ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2016-12-23 08:56 pm
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2016-12-23 08:56 pm
Entry tags:
Poem: "When the Frame Comes Off"
This poem is spillover from the April 5, 2016 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from siliconshaman. It has been sponsored by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lone_cat.
"When the Frame Comes Off"
Language is not a static picture
but a living, growing thing
always in motion.
Most of the time it circles
around the same center, but
sometimes it changes rapidly.
The internet is one of those things
that changes everything.
Language adapts to keep up
with the shifting culture
and technology.
When the frame comes off,
it can change very fast.
Adding vocabulary
is easy and common.
Changing grammar
happens less often.
It's the punctuation
that changes most rarely.
So when you see
the whole word order
shifting around, and
punctuation marks used
to create fresh compounds,
then you know that we're in
a period of high fast change.
This is the beginning of
new!English, as different
from what came before
as the shifts from Old
to Middle to Modern.
A hundred years from now,
it will be as hard for anyone
to understand what we wrote
as for us to read Chaucer
or even Beowulf.
It's exciting to watch the change
in the moment, as it happens, live,
linguistics with the frame taken off.
* * *
Notes:
Take a look at some of the inventions that changed everything.
Languages change in many ways, but they usually do so slowly, all the time. Occasionally you see a big fast jump such as the Great Vowel Shift.
Social media, the internet, and other modern aspects are changing the English language. One big impact comes from the rise of emoji, and while some people mock or ignore them, other folks find that these symbols greatly enhance their ability to communicate. All this is happening at high speed.
siliconshaman. It has been sponsored by lone_cat."When the Frame Comes Off"
Language is not a static picture
but a living, growing thing
always in motion.
Most of the time it circles
around the same center, but
sometimes it changes rapidly.
The internet is one of those things
that changes everything.
Language adapts to keep up
with the shifting culture
and technology.
When the frame comes off,
it can change very fast.
Adding vocabulary
is easy and common.
Changing grammar
happens less often.
It's the punctuation
that changes most rarely.
So when you see
the whole word order
shifting around, and
punctuation marks used
to create fresh compounds,
then you know that we're in
a period of high fast change.
This is the beginning of
new!English, as different
from what came before
as the shifts from Old
to Middle to Modern.
A hundred years from now,
it will be as hard for anyone
to understand what we wrote
as for us to read Chaucer
or even Beowulf.
It's exciting to watch the change
in the moment, as it happens, live,
linguistics with the frame taken off.
* * *
Notes:
Take a look at some of the inventions that changed everything.
Languages change in many ways, but they usually do so slowly, all the time. Occasionally you see a big fast jump such as the Great Vowel Shift.
Social media, the internet, and other modern aspects are changing the English language. One big impact comes from the rise of emoji, and while some people mock or ignore them, other folks find that these symbols greatly enhance their ability to communicate. All this is happening at high speed.
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