so last year as a class we read Beowulf
which is the first trace of written
English and then after the reading we
talked about the evolution of language
and if that was a good thing or a bad
thing at the time I thought the
conversation was kind of stupid and
frankly a waste of time because
obviously language is changing as we
don’t talk like Henry the eighth anymore
and as we can’t do anything about it
there is no point in talking about it so
in the year since as Excel said I’ve
kind of changed my mind because I’ve
taken a class on rhetoric and the
utility of English and I’ve also
listened to debate about the importance
of language when it comes to terms like
radical Islamic terrorism and fake news
and so now I realize that English is a
really important thing to discuss and to
debate and also that the language sorry
the language is in constant fluctuation
so when I take issue with today are
those who oppose the evolution of
language or who they focus on certain
parts of the debate so for example my
English teacher of this year she has
told us several times that she’s against
using the word impact as a verb and so
she she says you can have an impact that
you cannot impact something or something
can’t really be impacted and so she
would always say that’s not correct and
so I kind of looked into it and I found
out that the origin of the word as a
verb has its has its roots in very
vicious business jargon and has led a
vicious campaign to erode the English
language or so grammarians will have you
believe because in truth what has
happened is very natural and organic a
word has made its way from the fringe to
the mainstream and it happens with slang
all the time most of our words we use
today were once considered slang and the
like English language is in constant
fluctuation adding or subtracting words
and changing meanings and I will bet you
ten dollars that in ten years
on fleek will become totally acceptable
in everyday language so but historically
humans have been unable to understand
the fact that language is an organ
and is hence always evolving and there’s
an associate professor of English at
Columbia University that wrote a book
about this and he says that historically
people cannot accept that language is
something that isn’t something that is
but rather something always becoming and
there’s two reasons for this
so for one the average lifespan of a
words meaning is just a little longer
than an average lifespan of a human so
something that seems to have always been
around has actually only been around for
five years before your birth and it’s
probably gonna go and extinct ten years
after your death um additionally we have
this thing called the dictionary and it
looks like a big fat book of
Commandments on words and that feeds
this image that language is immortal and
will never change when in reality the
dictionary itself is also always being
edited and updated anyway people who
focus on this debate of evolution
they’re being pretty nit picky because
we get upset about words like impact or
the fact that we now say they instead of
he or she to avoid gender awkwardness
but if we look at the big picture we’re
actually really okay with what’s
happening because we’re okay with the
fact that we don’t talk like Shakespeare
anymore so she experienced a great
example in this school we have to read
Shakespeare every single year from the
6th to the 12th grade and I absolutely
hate it and I know I should love it
because Shakespeare has done so much for
the English language has contributed new
words has written beautiful plays but I
just can’t help feeling frustrated
because I don’t understand what’s going
on and so on late Tuesday nights as I’m
surfing the internet freaking out about
tomorrow’s quiz I end up on no fear
Shakespeare Curtis parks notes and this
is a great website because it takes the
original Shakespearean text and
translates it into modern understandable
English and I feel kind of disappointed
in myself because I had to cheat I guess
and now I understand what’s going on but
I don’t really get the language so but
there’s no free lunch you have to pay a
price for everything but all I can think
about is when I shelf that your
Shakespeare play about how happy I am
that we don’t talk like Shakespeare
anymore and I know that my English
teachers probably feel the same so for
example there’s a
and Shakespeare in terms to say there’s
someone at the door you say madam
there’s alighted at the gate but we’re
totally fine was just saying there’s
someone at the door
other words have been completely cut out
of the debate so my personal favorite
would be decimate this mate
so the original meaning for decimate is
to take one that means to kill one out
of a group of ten to punish the whole
group there’s a pretty violent meaning
nowadays we just know it as take a big
percentage out of so I don’t know if
this is a peaceful two-hour Testament
sorry testament to peaceful society or
if this is just a random coincidence but
we don’t get upset about the fact that
nobody says decimate as some form of
barbaric torture anymore and so my last
argument would be a lot of people think
that people who engage in evolution of
language are just being lazy so they’ll
say well why can’t they just get up and
