See here online at booktv. Org. Welcome to the manhattan library. My name is erica parker, im elaborate here at midmanhattan. Before we get started out of respect for the speaker and your fellow audience members i would like you to please silence all Electronic Devices at this time. Thank you for joining us for all the talk with John Mcwhorter on his book words on the move why english wont and cant sit still. So language shifts constantly. Did you know the word clue derived from clue, a middle english word meaning follow the yarn. In passionat follow thread we through the labyrinth. It does not make sense. Countless other words have changed this way taking on new meetings or new shades of meaning. In the age of means and texting, lol, dfw, et cetera, language continues to shift. But as John Mcwhorter explains, this shouldnt scare us. Submit expense of english language is evolving before our eyes, and why we should embrace the change, not fight it. John mcwhorter as an associate professor of english and comparative literature at columbia university. He is the author of more than 15 books including the language folks. Hes currently writing his 20th book. Please give a warm welcome to John Mcwhorter. [applause] thanks everybody. I want to talk to you for not too long about a new way of hearing language. I think its important because i think linguists have failed to explain the realities of how language change works. And what language really is. We are ultimate inpatient, we dont understand what everybody sees it differently than we do. But really theres a lot in common between languages and national history, the way biologists have taught us to see flora and fauna. You would never know it from the way language is taught in the school system. You would never know it from even taking just one but two linguistic classes that certain things are really not hit on. So i want to give you a new way of looking at language that will feel good, all of this makes it so you can walk down the street feeling better about what you hear and possibly feeling better about your own speech what it comes down to is this. Language is inherently changeable. Language changes. Its not that it might change. It always will change. It must change. If you ask somebody whether they think language has changed him out of the anybody would say no. But i think we can to think what language changes is, first of all, that you need new words for new things, like anybody would say that. You would assume a lot of those words probably are going to come from foreign languages, and that is something in my process is exciting. We all know that slang changes. Language of change is much more profound than that, and so see if this works. There we go. Theres what we know, and heres what you dont learn. We will always need new words for new things. Thats true. But what we are not taught is that language changes as inevitably as cloud patterns change. The analogy is with looking up in the sky and sing the clouds today, if you look up tomorrow and saw the clouds in the same place, that would be utterly bizarre. Its the same thing with language change. It has to change the way cloud patterns have to change. Clouds change by wind. Language is change because every generation slightly misuse or reinterprets what the last generation said. Thats never not happened and it always will. Or words will come in from foreign languages, and thats true, but if he took a group of people and for some reason put them in a cave and somehow they could live in the cave with food and everything they needed, but they would indicate and there was no cultural change, no contact with anybody else, and people would somehow managed to reproduce and live in the cave for 2000 years. Windows people can out of the cave they would be speaking a whole new language. Not because anything new was invented, not because they admit anybody else. It wouldnt be just the slang. They wouldnt understand that people who had gone into the cave. Thats because its inherent to language that change. Thats what language changes. Or we know that slang and idioms will change, yeah, but its hard to see a dictionary pick a dictionary is a wonderful thing, but a dictionary page is like a polaroid snapshot and thats really all it is. They can be a beautiful polaroid snapshot, but if you have a polaroid of somebody at 40 and then 10 years later you encounter that person and you showed them the picture of themselves at 40, you dont think the way they were at 40 a somehow the way they really are, any change that is happened since then is somehow wrong or peculiar. People change. Languages are the same way. It changes in basically five ways. Thats not true but i have fashioned it into five easy to remember ways. One of them is something that cannot im going to call creeping implications. Words change by creeping implications but what i mean by that is that at any point in time, a word has different resonances surrounding it. Theres the quoteunquote dictionary definition, and then there are other things that would make you think of. As time goes by what everybody thinks of the word meaning, moves into, including those residences. So after while the word meaning has changed and after a long while the word meaning is unrecognizable. That is something that happened to almost every word in any language. The words dont change like and or in other words, like father and brother. Those are the exceptions. Thats just a boring little collection of 100 or 200 words. Most words are always moving along. So, for example, silly first met blessed. Audition first meant your hearing. It had nothing with doing the on stage are trying up or something. Lewd first meant i learned. You can imagine how i learned might morph into meaning sexually improper but originally lewd meant on learned. Mary first met short. Gradually came to mean jolly because that which is short is often pleasant. It happened bit by bit. Meet first meant all food. Loaf was the food for bread. Warped we not associate with health food stores, that was the word for vegetable. Vegetable came in later. Apple first met fruit. So, for example, lets say you are blessed and we imagine what that word means. If you are blessed, then theres reason to think that you are innocent. So edward the first means blessed my many generations later mean that you are innocent. So innocent is probably harmless and that was surrounding the word and the next thing he knew, a