Encore: How Latin Became the Romance Languages
Tides of History
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The Nature of Language Change
Language is always fighting a losing battle to change slowly and often imperceptibly. Is just the nature of language, is just what it does. These changes take many forms. Sometimes theyr changes in pronunciation. Some pronunciations might fall out of use except in really specific places. Other times there are shifts in the meanings of particular words. This is called semantic change. There are changes in orthography, in how we write or spell words and sentences. When we put them all together, what we get language change and a whole bunch of different dimensions all at once. It's happening everywhere, all the time, in the speech of every single person.
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