look the proper meeting up in a
dictionary
instead of hijacking the words for their
own nefarious purposes well I would
argue actually the contrary the fact
that we have been able to adapt our
language and just even our ways of life
and not fall in a cycle of well we’ve
been doing it this way forever so why
start now it’s kind of what’s kept us
going as we say in French mingle so some
people would even argue that the fact
that people don’t want to adapt their
language that’s a sign of laziness and
that has dangerous consequences and so
there’s this really important author
called George Orwell you might have
heard of him and he wrote an essay
called politics in the English language
and in it he argues he argues many
things but one of them is that
ready-made phrases which are the type of
phrases you’re gonna hear over and over
and over in the news those are a
testament to laziness and those have
dangerous consequences and so one that
comes to mind would be fake news which
is something we’ve heard a lot in the
past few months
so when fake news became a thing it
meant something completely different as
what it means today today we know it as
what our president will say to credible
norts news sources to tell them that he
doesn’t believe in what they’re saying
and originally that’s fine
the president he engaged in the
evolution of language he’s taken a term
changed its meaning and it reintroduce
it to the world so in that sense I would
say what he’s done is perfectly okay
however he’s taking it a step too far
and that’s our fault because we have
started to absorb the meaning without
thinking about what he’s really saying
so now I can go up to my math teacher
and say when she gives me a zero I can
say hey this is fake news I’m not gonna
accept this and so at this point we’ve
come to a bit of a dangerous stop
because what our president has done is
has he has made us take his vocabulary
and we don’t even think about it anymore
so what we need to do is reclaim the
word reach ange the definition and send
it back to him and back and forth and
that’s what I would call a democratic
process so and I think that’s a good
thing so my point is today that language
is always changing it’s constant
evolution and that’s a good thing and it
goes from the kind of simple of I don’t
want to speak like Shakespeare because
it’s very complex to also we want to
make sure that the people in power are
kept in check by the people like us and
to all those 10th graders who have to
read Beowulf which is I’m gonna admit
not my favorite book out there it does
get better and next year the readings
are much more interesting
[Applause]
which is the first trace of written
English and then after the reading we
talked about the evolution of language
and if that was a good thing or a bad
thing at the time I thought the
conversation was kind of stupid and
frankly a waste of time because
obviously language is changing as we
don’t talk like Henry the eighth anymore
and as we can’t do anything about it
there is no point in talking about it so
in the year since as Excel said I’ve
kind of changed my mind because I’ve
taken a class on rhetoric and the
utility of English and I’ve also
listened to debate about the importance
of language when it comes to terms like
radical Islamic terrorism and fake news
and so now I realize that English is a
really important thing to discuss and to
debate and also that the language sorry
the language is in constant fluctuation
so when I take issue with today are
those who oppose the evolution of
language or who they focus on certain
parts of the debate so for example my
English teacher of this year she has
told us several times that she’s against
using the word impact as a verb and so
she she says you can have an impact that
you cannot impact something or something
can’t really be impacted and so she
would always say that’s not correct and
so I kind of looked into it and I found
out that the origin of the word as a
verb has its has its roots in very
vicious business jargon and has led a
vicious campaign to erode the English
language or so grammarians will have you
believe because in truth what has
happened is very natural and organic a
word has made its way from the fringe to
the mainstream and it happens with slang
all the time most of our words we use
today were once considered slang and the
like English language is in constant
fluctuation adding or subtracting words
and changing meanings and I will bet you
ten dollars that in ten years
on fleek will become totally acceptable
in everyday language so but historically
humans have been unable to understand
the fact that language is an organ
and is hence always evolving and there’s
an associate professor of English at
Columbia University that wrote a book
about this and he says that historically
people cannot accept that language is
something that isn’t something that is
but rather something always becoming and
there’s two reasons for this
so for one the average lifespan of a
words meaning is just a little longer
than an average lifespan of a human so
something that seems to have always been
around has actually only been around for
five years before your birth and it’s
probably gonna go and extinct ten years
after your death um additionally we have
