Language change

[Ann Dowker]

Coincidentally, an overseas visitor to England who was last here in the
early 80s has just spontaneously pointed out what he perceives as language
changes:

(1) People used to say "Cheerio!" all the time; now they rarely do.

(2) People used to use interrogative endings in casual conversation ("It's
a nice day, isn't it?", etc.) far more often than now. (I'm not sure he's
right there; I think such endings are still used quite frequently.)

(3) People use "Brilliant!" a great deal nowadays to mean not necessarily
"clever", but "fine!", "great!" etc. He was initially rather startled when
a student kept saying "Brilliant!" to him to express agreement - he
thought at first that the student was putting himself in the position of a
judge of his, the tutor's, intellectual performance. (I am so accustomed
to "Brilliant!" used in this way that it hadn't occurred to me that it is
an example of language change; but he is right - it wasn't used much in
this way during my childhood. I do remember "Brilliant!" being used
in a very different, ironic sense by children in Edmonton, Alberta in the
early 70s - the implication was "How stupid can one get!!!")

Ann