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Saturday, January 18, 2014

John McWhorter on how we're not destroying civilization




We hear so much about how English is going to the dogs. But I'm having a hard time seeing those dogs of late. In the way young people are texting, tweeting and just plain talking, I see, of all things, warmth. American English is getting sweeter all the time. Take the peculiarly witty locution that the American Dialect Society just anointed as the word of the year, the new because. It is now acceptable, at least in tweets and such, to write things like “I stayed home because weather,” “I just eat them by the handful because chocolate,” and “Dow closes at record high for 35th time this year because Obama.”

Read more: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116161/net-speak-because-making-english-warmer-language