this thing called the dictionary and it
looks like a big fat book of
Commandments on words and that feeds
this image that language is immortal and
will never change when in reality the
dictionary itself is also always being
edited and updated anyway people who
focus on this debate of evolution
they’re being pretty nit picky because
we get upset about words like impact or
the fact that we now say they instead of
he or she to avoid gender awkwardness
but if we look at the big picture we’re
actually really okay with what’s
happening because we’re okay with the
fact that we don’t talk like Shakespeare
anymore so she experienced a great
example in this school we have to read
Shakespeare every single year from the
6th to the 12th grade and I absolutely
hate it and I know I should love it
because Shakespeare has done so much for
the English language has contributed new
words has written beautiful plays but I
just can’t help feeling frustrated
because I don’t understand what’s going
on and so on late Tuesday nights as I’m
surfing the internet freaking out about
tomorrow’s quiz I end up on no fear
Shakespeare Curtis parks notes and this
is a great website because it takes the
original Shakespearean text and
translates it into modern understandable
English and I feel kind of disappointed
in myself because I had to cheat I guess
and now I understand what’s going on but
I don’t really get the language so but
there’s no free lunch you have to pay a
price for everything but all I can think
about is when I shelf that your
Shakespeare play about how happy I am
that we don’t talk like Shakespeare
anymore and I know that my English
teachers probably feel the same so for
example there’s a
and Shakespeare in terms to say there’s
someone at the door you say madam
there’s alighted at the gate but we’re
totally fine was just saying there’s
someone at the door
other words have been completely cut out
of the debate so my personal favorite
would be decimate this mate
so the original meaning for decimate is
to take one that means to kill one out
of a group of ten to punish the whole
group there’s a pretty violent meaning
nowadays we just know it as take a big
percentage out of so I don’t know if
this is a peaceful two-hour Testament
sorry testament to peaceful society or
if this is just a random coincidence but
we don’t get upset about the fact that
nobody says decimate as some form of
barbaric torture anymore and so my last
argument would be a lot of people think
that people who engage in evolution of
language are just being lazy so they’ll
say well why can’t they just get up and
look the proper meeting up in a
dictionary
instead of hijacking the words for their
own nefarious purposes well I would
argue actually the contrary the fact
that we have been able to adapt our
language and just even our ways of life
and not fall in a cycle of well we’ve
been doing it this way forever so why
start now it’s kind of what’s kept us
going as we say in French mingle so some
people would even argue that the fact
that people don’t want to adapt their
language that’s a sign of laziness and
that has dangerous consequences and so
there’s this really important author
called George Orwell you might have
heard of him and he wrote an essay
called politics in the English language
and in it he argues he argues many
things but one of them is that
ready-made phrases which are the type of
phrases you’re gonna hear over and over
and over in the news those are a
testament to laziness and those have
dangerous consequences and so one that
comes to mind would be fake news which
is something we’ve heard a lot in the
past few months
so when fake news became a thing it
meant something completely different as
what it means today today we know it as
what our president will say to credible
norts news sources to tell them that he
doesn’t believe in what they’re saying
and originally that’s fine
the president he engaged in the
evolution of language he’s taken a term
changed its meaning and it reintroduce
it to the world so in that sense I would
say what he’s done is perfectly okay
however he’s taking it a step too far
and that’s our fault because we have
started to absorb the meaning without
thinking about what he’s really saying
so now I can go up to my math teacher
and say when she gives me a zero I can
say hey this is fake news I’m not gonna
accept this and so at this point we’ve
come to a bit of a dangerous stop
because what our president has done is
has he has made us take his vocabulary
and we don’t even think about it anymore
so what we need to do is reclaim the
word reach ange the definition and send
it back to him and back and forth and
that’s what I would call a democratic
process so and I think that’s a good
thing so my point is today that language
is always changing it’s constant
evolution and that’s a good thing and it
goes from the kind of simple of I don’t
want to speak like Shakespeare because
it’s very complex to also we want to
make sure that the people in power are
kept in check by the people like us and
to all those 10th graders who have to
read Beowulf which is I’m gonna admit
not my favorite book out there it does
get better and next year the readings
are much more interesting
[Applause]
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