rate of language change

[Steve Gustafson]

>Too cautious, I think.  My late mother, who had little education, was
>keenly aware of some of the differences between her own speech and her
>children's speech.  A former girlfriend of mine, a native speaker of
>Kacchi, was highly aware of the differences between her own speech and
>her parents' speech, which in fact appeared to be rather substantial,
>and were regarded by her as substantial.  And there is a huge amount of
>evidence showing that people are frequently aware of the same sorts of
>differences, even if they sometimes choose to regard these as
>"corruption" or "slovenliness" rather than as change.

U.S. television watchers might find it amusing to figure out what exactly it
is in the current batch of Tylenol commercials that make the narrator's
voice sound distinctly old-fashioned.  Not only does she fumble her r's, she
uses the /aa/ vowel, close to the backwards 'c' of the IPA, a sound present
in my grandmother's version of Swedish, but which is not a phoneme in
current majority English --- and what astounds me is that she uses it in the
name of the product, which she pleases to call /'tai l@ ,naal/.

---
With wind we blowen; with wind we lassun;
With weopinge we comen; with weopinge we passun.
With steringe we beginnen; with steringe we enden;
With drede we dwellen; with drede we wenden.
                                  ---- Anon, Lambeth Ms. no. 306