word that originally met blessed met harmless. Thats fair enough. Something is harmless its probably transeventeen and so the word came to mean weak. You can see this happening century by center. One way is mentally. You might not be on the physically weak but you might be kind of slow or not very bright. So after while that word that meant blessed mint dim. One of the ways you might manifest it is if youre kind of goofy, gradually that meaning came in, such that blessed meant goofy. Originally the word meant happy. And so a word that started out meaning happy h again blessed, anderson, harmless, weak, slow, became goofy. All of that was a cynical word, and this is the thing. Thats normal. Thats what were to do. Almost every word in your mouth is doing that. We cant feel it within our lifetime thats how language change work. This has implications. Its not just silly is interesting or almost anywhere you are using and that kind of history. It gives you a sense of why shakespeare can be difficult to hear in real time if you havent read it first. This is a controversial topic and i know many people say that with the shakespeare as just a matter of poetry or that it has to be performed really well on that its better when the person has a british accent. All of us know that still, if all of those things are in place, shakespeare if you havent read it, its one thing to read it, but in real time if you havent read it, its tough. You get tired after about 20 minutes. Somebody tells you you are not politically its not only poetry. Its that words meanings change. A lot of words that we hear sound like english because they are but words dont mean what they mean to us because so much time has gone by. So, for example, hes defending himself against charges. Why bastard . Wherefore base . When my dimensions are as well compact. My mind as generous and my shape as to as honest maddens issue . My mind is generous. Why generous . People are making fun of him and hes objecting that he is free with his goods. Its not impossible but its odd. Theres a little bump as your listening and he keeps going. Hes not going to stop and explain. You cant act your way through it. Then my mind is generous to we dont usually talk about a generous brain. That happens about three times the page, there goes the fatigue. Generous when shakespeare wrote it meant noble. Notice how all of a sudden it makes sense. He is as noble as anyone else. If you are noble, especially back then, part of being a noble involving magnanimous with your folks. As result after while generous came to mean magnanimous and needed a new word for noble, and it was actually noble. So thats why shakespeare is hard. This point bears pushing because i know how angry some people get at the idea that shakespeare might be, get ready for, changed. There is a growing movement especially over the past 20 years not to translate shakespeare, but to adjust shakespeare, especially when the words are such that we can no longer understand what he meant when hearing it life and have not read it. So, for example, mcbeth again, besides, this duncan has borne his faculties so meek. What does that mean . You can have time. So besides this, so clear in his great office, clear what . Im not clear in my office. Im sitting in a chair. Nobody would say you are looking clear. Thats odd but its a play and he keeps going. His virtues will plead like angels, trumpet tongued, against the deep damnation of his taking off. Taking all of . Where is he going . We think of taking off as flying. What does it mean . But he keeps going. Thats hard. You can read the footnotes but lets face it, we are busy. Life is hard and after while especially after you have kids you can have time to read. So you are watching it live. Suppose you change about to the things it needs. Duncan have to Board Authority so meek, his faculties, authority are born. His authority so meek, not clear in this great office. We cant do what that means. So pure in his great office, the idea being that he keeps his hands clean, that his virtues will plead like angels against the deep damnation, not just taking off but h his knocking o. Thats what it meant. It had a slaying flavor. So does knocking off for us. So the issue is that words and meanings change. What this means is theres no such thing as a community of speakers using a word wrong. We hear it that way. We think lately people using such and such to mean this, but is supposed to mean that. We understand its inherent to a word for its meaning to change. We understand that a word isnt something that is. Its something going on. Thats the way language has always been. Power of human conversation and we are not doing it in a tighty sort of way such as we do it once in paragraph and never do it again. Its something that we constantly do almost as someone might be cleaning themselves. Donald trump, believe me is one of those markers. Why does he say that . He wants to indicate his fact. There are many people who were upset, literally being misused because its supposed to mean by the letter exactly and yet, people seem to be using in construction and people say i was literally dying of thirst and thats just wrong because it means that youre using something to mean its opposite, both the factual and then figuratively. That really gets on peoples noses. It really doesnt have to, really. Thats what it meant at a certain point. Everybody who thought of it meaning only that is now very, very dead. They died not knowing something that you guys and women can all know that literally was never going to say meaning by the letter. No one ever stays still. One thing that words do intend to do is they become less intent that a word that meant by the better who is eventually start meaning Something Like really, that what was the way it was going to weaken, you just knew that was going to happen, once it means really, of course, people are going to use it to intensify their figurative expression because thats what we to when we speak. Next thing you know is i was really dying of thirst and not mean it. You knew that was going to happen. Now, often is said as my foot tangles in this wire that this use of literally is new. Many ways while it would feel new. I dont know. He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arriel. This is something who is writing in a much more formal era. So its not, not new. People think that cant be. I actually see a teacher where somebody compliance