Monday, October 29, 2007

Baseball and the Evolution of Language

This post has little to do with my usual topic, but it may be of interest to anyone who works with kids or has ever complained about "kids these days" not knowing proper English. As huge Boston Red Sox fan (Go Sox - World Series champs!), I was drawn to this repost on Slate about how they spell S-O-X. Not surprisingly, our current battle with the language of text messaging (or worse, LOLspeak) is not the first time that efforts have been made to simplify the English language. Did you know that Noah Webster was mostly successful at changing irregular words like "gaol" to "jail", but less successful with "group" to "groop"? I was also interested to learn that Teddy Roosevelt tried to replace the "-ed" suffix with "-t". And, thanks to the practice of the day, the Declaration of Independence will always look like it encourages the "Purfuit of Happineff" to me.

So, with technological change comes the evolution of language. I guess those of us who work with children will jus has 2 deal wif it.

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