Back in Britain after 45 years abroad 2

Language is in constant evolution. Here are some things I noticed about my own language after spending 45 years away:

Social media issues: Of course the arrival of social media has led to many changes in people’s use of language, whereby “written language” has merged with the “spoken language”, especially visible in chats and texts. I cannot compare this to 45 years ago, since there were no social media then.

Spelling: it might be as a result of social media that I notice these things more than before, but I never realised how many people did not know how to spell:

“their” – as against “there” eg “I saw them play there best game ever”

“have” – as against “of” eg “I would of known”

Lexical items: I was unfamiliar with most of these items, although they did arrive out to Italy at my British workplace:

a heads-up, no-brainer, sound-bite, bench-mark, bog standard, ball-park, chill (meaning to relax), cool (meaning “good” rather than “laid-back”), touchy-feely, gender-neutral “guys”, down to me (rather than “up to to me”), “issues” (meaning problems), brain fog, and the ever flourishing use of the interjection “like”

The list is probably endless

Phonology:

Rising intonation to turn a statement into a sort of question:

Now very common and who knows if in the future it might replace what in English has traditionally been a “syntactic” way of forming a question: eg “this situation is a bit messy?” instead of “isn’t this situation a bit messy?”

Vocal fry aka creaky voice syndrome:

This is very common amongst young people (more prevalently females, but not exclusively) and seemingly more so in the USA (where it is often known as “Kardashian speak”) and here in the south-east of England. hence it is has been dubbed an “affectation”, although most people who use it do not appear to be aware of how they sound.

Here are some of the many online examples (I have deliberately chosen a female presenter so as not to fall foul of “judgementalism” – see my previous blog about this.) The second clip actually presents some possible explanations.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iY-ehIyRY_Q