about literally, figuratively i stand against it. You can run fast but then you can be fast asleep, you sit fast, stuck fast. It means both rapid and then the very opposite of rapid. Has that ever bothered you. Are you aware of it now . Isnt that kind of neat. You can bolt the chair to the grounded and the world keeps spinning. If you seed a watermelon, chances are that you do not purchase seeds and put them into the watermelon before you eat it. If youre seeding a plot of land it would be counterproductive to take the seeds out of the land. Thats three examples and i think theres seven up there up there, theres about 75 called contronyms. To the extent we have probably not known what a person meant. If a person was saying i was literally freeze to go death, what they are telling you is they didnt die and you werent qon confused. Contronym is fun. Acknowledging their state of mind while outlining your own. Thats some awful lot what we mean such as totally the way people below a certain anal uses totally these days. It doesnt mean in total fashion. We are totally going to get tickets for the taylor swift concert. Thats not what it means. We are totally going to get tickets for the taylor swift concert, it means we both know that there are reasons why some people would say that we shouldnt get those tickets such as that maybe shes considered a little bit x, y or z or we are busy students or Something Like that, but we are going to get the tickets. If somebody says, hes totally going to call you, its not hes going to call you in his completeness, its he is going to call you even though some people are reason to believe that hes not. Its acknowledgment of standing condition of which all are aware. Theres lots of acknowledging markers. This is all language. Emily says in the knights tale, yet of texas thy company, a very, very long time ago. So factuality and acknowledgment. The things that you can think of some sort of degradation of language which are really very sophisticated. For example, you might think that to pin add adjective. Imagine a person looking out of the window and they see a squirrel, hey, i see a squirrel, more specific meaning, hey, that squirrel is gray rather than a black squirrel that i expect. So what you mean is the squirrel is gray. It means it was longer than you want expect anything to be. Thats what it means. Listen to the way people use that because they to all of the time. Its never profanity, it its counterexpectational. I want to understand that im talking about language as we know it. Lol, much ink has been spilled over laugh out loud being used in context texting. Any number of accounts that lol, quote, unquote, doesnt mean anything. Thats because one of the word, you can see the actual text exchange. I like you, im pretty sure everyone figures that out before you, lol. What does it mean. I dont know, just assume, why they are sprinkling that in there, you say. It wont cancel for a while, lol. It seems so unsystematic, you know what that is, think about how much we laugh when we talk to each other casually. Theres an awful lot of, really, empty laughter that one does. If you dont giggle a little bit making jokes while youre talking specially to people that you know so well, its unspoken part of being a normal human being to chuckle a little bit when interacting people. Lol is how texting has creating and make it clear that everything is okay. We are always indicating that we really mean things and looking at other peoples brains and we are always engaging the counter expectational and we are always keeping things easy. Lol does that and so its a face marker just like our involuntary easing laughter when we talk. All of those things and as you can imagine, the long list of factuality and part of the language as you using past sense or pluralizing a noun. Very often you can hear people that speak standard language and they also use a different kind of speech among another, we are teaching about black americans since we are in america, why do they do that, why do they have to be different, why does president obama sound different when he talks to the naacp. I know a lot of people that actually heard the president as fake in that. They think, well, if he can talk one way, why he would talk the other. Nonstandard dialect is another kind of easing and its something that probably every second in the world does to some extent by switch to go a different language in a situation, or if not that, then a different dialect. Its very much part of language. Once again, you a way of hearing language in a more positive way and so it can be one thing to listen to all of the littal easing and actually even lols, whats all of this trash . Why do people sound like edward and they never, they never have and all of the face markers have sophistication of their own. So those are the big two. Then there are other assets. That sounds like a disease. The last time im going to use that term but theres expecter chapter about it. So, for example, can, you can do it. Can came from no. You can to this, that you can identify, that originally came from the verb to know as did canny, cunning, couth. There wasnt the word couth, it meant could. Thats normal. You feel odd, wet muscle that youre kind of stuck with it. Ought is that way. Look at that word. Think about how to say it. Where did ought come from . It was the word for owed. You can hear it used that way in shakespeare. Ought meant owed. You owed something to somebody, you ought them. Next thing you know you ought to do something. Ly, first was like which meant body. So what happens is that what we think of an ordinary words become pieces of grammar that just basically manage the traffic between these words. So richard the third let us two. Richard rogers in 1930, having some liquor and writing a song, lets go. Now, already for Richard Rogers what hes thinking what he was saying let us go, when we say lets go, really we are saying letz, lets go. A whole new gram at cali grammitcal and they would hear a prefix. Lets go. Thats what i would say to my daughter. I would never say let us go. Where did the prefix come from . Let us, perfectly ordinary. Its happening all of the time or walked. Imagine if you made up a language and youve come up with a word for ambulating and it would be kind of corny to say yesterday specially if you meant an hour ago. How are you going to put it in the past, you certainly wouldnt think of adding some little bi