solemnly affirm that" / "I swear that" is meant. Especially egregious when used to aver that one did not do something in the past: "I promise you that I didn't...", which is simply nonsensical ("to promise" always has a future sense).
I expect that people simply became increasingly averse to using the verb "to swear" because of its proximity to "to curse." Now, one almost never hears someone use it correctly. (And this I still count as an error rather than as merely a shift in usage.)
3. "As far as..." (in the sense of "to the extent that") used without the necessary terminal "is concerned" or at least "goes."
4. "Awesome" in the sense of "outstanding" - often used as a stand-alone expression of assent: "Do you want to go to the movies tonight?" "Awesome!" "Would you like another helping of soup?" "Awesome!"
I distinctly remember being frankly dumbfounded when a university professor described my sister as "awesome" - which, for me, had previously been reserved as a synonym for "awe-inspiring."
5. Incorrectly conjugating the verb "to lie" (in the sense of "to rest in a reclined position") and/or confusing it with the very distinct verb "to lay" (e.g., "to lay bricks").
6. The use of the construction "I'm good" in the sense of "No, thank you!"
"Would you like another portion?" "I'm good!"
O course, I won't bother pointing to gross shifts in the meanings of individual words, such as the displacement, by the word "partner," of "lawfully wedded spouse."
Anyone else here able to cite specific instances of shifts in usage since mid-century?
Regards,
Language is a moving target.
CC
Who cares? McWhorter was making nascent right of center noises back in the day. Then he let loose with a bunch of black victimhood pailful shortly after that.
No use for him. At all.
Iirc the western mountains of Maine and New Hampshire had the purest settler accents and words even 30 years ago.
The latest New International Version of Scripture turned the normal use of “he” to “he or she,” but even more egregiously, turned the individual use of “he/he or she” to corporate “they” - for no other reason than to be counted politically correct (while being unashamedly grammatically incorrect). The world is being dumbed down in so many ways; language is one facet of that.
We notice it, but can we stop it?
Eventually all black people will talk like Idris Elba.
Why have the letter “R” if you’re not going to use it?
I remember that some of the movie stars of the mid-century, like Katharine Hepburn, had more british-sounding English than we do today. My presumption was that the upper classes in the eastern cities took longer to lose the British accents than the rest of us did.
Sometimes the British tendency to add the ‘fah’ sound makes listening almost impossible. There is a chick on the Formula One broadcasts that adds so much ‘..ah’ sound to her vocabulary as to make her vocalizations nearly unintelligible.
I’m glad we don’t sound like the nutless cowardly retarded Brits now. What they let happen to their country is disgraceful. I can’t even listen to a British accent on TV anymore.
Does it? To this Englishman brought up to speak 'RP' with a slight Hampshire twang, English spoken by an Australian sounds every bit as exotic as English spoken by an American.
[RP - 'Received Pronunciation', a standardised accent disseminated by BBC radio from the 1930s, based on the English spoken by the upper middle classes in the London area.]
I suppose that’s true so far as the “a” goes, but some older American dialects (mostly in the parts of the country that were settled earliest) drop the “r” at the end of a word, which makes me wonder if the American “r” isn’t a new development. To complicate things, some English regional (and presumably older) dialects also have a pronounced American “r”.
I think McWhorter told of how the upper-class NYC accent dropped the “r”, but then teachers tried to convince immigrant students that dropping “r”s was lower-class. At any rate, “far” pronounced “fah” may have had more to do with the “r” than the “a.”
Word For The Day Ping!..................
Hard to believe this is true, as the world (and country UK) was so dispersed - there was no long range communications (radio, TV, phone, etc); and suddenly people groups in the furthest regions of the UK suddenly developed an accent in two generations ? … hard to believe