Another article that I've come across is by the Independent. I like this one because, like other articles, experiments are used to gain the facts about our ever changing English language. However, this is the first one I've come across which actually gains a young person's perspective of the matter. And it's definitely something I think is important when gaining lots of information.
One experiment carried out included Gus, "a 13-year-old who attends an inner London comprehensive." A conversation overheard on a bus between two teenagers was given to Gus to hopefully decode. The article explains that the schoolboy "wastes no time" in doing so, easily picking out and defining the words like our very own urban dictionary. He finishes with "And begging means chatting rubbish" and doing so "with a flourish." Giving the impression that it's just natural to him. He then goes on to say that he speaks this way because "you hear the the cool kids saying these words and... Nobody wants to be uncool." This almost challenges the theory that people converge in order to accommodate who they're talking to, when really, some converge to fit in.
But despite the melancholy feeling you might have just come across when reading that kids speak with slang in order to 'fit in', it's not all bad. In a way, this development in language is creating a better Britain. "youth speak based on common culture rather than ethnic or social background" followed by "people are beginning to sound the same" creates a positive outcome. I think that this change is breaking down barriers between different ethnic groups, making this world a much nicer place to live in.
In a nutshell, we can clearly see that the English language is rapidly changing and developing, but is this necessarily a bad thing? Gus, the decoder of the two teens' conversation stated "you have to learn a whole new vocabulary every few months just to keep on top of it." This really emphasises the fact that even youths find it hard to keep updated on the language used just to be 'cool'.
But who knows? This may just be the foundations of our English language in 100 years' time.
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